No later than their tenth quarter in the program (fall of their fourth year), graduate students will meet with their dissertation committee for a ninety-minute conference on their dissertation project. This meeting constitutes the Second Qualifying Exam, and will be based on a dissertation prospectus (see below for criteria). It must be 1) reviewed by the student’s dissertation committee and 2) approved by the Graduate Committee before 3) the Second Qualifying Exam is scheduled (see section 9.2).

After first consulting with their dissertation committee, the student submits their prospectus to the Graduate Committee through the Staff Graduate Advisor. Students should aim to submit their prospectus to the SGA by the first week of May to ensure the Graduate Committee can read it prior to their spring meeting.

The Graduate Committee reads prospectuses to ensure conformity to departmental norms. Rather than assessing the intellectual merit of the project, the Graduate Committee ensures that the prospectus is of appropriate length, describes and rationalizes a meaningful archive of primary and secondary sources, includes a clear statement of method, and follows the instructions for preparing the prospectus (see below for criteria). Members of the Graduate Committee are invited to respond to the candidate separately if they have advice or suggestions. The Graduate Committee may ask for revisions of the prospectus based on these guidelines. The Graduate Committee customarily meets at the end of spring quarter to review prospectuses; however, the DGS can convene the committee in Fall or Winter for this review upon request.

The prospectus must be 3000 to 5000 words (not including footnotes), with an accompanying bibliography of at least 50 works.

The prospectus should define the dissertation topic, its initial critical questions, its relationship to existing scholarship, and its methodology; it should also describe likely chapter divisions for the larger project.

The bibliography will include works most immediately germane to the dissertation, but should also represent the wider professional area within which the dissertation is likely to be received or in which it seeks to make an intervention. Depending on the nature of the project, this wider area may take the form of a literary period or genre (including, in both cases, secondary criticism), critical/theoretical field, or other construct that reflects an existing or emergent field of professional scholarship. This wider area list should not simply reflect works the student would be reading anyway for the dissertation; rather, it should be a list of works that constitute the larger, distinct field within which the dissertation might be received and interpreted. To facilitate review by both the Graduate Committee and the dissertation committee, students should use separate section headings to identify various parts of the bibliography (e.g., “primary works related directly to the dissertation,” “secondary works related directly to the dissertation,” “the wider area”).

The bulk of the Second Qualifying Exam will consist of a conversation about the future dissertation, in which the student’s dissertation committee helps them to think through the concept of the project, probe problems with its structure or materials, and understand its relation to other issues and methods of current professional interest. Hence, the Second Qualifying Exam is not primarily an event a student “passes” or “fails”; ideally, it should be the beginning of an ongoing process in the development of the dissertation. Nevertheless, in some cases, the dissertation committe may ask for revisions to the prospectus or additions to the bibliography that are significant enough to warrant rescheduling the Second Qualifying Exam to a later date.

Completion of the Second Qualifying Exam will mark the student’s official advancement to candidacy, which will require filing the appropriate forms with Graduate Division; the Staff Graduate Advisor can help process the form as necessary, but it is the student’s responsibility to initiate this process (see Sec 9.2)

After the Second Qualifying Exam, students will be expected to meet for a “first-chapter” conference (60-90 minutes) with their dissertation committee.  This meeting will occur after any chapter in the dissertation is written, and the student should initiate it. The purpose of the “first-chapter” conference is for the faculty and student to assess how the proposed dissertation is actually taking shape and address any difficulties that have emerged.

A prerequisite for the Second Qualifying Exam is that the student has formed their dissertation committee. This entails speaking to at least three English department faculty members who have agreed to serve, and having filled out the required paperwork (see below). Affiliated faculty are considered to be in the department. At the student’s request, the committee may include one faculty member from another UCSB department, or from another UC campus, though this person may not serve as Chair.  If this person is added to the committee before the Second Qualifying Exam , then making arrangements for a non-UCSB faculty member’s attendance for the  exam is the student’s responsibility.

For more information on the process and paperwork of forming a dissertation committee, see guidelines on the Graduate Division website. The Staff Graduate Advisor can also help clarify this process as necessary.

Early in the quarter after passing the First Qualifying Exam, the student should meet with their faculty advisor to discuss these plans, including what further coursework might facilitate defining the dissertation topic more precisely, and which faculty might offer most helpful guidance as dissertation committee members for the student’s Second Qualifying Exam. The student should choose the three members for the dissertation committee (including the Chair),  selected on the basis of their areas of specialization. An additional, fourth member may also be added when beneficial. It is possible for the student to make changes to their committee as their dissertation evolves.

After the First Qualifying Exam, students should enroll in ENG 298, the Doctoral Colloquium (see 5.3), and begin thinking about their dissertation topic and the areas of specialization appropriate to it. ENG 298 should be taken in Fall and Winter, with the idea that students can submit their prospectus materials for Graduate Committee review in Spring. If approved, students can take their Second Qualifying Exam toward the end of the same quarter. Students can look over the department’s library of representative past prospectuses and bibliographies before preparing their own materials; please contact the Staff Graduate Advisor for access to this archive.

Subsequent to Graduate Committee approval (see section 9.1), the dissertation committee may ask for further revisions before or after the exam

Students should  be proactive in providing the paperwork necessary to advance to candidacy upon completion of the second exam. These include: Doctoral Forms I and II, as well as the UCSB Graduate Student Conflict of Interest Form, to be signed by the dissertation committee immediately following the exam. The forms are available on the Graduate Division website. The Staff Graduate Advisor may assist students with navigating this process.

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