Note: The guide below is tailored to the requirements of the UT Dallas PhD in History of Ideas. I am no longer taking on new field exam students at UTD, as I have left to teach at SIU. The information below is only relevant to students who started work on exams with me prior to Fall 2022.
They go by many names: Qualifying Exams, Field Exams, Comprehensive Exams. They are typically a part of the Ph.D. process, or occasionally the Master’s degree. Such exams are highly idiosyncratic by discipline, university, and program. (My PhD program didn’t even have field exams, so this is completely based on my experience advising and evaluating them as faculty.) Unlike the guide to the dissertation proposal, which aims at generality across differen program requirements, this guide presupposes the fairly specific requirements of the UT Dallas PhD in History of Ideas. These are my own personal suggestions and opinions, and do not represent official policy for the School.
The most important thing to do before you start preparing for your qualifying examinations is to read the current version of the Field Exam Guide for your program. For our program, this document includes clear explanations of every element of the exam process, all requirements, and a normative timeline. We expect that students start preparing for exams in their 4th semester, and encourage students to complete their exams as early as possible in the third year. Our exams require students to choose three fields (one major and two minor), prepare bibliographies in each field, and write examination papers in each field. The final component is an oral examination which can ask questions about the field papers, ask you to talk about the works on your field bibliography, or general questions about the field.
Why are Field Exams Important?
Here there is a great disagreement between faculty, and I suspect no small amount of “I had to endure them, so you should have to as well.” But the field exam presents an excellent opportunity for students to devote an extended period of time to directed study of the major texts in your fields of expertise. This will provide you with solid foundations for future work, for teaching, and for things like job interviews and informal conversations with other experts in your field.
How to Choose Exam Fields
Except in rare circumstances, you should not be starting your study of a field from scratch when you start preparing for your exams. During coursework, you should be learning material and developing relationships with faculty that inform what you will do in your field exams.
Your exam fields should be related to courses that you have taken, especially graduate courses at your current institution. For each field, you should spend only 1-2 semesters preparing, or you will start to fall behind. You need to be able to get up to speed in the field given a long reading list and typically brief weekly or biweekly meetings with your field supervisor. This is much easier if you start with some grounding. Relatedly, you should chose fields within your faculty supervisors’ fields of expertise. This may seem obvious, but if your faculty supervisor has not published on and does not teach in the field, they may be less enthusiastic or less able to lead you through the material in a timely fashion.
You should choose exam fields with a purpose beyond merely jumping through the hoop. Your exam fields should either be the field of, or supportive of, your dissertation project, or it should represent a major field you want to teach at an advanced level.
How to Prepare Your Lists
In History of Ideas at UT Dallas, students are expected to prepare the field bibliography for their exams, rather than having a standard exam list. Assembling the list of major texts for the field is one of the activities that helps students get a handle on the outlines of the field. However, many faculty will have a set of key texts that they think are central to a specific field. Rather than trying to guess at what these might be, a good starting point is to ask them if they have a suggested starting list. Some may demure and only want to suggest additions after you have first proposed a list. Others will have a list ready to send. (For my exam fields, see my growing list of sources below.)
Next, you should go through all of the syllabi you’ve had in the area of your field. You should especially focus on graduate-level courses that you have taken here, but you should also look at syllabi for courses you have taken elsewhere and even undergraduate syllabi. Add all of the sources relevant to your field topic that you have already read; consider adding any other relevant sources from the syllabi even if you have’t read them. Not sure a source is relevant? Make a note to ask your field supervisor about it.
If your field has a historical dimension, it should include both primary and secondary sources. For example, a field on Early Modern Philosophy should include not only texts by Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, and Hume but also major contemporary interpreters and commentators on those works.
In Philosophy, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is recognized as a reference source of high quality. The bibliographies of SEP articles often contain many of the most important articles in the field. While encyclopedic sources (as tertiary sources) are usually not suitable for inclusion on such a list or citation in a paper, the SEP has many articles of such exceptional quality that they should be considered for citation and inclusion. Ask your field supervisor if any of the relevant articles would be suitable for your list. Another source of key articles in philosophy are the Summaries and Key Works sections of topics in PhilPapers.
Fields I can personally supervise
The following are the main fields I will supervise. (Eventually this list will include links to starter lists for each field.)
- History and Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Medicine
- American Philosophy and the Pragmatist Tradition
- Social and Political Philosophy
- Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art (with emphasis on Anglophone traditions)
- Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science
- The Analytic/Continental Divide in Philosophy
- Comics Studies (Humanities Field)