_______Contents:_____Overview
______________________ Application and Financial Support
______________________ Degree Requirements
______________________ The Degree Master of Arts
______________________ The Degree of Doctor of Philosopy
______________________ Teaching in the College

_______________________________________

Overview

The graduate program in Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago stresses an interdisciplinary model of study, long an emphasis at this University, which allows students to construct fields of research in fresh ways. In order to draw on the University's strengths, both inside and outside the department, students are encouraged to work not only with departmental and affiliated faculty but with faculty throughout the University whose courses are of relevance to their particular interests.
The University's Workshops (non-credit, interdepartmental seminars that meet biweekly) offer a further avenue for interdisciplinary work. Many current graduate students are engaged in the Workshop for Historical Semantics. Students are also encouraged to participate in the department's colloquia and lecture/discussions.
Language courses taught in the department include German, Norwegian, and Yiddish.

Application and Financial Support

Applicants to the Department of Germanic Studies should have a solid background in German language and culture. Students with undergraduate degrees in other fields are encouraged to apply, but must include with their application a list of relevant German/Germanic courses as well as a letter of recommendation from a faculty member able to evaluate their level of German language competency. Such students will be asked to make up deficiencies in their language preparation before entry into the graduate program. All entering students whose native language is not German are required to pass an ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) oral proficiency examination in German during their first quarter in the program.

Admission to the department is competitive. Fellowships awarded by the Department of Germanic Studies for a small number of highly qualified students combine stipend and teaching salary to provide support beyond tuition amounting to $20,000 per year, two summer stipends in the amount of $3,000 each, and University student health insurance. These awards are renewable for up to five years. In addition, departmental funds are used to support students in summer projects, travel, and research. In addition, the Norwegian Culture Program Endowment Fund provides some money for research and travel support for students interested in Norwegian language and culture. Finally, competitive university grants are available for dissertation-level teaching, research, and writing.

Applications to the program must include a writing sample of not more than twenty pages, in German or English; Graduate Record Exam scores from the general examination; TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language) scores, if applicable; and three letters of recommendation.

The application process for admission and financial aid for all graduate students is administered through the divisional office of the Dean of Students. The Application for Admission and Financial Aid, with instructions, deadlines and department-specific information is available on the Graduate Student Online Application page. Questions pertaining to admissions and aid should be directed to: humanitiesadmissions@uchicago.edu or (773) 702-1552. All correspondence and materials sent in support of applications should be mailed to:

Dean of Students
Division of the Humanities
The University of Chicago
Walker, Suite 111
1115 East 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Degree Requirements

The following is an outline of the main features of the graduate program. If you need additional information, please write directly to the Department of Germanic Studies.

Students in the Department of Germanic Studies are as a rule admitted to the entire Ph.D. sequence of study. Students interested in a one-year interdisciplinary Master's program in Germanic Studies may want to contact the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. Study towards the M.A. degree, normally completed after the first year, is intended as an introductory period, a time for both faculty and students to decide on the suitability of an extended graduate program. All students entering the Ph.D. program with a master's degree from another institution will undergo an informal evaluation at the end of their first year in the department to assess their progress and to plan their further course of study.

The Degree Master of Arts

COURSE WORK: Three quarters of course work and a total of eight courses are required during the first year of study. These include the mandatory pedagogy course ("Acquisition and Teaching of Foreign Languages"). A completed M.A., which includes the pedagogy courses and a "superior" rating on the German oral proficiency test, are prerequisites for teaching appointments. Besides the pedagogy course, students must take at least one course each quarter from departmental faculty, and at least two additional courses from departmental faculty during the year. The remaining courses could contain little or no Germanic material and may be taken primarily for methodological, theoretical, or historical interest. Course selections must receive the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies. All courses must be taken for a letter grade. We expect students to develop a broad historical sense of German culture through coursework as well as their own background reading. The primary aim of the master's year is for students to explore a variety of materials, approaches and problems.

LANGUAGE EXAMINATION: Students who do not achieve a "superior" rating on the oral proficiency examination in German (to be taken early in their first quarter) will be advised to undertake further language training or to take other steps to improve their skills; they will be re-tested during the second quarter.

M.A. EXAM: The purpose of the M.A. exam is to test students’ ability to work with concepts central to the discipline, to articulate literary-historical arguments, to discuss significant patterns that extend beyond individual texts, and to articulate how such concepts relate to the interpretation of individual works. In addition, the exam establishes a useful foundation of knowledge upon which the student can build in later studies.

The examination takes place in the eighth week of Spring Quarter of the student’s first year of graduate study. Its basis is a list of some twenty to twenty-five texts selected by the student in consultation with the two members of the student’s M.A. exam committee. (The committee—consisting of two members of the department’s core faculty—is to be designated by the Director of Graduate Studies in consultation with the student.) This list reflects a category of literary research such as a genre, a period, or a general concept bearing on a mode of writing. Examples of the former might be “The Bourgeois Tragedy” or “Modern Urban Short Prose” or “The Elegy.” Periods can be variously conceived: Enlightenment, Realism, Weimar Republic. General concepts are more abstract categories such as “narrative” or “performance” or “argumentative writing.” Lists could also be organized along thematic lines or in terms of a traditional narrative subject. The point is that the list be designed so as to sustain a process of coherent intellectual inquiry. In addition to the 20-25 primary texts, the list includes a representative cross-section of secondary literature addressing the topic under study.

The examination itself has two components:

a) a take-home written examination, and
b) an oral examination approximately one hour in length.

The take-home component consists of three essays (of two and one half, never more than three double-spaced pages) written in answer to questions devised by the faculty. These questions offer the student an opportunity to demonstrate her/his ability to explore various intellectual issues raised by the list as a whole as well as by specific works on the list. Students will receive these questions on Friday morning of the eighth week of classes and hand in their completed essays by 5:00 p.m. the following Monday. The oral examination is devoted to a critical discussion of the students’ three essays as well as to works included on the list but not addressed in the written part of the examination. It will take place one week after the written exam. Following a forty-minute discussion of the essays, the student and the faculty examination committee will assess the student’s overall progress, including course work. A crucial aspect of the M.A. examination is planning and advising. Students should choose their examiners and have one planning meeting with each examiner by the eighth week of Autumn Quarter. Students should choose examiners and design the lists with a view to the seminars they plan to attend throughout the year. Students must submit their lists for approval at the end of the fourth week of Winter Quarter. Two weeks after submission, they should meet with their examiners to discuss preparation for the exams. During Spring Quarter, students should meet with their examiners twice prior to the exam in order to discuss questions arising from their readings. Of course, throughout the process students are encouraged to discuss questions arising from their readings with other faculty members, both inside and outside the Department of Germanic Studies.

First Year: Time Schedule M.A. Exam

Fall ____Week 8_____Choose examiners
Winter _ Week 4 ____ Submit exam list for approval
_______ Week 7 ____ Arrange to meet with examiners to discuss exam preparation
Spring _ Week 8 ____ Written exam
_______ Week 9 ____ Oral examination

The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

The Ph.D. phase of study will be self-designed to a greater extent than the M.A. Students who enter with an M.A. from another university will be required to take one pedagogy course in their first year ("Acquisition and Teaching of Foreign Languages"). This requirement may be waived by the department if a student can demonstrate that equivalent work was successfully completed at another institution. Completion of the course (or a departmental waiver), together with a "superior" rating on the oral proficiency interview in German taken early in the first quarter (or re-taken later if necessary), are prerequisites for teaching appointments.

COURSE WORK : Students will establish that balance of course work and individual preparation that best suits their intellectual agenda. Course selections, however, must be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies. A minimum number of eight courses over two years, not including the pedagogy course, is required. All of these courses must be taken for credit. Six must be taken for a letter grade. The remaining two may be taken Pass/Fail. Typically, the two post-M.A. years (during which students will also be teaching) will look as follows: two seminars each quarter the first year; at least one seminar each quarter for the fall and winter quarters of the second year; exams in the spring quarter of the second year. In this way students will have ample time during the second Ph.D. year to prepare for the exams.

LANGUAGE EXAMINATION : All students are required to pass one university foreign language reading examination (usually in French, ancient Greek, Latin, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, or Italian) before taking their Ph.D. oral exams. Students whose dissertation work requires them to read original texts in a language not listed above may petition the department and division to accept that language instead.

Ph.D. EXAMINATIONS: Students will complete the Ph.D. exams in three stages. During the last quarter of the first Ph.D. year and the following summer, students are asked to begin assembling a Ph.D. major field list (of about 50 works) and two annotated syllabi for future courses–one undergraduate, one graduate–that they would like to teach. An important part of the job market portfolio, the syllabi are to demonstrate the student’s ability to ‘translate’ some of their research interests into viable seminars and to explain their choices. The syllabi should include a rationale for the design of the course. The two courses should be on topics other than the major field, although they may intersect with it. The major field list should be organized around a broad topic such as “Discourses of Madness from Kant to Musil”, “Worldly Provincialism: German Realism 1850-1900”, or “The Aesthetics of Sacrifice in Post-war German Literature and Art.” Students should then group their 50 works into several clusters according to particular themes or sets of questions. Students are invited to consult with as many faculty members as possible as they work on these materials. They should also arrange for an exam committee of three faculty: two faculty members (normally both members of the department) to compose and evaluate the written examination questions, and a third faculty member (from either the departmental or affiliated faculty) to serve as an additional examiner for the oral exam.

At the beginning of the fall quarter of the second Ph.D. year, students will submit preliminary exam lists and both syllabi to the faculty committee they have chosen and to the graduate advisor. (In many cases, students will actually wish to submit one of these syllabi for the annual Tave competition in the winter quarter. (The Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowship allows graduate students to teach a free-standing, self-designed undergraduate class.)

The four-hour, open-book, written exam will be taken no later than the 7th week of spring quarter. Six weeks prior to the exam, each student will submit to the exam committee and to the graduate advisor a list of categories and questions that indicate what he or she considers to be the salient issues of the major field. Faculty will use this list as a guide in preparing the exam. Within two weeks of the exam, the committee, joined by the third member, will meet with the student for an hour-long discussion that will encompass the exam, the two syllabi, and plans for the dissertation. Students should work on their dissertation proposals over the summer and schedule the formal proposal defense at the beginning of the fall quarter of the third Ph.D. year. For further details regarding the Ph.D. examinations, students are encouraged to consult with the graduate advisor.

Second Ph.D. Year: Time Schedule Ph.D. Exam

Fall ____ Week 3 _____Preliminary exam list and syllabi
Spring __Week 2 _____Submit list of questions/categories designed to help you to organize and ___________________ think about the texts on your major field; these should be submitted to ___________________ the exam committee and the Director of Graduate Studies.
________Week 7 _____Written exam
________Week 9 _____One hour long discussion of written exam, syllabi, major field list, and ____________________dissertation plans

The dissertation proposal is due no later than one quarter after passing Ph.D. examinations.

DISSERTATION PROPOSAL: After the Ph.D. examination, a student should identify and select a dissertation committee. One member of the committee is chosen as the dissertation advisor and primary reader, and the others as second and third readers. A proposal ought not attempt to predict the final conclusions of the project before the research is fully under way. Instead, it should attempt to divide the project into subordinate questions and to rank the parts of the project in terms of priority. It should include a preliminary bibliography, a potential chapter structure and should indicate a rough timetable for the research and writing of the dissertation. The proposal of 20-25 pages should be problem-driven, question-oriented, and should contextualize the project within current debates in the field. The student will then have an opportunity to discuss the project in a PROPOSAL DEFENSE with the dissertation committee. This should be done not later than one quarter after the Ph.D. examination. Students should file copies of their examination lists and proposal with the department administrator.

WRITING THE DISSERTATION: After the proposal has been approved by the readers, the student should plan on spending the remainder of the fourth year researching and reading. Some students may spend this time away; others may choose to remain in Chicago to work closely with their readers. We encourage students to try to complete the dissertation during the fifth year, if possible. All students should complete the dissertation by the end of the sixth year.

Teaching in the College

Graduate students in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago will enter the job market with a solid basis in current pedagogical theory and practice as well as a range of teaching experiences in a variety of classroom settings. Teaching in the undergraduate language program is an integral part of the graduate program.

Before they begin teaching, graduate students must participate in a graduate seminar on pedagogy ("Acquisition and Teaching of Foreign Languages"). This course is an introduction to foreign language acquisition and to the theoretical models underlying current methods, approaches and classroom practices. Syllabus and test design and lesson planning are also treated. All participants do two days of observation and two days of supervised teaching in a first-year class.

Graduate students have the opportunity to teach in the beginning and intermediate German language program. They have full responsibility for the courses they teach, including syllabus design, day-to-day instruction, test design, grading and all other record keeping. Input from the graduate students is also critical in the ongoing implementation and revision of the curriculum. Internal grant monies have been made available to support the development of an on-line writing project designed by graduate students, as well as other curricular innovations.

Graduate students also have the opportunity to work as on-site coordinators and/or instructors in study-abroad programs in Vienna and Freiburg. The preparation of students for study-abroad and their reintegration into the curriculum is an ongoing process in which graduate students, in their roles as instructors, are deeply involved.

Each fall there is an orientation for all graduate students who will teach that year. It is held in conjunction with the Center for Teaching and Learning and deals with general procedural and pedagogical issues as well as specific course objectives and practices. This inter-departmental cooperation also includes jointly held workshops and seminars on different topics in the field of second language teaching, offered by University of Chicago faculty and experts from other institutions.