Students entering with the B.A. will normally take 15 advanced literature courses and graduate seminars, spread over three years in the proportions respectively of 8, 6, 1, two or three of which may be individual work supervised by a staff member. In special circumstances students may obtain up to a year of course credit for graduate work done at other institutions. Students who enter already having completed some advanced work may be asked to proceed more quickly. Individual programs are worked out in consultation with the Director of Graduate Study to include:
a substantial core of courses in Comparative Literature, at least one per semester during the first two years of study
a substantial core of courses primarily in one national literature along with significant related work in at least two others. Courses taken in the second and third literatures must include a minimum of two regularly scheduled graduate seminars (or 100 level where appropriate with approval of the Director of Graduate Study)
a spread of courses comprising work in all three major genres (poetry, drama, narrative) and covering a significant range of distinct cultural epochs (medieval, romantic, modern, and so forth)
some work in the area of literary theory, literary criticism, or literary translation.
if pertinent, courses relating literature to other fields of inquiry or expression; for example, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, history, music, or the visual arts