Senior departmental exams are taken in mid- May, usually a day or two after Dean's Date. 

The senior departmental exam is an opportunity for you to demonstrate the intellectual and analytic skills you have acquired during your course of study in the major, including both coursework and independent work. It takes the form of a 30-minute conversation between you, your thesis adviser (COM first reader), and one additional member of the department.

One week prior to the exam, you will submit a bibliography of between 5 and 10 texts (literary, critical, and/or theoretical) that have been central to your thinking as a Comparative Literature major; no more than half of these texts should have figured centrally in your independent work. You will also submit a brief paper of no more than 1000 words giving an account of one of these texts (which did not figure centrally in your independent work) and its importance to your course of study, and/or of a critical methodology that has been crucial to your intellectual development in the major. Your paper and the works on your bibliography will form the basis of the exam.

You will have 5 minutes at the start of the exam to speak to the points you have raised in your paper, and to explain your choice of bibliography. This presentation will be followed by questions from the two faculty members.

Students in the classes of 2025 and 2026 will have the option of taking the older version of the senior comprehensive exam that was described on this website when they declared the major. Information about this option will be made available by the DUS in meetings with the cohorts of 2025 and 2026.