Exams

PhD Exam Reading Questions

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I’m hoping that by titling these posts with what I searched as I looked for these kinds of things I can help future students who are also in search of these kinds of things.

These came to me via a friend who got them from another friend who got them from Cindy Selfe and Laura Allen, both of whom work in the R(hetoric)C(omposition)L(iteracy) department here at OSU. I’ve not met either of them in person, at least not more than in passing, but I am grateful to them for their wonderful questions that translate pretty well to other disciplines. I also won’t commit to answering all of these questions in every post or for every reading, but I will try to answer the ones that seem important for whatever reading I’ll be writing about. I’ll use these questions as an outline to format each reading-specific post.

With that, here’s the list of questions

Reading Questions (with thanks to Cindy Selfe, Laura Allen)

  1. Summary & Implications: What is the author’s project and why is it important now? What’s the narrative about the field that’s emerging from the reading? What narratives are silent? Whose voices are silent?
  2. Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?
  3. Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?
  4. Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?
  5. Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?
  6. Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?
  7. Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?

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Exams: A New Hope

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Hi, I’m a Ph.D. student at THE Ohio State University studying legacyquels (more on that later, I’m sure) in film and television. I’m starting this blog as a way of tracking and holding myself accountable to the reading I’ll need to do in the time before the (tentatively scheduled) December 2020 exam date. There’s a lot of reading and writing to be done in that time, so I’ll be doing at least the latter part here so that I can hold myself accountable to doing the reading and synthesizing what I’ve read/watched.

In the near future, look for a post with my reading list, as well as a description of my major and minor fields. Those will hopefully be useful to those who come looking here for a film and tv studies reading list for their PhD programs in the future. I looked at a few of these kinds of sites myself as I developed these lists, so I hope I can repay that to whomever may come after me.

The majority of post on this page will be me trying to make sense of what I’ve read recently. I’ll aim, for now, at posting 3x a week, roughly every other day. That’s a lot of posting, but it should be relatively short posts that synthesize what I’ve read in that book and begin to connect them to other readings or texts. If you’re a family member looking to support me in this endeavor, I’d appreciate any clarification questions you might have about what you read here. The way you learn best is by teaching others, so I’d welcome the opportunity to explain what I’ve written differently. If you’re a friend or colleague looking in on what I’m reading and something you’ve read jumps out to you as a cool or interesting connection, please let me know about that as well! We’re all in this together, as I’ve heard some young people sing inside a high school gym. Here goes nothing.

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