Language Requirements

If your dissertation is devoted to any considerable extent to an author, you must be able to read the author’s works in their original language. If you have completed comparable language acquisition work elsewhere, you may petition the Director of Graduate Studies for a waiver.

Reading knowledge is demonstrated either by:

  1. receiving at least a grade of ‘B’ in language courses that the DGS has approved in advance, or
  2. passing a departmentally administered translation exam.

Explore language offerings at Duke