Second Year Paper
In lieu of a master’s thesis, the philosophy department requires as an internal milestone the completion of a “Second Year Paper”. This paper may or may not be related to the student’s main research topic, but it should be a stand-alone piece approaching a publishable standard, and be between 5,000 and 7,500 words in length. The Second Year Paper should be defended in front of a committee of three faculty members, ideally with the chair being the student’s advisor. The student is responsible for gaining written approval from the DGS for their committee by the end of January in the Spring of Year 2. The defense should include an oral presentation of no more that 20 minutes, and a subsequent discussion of no more than one hour. To pass the defense, the student should be able to talk fluently and intelligently about their paper, reflect upon its contents, and discuss its place in relation to surrounding scholarship. Ideally, the discussion would offer the student feedback so that they can incorporate it into the manuscript and eventually seek to publish it in an appropriate venue. The defense should take place before the end of April of the Spring of Year 2, and the manuscript should be delivered to the committee at least 2 weeks before the date of the defense.
The committee will grade the Second Year Paper and associated defense as Pass, Low Pass, or Fail, by majority decision. At the end of the year, this result will be taken into account in assessing continuation in the program.
Directed Readings Course
In the Fall of the third year (that is, the first semester of Year 3), the student must take a directed readings course, typically with their advisor, in which they will cover essential readings for the student’s main area of research. The goal of this course is to support the student in developing familiarity and competence with the literature in the area of their proposed dissertation. This course requires a final paper, of between 5,000 and 7,500 words, and there are two options for such a paper:
1) Review paper: A stand-alone paper reviewing the literature surrounding a particular research problem, with an emphasis on recent literature. Ideally, this review paper should approach publishable standards.
2) Dissertation chapter: A polished draft of a paper that may serve as a chapter of the dissertation or be a stand-alone paper.