As always, I finish class planning not so much because I've completed the task but because the first class happens. What I have is what they get, barring some modifications.
I'm . . . OK with my syllabi. Both feel like very new preps, even as I've taught an earlier version of script analysis for over a decade now. Things feel risky, but also a little exciting? A lot will depend upon my discipline in keeping up with daily grading (or weekly in the case of the PhD class). Low-stakes writing works best, in my experience, when I demonstrate early and often that what they write--the ideas and questions they express--matter. Otherwise, students get the sense that it's meaningless busywork.
So: discipline. I have been good at that at points in the past, so I know I can do it.
I came home, crashed, and then had another coffee--much later than I usually do. I have that just-completed-a-huge-task burst of energy. I did the dishes, took out the recycling, cleaned the cats' litter boxes, and even found the old, old version of our programs comprehensive exams.
Comp exams, for those who don't know, are the ordeal exercise that PhD programs put students through as they finish their coursework and transition to dissertation writing. It's the pivot between "PhD student" and "PhD candidate," aka "ABD (All But Dissertation).
No matter where you go, they're a bundle of anxiety, stress, and exhaustion. Historically--in this program and in others (like my own PhD program)--comps or comp-equivalent exercises were used to prove that the student wields an encyclopedic knowledge of the field. As we came to question that expectation, we shifted to the more-defensible-but-still-questionable metaphor of a mental rolodex of names, events, texts, and theories that any Theatre PhD should have at their beck and call. "If you're at a conference," we'd tell students as an example, "and someone presents a paper on rasas, you as a PhD should be able to link that concept to Sanskrit theatre."
As I explained to my seminar this morning, we as a program and as a field are stepping back from that image of what a PhD in Theatre is or should be. As I've written about here, the model of "encyclopedic knowledge of world theatre history, literature, and theory" is a mirage. There's just too much. We now tailor comp exams more to a student's history of study. Have they retained info about the studies they've engaged in while in the program? Can they take a meta-critical perspective about these studies--comparing, contrasting, evaluating, and synthesizing them? Can they demonstrate the ability to do the research necessary to discover, evaluate, and assimilate new information?
I shared with them the very first comp exam I helped to grade here at this institution. It was spring 2006. The comp exam at that time consisted of a list of 100 terms from (mainly) Western/European/North American theatre history, literature, and theory. It murdered students. I mean, of course it did! Looking at it now, there are a few (a handful) that even I could only guess at. I'm not sure what that kind of test does except for demoralize someone.
I'm glad we stepped away from that model. I'll be happy when our new curriculum gets approved and we can step away from even our current model.
But what if anything should replace it?
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