Despite the fact that I have been a university student for the past eight years, staring down the reading list for my PhD comprehensive exam is the first time I have felt truly overwhelmed by the literary task set in front of me. I am starting a PhD in Theory and Criticism this fall, the first major hurdle of which is the completion of a comprehensive exam, ideally at the end of my second year, on selections from 100+ texts dating as far back as Plato and as recently as the 2010s. While my reading strategies and approaches had been shifting over the course of my MFA, when I started seriously thinking about this undertaking after receiving my acceptance this winter I realized that a serious adjustment in the way I read was necessary. Where my previous reading habits had been focused on volume and range with wiggle room on retention and even comprehension with the goal of being able to impress professors and succeed in my previous degrees; I am now working within the boundaries of a reading list that was constructed by an institution and which I am required to develop a deep understanding of. Many of the goals I have held in the past when it comes to deciding what to read still hold true, I want to get through a lot of material and be able to talk broadly across a range of topics, but as I have started on the journey towards my comps I have started to think more about the significance of a reading list, and how I intend to work through it over the next two years. Given the discussions I have had in the past about my reading choices (you can find a post about them that I wrote in my undergrad here) I want to continue that conversation now and hopefully provide a bit more of a critical reflection on the choices that underpin reading lists, whether they be dictated by a university or created in the pursuit of personal passion.
The first thing that I have realized is that my academic reading is going to have to replace most or all of my extra-curricular reading. Historically speaking, I have worked on my own side projects throughout the semester and fit course readings and research in around that. At first I thought I was going to keep this system going, perhaps switching to alternating between a comps book and something I had picked out. However, as I am in the middle of my third week trudging through Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason it has become clear that I don’t have that kind of time. Admittedly, I am making this process more challenging for myself than it technically needs to be. Many of the comps texts are not required to be read in their entirety, but I find myself incapable of jumping in half way through a text or leaving off after reading only half the argument. Just like when I was picking my own texts, I want to understand the full shape of something – even if every little detail doesn’t stick around in my brain long term.
The other major change that seems to be worth noting is my realization that jumping around is not going to be a helpful approach. I used to make reading selections with the goal of creating contrast between different books and hopefully increase retention. When I jumped into the comps list I started with Nietzche, largely because I had been meaning to read him for a long time but had never gotten around to it. Now I am back a generation reading Kant and have realized that my ability to fully comprehend Nietzche’s argument was limited by the fact that I hadn’t done Kant yet. This was the moment at which I started to think critically about how I conceived the project of comprehensive exams. When I last wrote about my reading on this blog I said that “In terms of the specific book I am reading at any given moment there probably isn’t a rational as to why this book at this time. I read things that look or sound interesting, with the parameters set out [in the previous piece]” and continuing to think about what I was reading in this way ended up undermining my early comps reading because I wasn’t yet thinking about what comps was meant to achieve. This exam is not just a test of my knowledge of any individual text, it is an exploration of the history and breadth of my chosen field – requiring an understanding of flow and continuity across time. So I am starting to think more about movements, not necessarily reading in exact chronological order but at least pursuing clusters of text which directly relate to each other before leaping off to a different subject or approach.
This process isn’t meant to be fast, it is asking me to spend time on a given idea or writer to understand them and their place in a wider history of thought. Rather than continuing my planned path of plowing through as many books as I could manage this summer, deciding my text book largely based on what I had on hand from the list I have narrowed down my focus significantly. It is going to be a summer of Kant, Nietzche, and perhaps adding in Hegel to help those connections grow. Time will tell if I am able to stick with this more conservative plan, and whether it will actually help me with my comprehensive exam two years from now, but for now it seems like the sensible approach.
As I attempt to embrace the spirit of my comps reading list I do wonder about what is left out when imaging my reading in this way. My previous approach enabled me to read vastly different and often mutually critical perspectives side by side. Whereas the comps list instead puts feminist, post/de colonial, queer, and anti-racist perspectives in a separate category that exists as a kind of sidebar to the otherwise cohesive flow of dominant philosophy and theory. As I work through Kant and the people who respond to him those voices remain entrenched in the male European narrative about the world and how we know it. I feel confident that there are many queer, Black, Indigenous, Asian, and otherwise marginalized folks who have written nuanced and insightful responses to Kant and his tradition, but the structure of a comprehensive exam does not make clear the path to incorporate those voices as an integral part of the canon rather than as an afterthought. Some of this is a failing of the university, a problem of studying within colonial institutions, but I also recognize that some of this is my personal limitations as I read from a place of privilege in many respects and need to intentionally seek out challenges to the narrative that I am being steered towards.
To fall back on a cliche – this is a marathon not a sprint – I don’t expect that I have figured out all the solutions to the process of reading for comprehensive exams. In fact, I suspect that this is just the start of many more inner debates about how I decide to read my way through the list. Reading is a powerful way of learning about the world and the way that people have thought through our place in it, so thinking critically about those reading choices whether it is within a much beloved genre like fantasy or murder mysteries or in the face of an institutional challenge like a PhD exam.
If you enjoyed this post or have ideas you would like to share please feel free to leave a comment and if you really enjoyed this post please consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee here. If you found the ideas in this post interesting you might want to check out my previous post about deciding what to read which can be found here. You can also connect with me about what I am reading at the moment by finding me on Goodreads here.
Res Gestae 