RLL Program Milestones

SECTION A: Semester 1: RLL Orientation
Effective for students admitted during and after fall 2023, during the first five weeks of the fall semester, at least one member of the RLL Executive Committee will lead the compulsory RLL Orientation for students who enter the program, covering general and track-specific pathways toward success in graduate school. Topics include but are not limited to: program overview; course selection; graduate school etiquette and expectations; goal setting; and connecting with peer and faculty scholars.

SECTION B: Semester 1: First-Semester (Screening) Review
The RLL Executive Committee will meet with students early in their first semester of enrollment to evaluate their previous preparation, to familiarize them with the program, and to determine an appropriate plan of study for completion of the degree requirements during the first four semesters (two years). The Committee will then prepare a brief record of the interview for delivery to the Head Graduate Advisor of the student’s Home department (or to the faculty member designated by the Home department as Graduate Advisor for RLL students), indicating any special provisions or studies that must be completed before the student’s admission to the Qualifying Examination. In preparation for this Screening Interview, RLL students should complete the First Semester Checklist, found under the Resources/Files tab.

SECTION C: Semester 2: Professionalization Planning Session
During the first five weeks of the spring semester, at least one member of the RLL Executive Committee will lead the Professionalization Planning Session that all second-semester students are required to attend. Topics that will be discussed include but are not limited to: approaches to connect and collaborate with scholars; best practices and expectations in research development; short- and long-term preparation for career pathways. Though first-year students are required to attend this session, all RLL students are welcome to attend each year.

SECTION D: Semester 5: Fifth-Semester (Progress) Review
Early in the fifth semester, the Executive Committee will evaluate the student’s progress and advise them regarding any remaining coursework requirements, preparation for the Qualifying Exam (7th semester), and possible composition of the Qualifying Exam Committee. Students prepare the following for the Progress Review meeting:

1. A three-page scholarly introspective (how you situate yourself as a
   scholar with respect to research interests and coursework, academic
   highlights in the first two years of the program [conferences,
   publications or papers in progress, participation in working groups,
   coursework of significant impact on your scholarly trajectory,
   grants/awards/fellowships either earned or applied for, etc.],
   research in progress, ideas/coursework for the future, etc.)
2. The 5th semester review checklist, found under the Resources/Files tab.
3. A major research or term paper, preferably written in English, that
   showcases your strongest, most relevant contribution to your field of
   interest, especially as relevant to the Article Presentation at the end
   of the 5th semester (see section D below).
4. An e-mail invitation to formally invite a non-RLL-Executive-Board
   faculty member of your choice (usually most relevant to your
   research and coursework) to attend the 5th semester Review.

SECTION E: Semester 5: Article Presentation (AP)
Effective for students admitted during and after fall 2022, RLL will Home an Article Presentation open (minimally) to all students and faculty of RLL in the final weeks of a student’s 5th semester. These students will offer a public, conference-style presentation (following the customary format of either Literature-style or Linguistics-style conference venues) of their own independent, completed research. Each AP will last approximately 20 minutes, with 10-minutes for audience Q&A. Though APs can be derived from papers written for graduate coursework, the work presented must constitute a research paper/project that has not been formally used for coursework, that is, one that has been significantly expanded upon or modified since its inception in a given graduate seminar. The AP provides students a concrete milestone by which to have completed professional research, while also serving as an ideal venue for community-building amongst the program. Students preparing for the AP, early in the 5th semester, should consult with their Home department and/or RLL-affiliated advisor.

SECTION F: Semester 6: Qualifying Exam Committee Selection
Following the 5th Semester Progress Review, students should consult with their Home department and/or RLL-affiliated advisor in order to determine the members of their Qualifying Exam (QE) Committee. QE Committees consist of a total of 5 faculty members, one of which serves as the Chair of the QE Committee. The following positions must be filled, with additional guidelines appearing further below:

1. Primary Language Member #1: This Berkeley faculty member must represent expertise (literary and/or linguistic) in the student’s primary language, and hail from the student’s home department.
2. Secondary and/or Tertiary Language Member #2: This Berkeley faculty member must represent expertise (literary and/or linguistic) in the student’s secondary and/or tertiary language, and hail from an RLL department other than the home department.
3. RLL Language Member #3: This Berkeley faculty member must represent expertise (literary and/or linguistic) in the student’s discipline (literature and/or linguistics), and hail from an RLL department.
4. Outside Department Member (Academic Senate Representative [ASR)]: This Berkeley faculty member must not hail from the student’s Home department.
5. Additional Member: This faculty member has no restrictions, and notably may hail from a non-Berkeley institution (as approved by student’s RLL Advisor).

Additional Guidelines:

The Chair of the Q.E. Committee must hail from an RLL department, cannot also serve as the ASR, and cannot subsequently serve as the student’s Dissertation Chair. Care must be taken to ensure that the future Dissertation Chair does not serve as QE Chair.

Selection of QE Committee members is primarily up to the discretion of the student, often the result of linking individual members with a specific QE area or set of QE areas (see section F, below). Students are responsible for contacting prospective QE Committee members and asking them to serve, most often accomplished via an email that details the QE areas of relevance for that prospective faculty member (section F below outlines guidelines for QE areas). Once the QE Committee is selected, the Head (or designated) Graduate Advisor and the Graduate Student Services Advisor of the Home department will inform the Director of the RLL Executive Committee of the composition of the QE Committee.

SECTION G: Semesters 6: Qualifying Exam Areas
Following the 5th Semester Progress Review and selection of Qualifying Exam (QE) Chair, students should consult with their QE Chair and RLL Advisor in order to determine the three Qualifying Exam (QE) areas. Guidelines for QE Areas depend on track, as illustrated below, though QE areas for both tracks should fit together coherently:

**SECTIONS H-L refer to Qualifying Examinations for students starting in Fall 2024. Students in earlier cohorts can choose to opt-in to this system starting in Fall 2023.**

SECTION H: Semester 6: Qualifying Exam Reading Lists and Field/Topic Statements
In the fifth-semester review, students introduce their tentative QE topics and five potential QE committee members. No later than the Friday of Week 12 of Semester 6, students submit their three field statements, reading lists, and names of committee members to the Executive Committee (CCing the Graduate Student Services Advisor in their Home department). QE reading lists should include a total of 90-120 items across the 3 lists (i.e., 30-40 items per list on average), making sure to include at least 8 items not in English, per each of the three lists. The Executive Committee Director, or their Home department representative, will respond to the student with feedback within two weeks.

For each reading list, a field/topic statement (no more than 3 pages) should be written that defines or describes the QE area and justifies the entries and organization of the reading list. For example, if a particular reading list is broken down into 5 subsections (general theory, specific theory, case studies for language 1, case studies for language 2, case studies for language 3), the field/topic statement should explain these divisions and, more generally, why select readings were chosen. Commonly, the field/topic statement prose appears at the beginning of the same document as the relevant reading list, though students may opt to construct the field/topic statements and reading lists in separate documents.

SECTION I: Semester 7: Written Qualifying Examination
The Oral QE will be conducted according to all current Graduate Division policies. The Oral QE is scheduled to take place no later than week 12 of semester 7. One month before the Oral QE, students must submit their mandatory Written QE to the members of the QE committee. The Written QE consists of 3 essays written by the student (1 essay per list) of no less than 3,500 and no more than 4,000 words each (excluding only the bibliography; footnotes/endnotes do count toward the word limit). There are no explicit prompts to follow nor is the student expected to write about any texts or data which are not in their reading lists. The primary goal of the Written QE is to provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate how they have engaged with the materials on their QE lists and formulate their own essays to target areas of interest within each topic. One month prior to the date of the scheduled Oral QE, the student will submit these 3 essays will to the QE Committee (CCing the student’s RLL Graduate Student Advisor in their Home department) who shall not formally evaluate them (i.e., there is no grade assigned); instead, the student shall engage in discussions with individual QE Committee members during which faculty will provide feedback. Faculty feedback on the Written QE should be specifically oriented toward facilitating a successful outcome of the upcoming Oral QE.

SECTION J: Semester 7: Oral Qualifying Examination
The Chair of the Qualifying Examination (QE) Committee is responsible for making sure that the committee members administer the exam fairly and according to Graduate Division procedures. The QE in Romance Languages and Literatures has two component parts: one written and one oral. Both are administered by no later than week 12 of the 7th semester. The oral examination alone constitutes the official Qualifying Examination as defined and recognized by Graduate Division. The oral component of the QE will be administered at least one month after the submission of the written QE, and no later than week 12 of the semester.

The oral examination lasts no more than three hours’ duration, at which all members of the QE Committee, as well as the student, must be present either physically or via long-distance communication (e.g. Zoom). The QE Chair must be physically present on campus if the Oral QE is conducted in a hybrid format.

During the oral component of the QE, the student will be asked a series of questions by each member of the QE Committee as related to the QE Reading Lists and Field/Topic Statements, though questions may also pertain to what was recently submitted in the written component of the QE. Often all 5 QE Committee members each offer questions to the student for 20-30 minutes, though the ASR member need not necessarily lead a round of questioning if the other faculty members wish to individually engage with the student for a longer allotted round of time. It is customary for the QE Chair, at the beginning of the Oral QE, to establish with the QE Committee and the student what specific questioning protocol the student feels comfortable taking place (for example, if while one faculty member is presenting questions to the student, other faculty members may contribute select related questions of their own, or if instead each QE faculty member will be uninterrupted by other members during their round of questioning). Additionally, the student is typically permitted to choose in what order, with respect to the QE Reading List/Field Statement areas and/or QE Committee members, they would like to orally field questions. Lastly, the student is also typically permitted to select a point for a short recess during the exam (for example, between the 3rd and 4th rounds of questioning, or between the 2nd and 3rd, etc.), established at the beginning of the Oral QE. Once all questioning is complete, the student is asked to leave the room in order for the QE Committee to confer with one another regarding the outcome of the Oral QE.

The Oral QE is evaluated by each of the 5 QE Committee members individually. All 5 members of the Qualifying Examination committee must be present and voting at the Oral QE. Each faculty member, based on the round of questioning they led (or in the case of the ASR, should no questioning round be led, based on the entire exam overall), must choose an evaluation between the options of PASS, CONDITIONAL PASS, and FAIL. Should any faculty member designate an outcome of FAIL, then the student does not pass the Oral QE and must retake those rounds of questioning for which a PASS was not achieved. It is up to the discretion of the QE Committee, led by the Chair, to determine if outcomes of CONDITIONAL PASS warrant that the Oral QE is not passed and require that the student need re-take those rounds of questioning of the exam. Note that if the student does not pass the Oral QE, they need not retake the written component of the QE.

In the event that a student does not pass the Oral QE, the Oral QE will need to be rescheduled, in consultation with the members of the Qualifying Examination Committee and the Executive Director of the Romance Languages and Literatures program.

SECTION K: Semester 8: Dissertation Committee Selection and Prospectus
Once the Oral Qualifying Examination (QE) is successfully passed, the student will arrange with a faculty member to serve as Dissertation Chair; after consultation with this faculty member, the student proposes the remaining two members. Crucially, note that the Chair of the QE Committee cannot serve the Dissertation Chair (though the QE Committee Chair can serve as a regular member of the dissertation committee). The dissertation committee consists of minimally 3 Berkeley Academic Senate faculty members, at least one of whom must hail from a department other than the student’s Home department, and at least one of whom must hail from the student’s Home department. Additional (i.e., beyond 3) members of the dissertation committee (usually no more than 1, for a total of 4 members) may be appointed by the student in consultation with the Dissertation Chair, and notably may include up to 1 faculty member from a non-Berkeley institution.

Upon constituting the dissertation committee, the student applies for Advancement to Candidacy by completing the Application for Doctoral Candidacy, found on CalCentral on the Higher Degree Committee eForm, for approval by the Graduate Division on behalf of the Graduate Council. Doctoral students should bear in mind that it is to their advantage to be “Advanced to Candidacy” as soon as possible following completion of the Qualifying Examination (see Normal Progress Schedule), preferably by the end of the semester in which the Qualifying Examination is passed.

Students advanced to candidacy (or All But Dissertation – ABD) are required to complete a Dissertation Prospectus, which consists of roughly 15-20 pages of prose (including an obligatory bibliography or references section) that offers a preliminary description of the dissertation project, including: the primary materials and/or research questions to be investigated; the descriptive or analytical approach to be undertaken; and the project’s relation to existing scholarly work. The Dissertation Prospectus must be presented to the student’s Dissertation Committee by the end of Week 12 of the semester following that in which the QE is passed.

It should be remembered that the prospectus is not intended to be a dissertation in miniature, so that there is normally no compelling reason why its completion should be delayed beyond the appointed deadline. Instead, its function is to allow the student to organize their dissertation plans and promote practical discussion amongst with Dissertation Committee with respect to how appropriate/feasible that project is as regards a successful filing within normative time.

SECTION L: Semesters 9-12: Dissertation
Once dialogue with the Dissertation Committee regarding the Dissertation Prospectus is convened, the student will spend their remaining semesters completing their dissertation, culminating in its filing with the Graduate Division.

Note that regarding dissertations written in a language other than English, special approval from the Graduate Division, acting for the Graduate Council, is required. If approval is given, an abstract in English must be included with the finished work.

Though formatting requirements for the dissertation must follow the guidelines as outlined by the Graduate Division, note that the organization of content in the dissertation is left to the student’s discretion, at the approval of the Dissertation Chair and Committee.

SECTION M: Academic Progress
The timetable for completion of degree requirements is as follows: By the end of the 6th semester, students will have submitted field/topic statements and reading lists for Qualifying Exam (QE). Over the course of the next two semesters, students prepare for and take the QE and apply for advancement to candidacy for the doctoral degree. (Note as well that all languages requirements must be fulfilled before the beginning of the semester in which the QE is taken.) Doctoral candidacy lasts for two years after advancement, although students are eligible for an additional two-year grace period before candidacy lapses.

“Normative Time” (NT) allowance for the program is set at six (6) years. The Normative time to Advancement to Candidacy is 4 years (time to QE).

* Please Note: International ABD students have a maximum of three years (after passing the QE) of waived Non-Resident Supplemental Tuition (NRST) to file the dissertation. Any delay in filing will be at the student’s expense.

Obligatory Milestone Progress Timeline