PhD Program Requirements

The PhD program is designed to prepare students for college and university teaching, museum work, and other research positions

PhD students, depending on whether they enter with a Master's degree or a Bachelor's degree (direct entry), will fulfill different requirements. Refer to the appropriate section below for further information.

PhD Program Requirements (Entering with an MA)

PhD Program Requirements (Direct Entry)

PhD Program Requirements (Entering with an MA)

The five-year PhD program is designed for students who have graduated with a MA in art history or a related humanities major. The basic requirements include a minimum of four seminars (2.0 Full-Course Equivalents), a dissertation reading course (1.0 FCE), one language exam (unless already completed during an MA degree), comprehensive examinations, a colloquium presentation, and a dissertation. One of the seminars must be FAH1001H: Methods in Art History, unless an exception has been made by the Director of Graduate Studies. You will be expected to maintain an A- average in your course work and complete your language exam by the end of year two; in addition, your progress will be reviewed annually to assure that you have met expectations. Students who fail to make satisfactory progress during the first two years may have their registration terminated.

PhD Program Requirements (Direct Entry)

The six-year program is designed for students who have graduated with a BA in art history or a related humanities major. The basic requirements include a minimum of nine seminars (4.5 Full Course Equivalents), a dissertation reading course (1.0 FCE), one language exam, comprehensive examinations, a colloquium presentation, and a dissertation. One of the seminars must be FAH1001H: Methods in Art History, unless an exception has been made by the Director of Graduate Studies. You will be expected to maintain an A- average in your coursework and complete your language exam before sitting the comprehensive examinations; in addition, your progress will be reviewed annually to assure that you have met expectations. Students who fail to make satisfactory progress during the first two years may have their registration terminated or transferred to the MA program.

Qualifying Year Components

To achieve candidacy, PhD students will complete the comprehensive examinations and an approved dissertation proposal during the qualifying year.

Comprehensive Examinations

Preparation for the comprehensive examination begins in the fall of the first year of the program with FAH5000Y (Comprehensive Examinations and Dissertation Topic Reading Course) taken with the student's interim supervisor (see SGS Supervision Guidelines for Students).

In consultation with the prospective dissertation supervisor, the student will constitute an examination committee comprising three members. One is the supervisor and at least one other should be a member of the Art History department.

Working with the student, the committee will define and agree to the areas of the examination, the length of study, and such readings as deemed to be appropriate. There are two aspects to the comprehensive examination: the general area (meant to “map out the field”) and the
dissertation area (specific to each student’s prospective thesis topic).

Reading lists for the exams are expected to comprise 75 items for the general area and 25 items for the dissertation area. Some committees may expect a few more readings and some fewer, but these should not represent more than a 25% variance from the norm. Keep in mind that these reading lists include the items for which students will be held responsible on the examination; students are welcome to develop more extensive bibliographies that will be useful in the future, but this is ancillary to the examination process.

Students should discuss each component of the exam with their examination committee members to be clear about their expectations. The examination committee will confer prior to the examination in order to discuss and agree upon the written questions to be submitted to the student; these are sent to the Graduate Assistant at least one week before the exam date.

Dissertation Proposal

What is the proposal for?

The dissertation proposal is a plan for a program of research and writing. It establishes your research questions and objectives, broad theoretical framework, and methodology. It also maps out the importance of the study, both for knowledge in general and within the field (and inter-related fields) through a brief review of previous literature and creation of an initial core bibliography. The scope and feasibility of your project should become clear in writing the proposal, which will help determine whether it is too narrow or too broad for development into a successful dissertation. You do not need to have your argument mapped out; the focus should be on your questions and your plans. While you may have some hypotheses and hunches based on the literature, you will not have a certain argument until you have started doing your research!

Think of the proposal as addressing the following:

• What are my research questions?
• Why should anyone care about them, both within and beyond the field? (Funding and award applications are often assessed by scholars in other fields.)
• How am I going to go about answering them? (Methods, resources, and timeline)

Who is it for?

In the first instance, the proposal is for your supervisor and your dissertation committee. Confer with your supervisor about the composition of your committee. Remember that comprehensive exam committees are not always the same as dissertation committees; membership can change and be augmented at this point as your project is clarified.

Your committee will want to make sure that you have a clear course of action, understand what needs to be done, and know how to set about doing it. The proposal is also for you—serving as a measure of your progress and roadmap towards completion. Perhaps most important, it will serve as the kernel for any number of proposals you will need to write for grants, conference papers and panels, perhaps a book prospectus, and cover letters for jobs. In this sense, you should see this as a living document that can shift as you need it to and as a useful vehicle to continuously hone your understandings of your research project. None of what you write is set in stone—indeed, the expectation is that things will change as you embark on your research.

What does it look like in theory and practice?

There is no set formula, but there is a guideline that you should seek to follow. The Graduate Office has sample dissertation proposals from current students and alumni that can be consulted upon request—but remember that you do not need to copy their format slavishly.  

Your proposal should include the following information:

• Prospective title for the thesis: this will undoubtedly change, but it is useful to have something readily to hand that communicates the essence of the proposed project.
• Description of the project: what is the scope? Temporal and geographical span? Major themes or questions addressed? Think of this part as a concise but informative response to a friend’s questions: “What is your dissertation about?” and “Why should I care?”
• Previous scholarship: who has worked on this material previously? How did they approach it? What were the strengths and weaknesses or lacunae in this scholarship? How would you build upon or revise these prior approaches?
• Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks: how will you approach your materials? Is there a particular model or perspective that you’ll draw upon? 
• Archives, field research, other primary sources: where are the main repositories of material for your research? Are there special libraries, research centres, physical sites, or people you will need to visit? Have you received the necessary permissions? If not, how will you do so? If you’re working with human subjects (interviewees, etc.), have you obtained ethics clearance and/or familiarity with the protocols for working with Indigenous materials?
• Schedule: provide a breakdown of how your research will be organized over the three years. For example, will you do “fieldwork” in year 1 or 2? Why? What do you imagine to be a reasonable writing schedule? How will you integrate grant proposals or conference presentations into this planned schedule? What is your plan for TAships and teaching? Keep in mind that this is a provisional schedule and will likely change as you proceed with your dissertation (and life).

Practically, your proposal should:

• be 10 pages of text, which includes any necessary footnotes;
• include a bibliography of no more than 5 pages;
• include up to 5 pertinent images that will help situate and guide your reader.

Departmental Procedure and Timetable

All dissertation proposals are due within four months of completion of the comprehensive exams (January 31 of the second year in the program). There are a series of scaffolded milestones for achieving the May 31 deadline. 

• Attend a series of two to three workshops organized by the Graduate Office between February and April.
• Submit the complete proposal to the dissertation committee and Graduate Office by May 31.
• The dissertation committee reviews the proposal within six (6) weeks of receiving it. It is expected that there will have already been close communication between the student and supervisor before May 31 as the proposal is developed, and this can extend to the committee as well. In any event, the committee will assess the submitted proposal and oversee any requested revisions so that it can approve the proposal by July 31.
• When the dissertation committee has approved the proposal, the student should send it to the Graduate Office and copy the full committee. The Graduate Office will give final approval and submit to SGS that the student be granted ABD status for PhD candidacy (remember that this requires all other program requirements, including the language exam, to have been completed).