Education

Harvard University: Arts & Sciences: Germanic Languages and Literatures

Category Art and Social Sciences, English Literature, Harvard University, Postgraduate, USA
Tags Arts, Germanic, Harvard University, Languages, Literatures, Sciences

Master of Arts (AM)

The department does not ordinarily admit applicants who only wish to study for the AM degree. The AM is normally taken as a step toward the PhD. The requirements for the AM are described below.

Prerequisites for Admission — Under-graduate or graduate work in German approximately equal to the requirement for an AB degree at Harvard; deficiencies must be made up.

Academic Residence — Three terms of full-time study. For financial residence requirements, see the GSAS Guide to Admission and Financial Aid or The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Handbook.

Program of Study — The satisfactory completion of an approved program of eight half-courses or the equivalent (see The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Handbook). Four of these courses must be in the group designated in Courses of Instruction as “Primarily for Graduates.” Two of the half-courses normally consist of the Proseminar and a seminar. One half-course must be wholly or partly linguistic in character. All new graduate students normally take both German 200 (Middle High German) and German 226r, the Proseminar (an introduction to literary research and theory).

Satisfactory Progress — Students must have a grade record showing more A’s than B’s, and no grade lower than B-.

Examinations — A four-hour written examination (administered at the end of the student’s third term) in which the student demonstrates an ability to interpret literary texts and to place them into their historical contexts, and a one-hour oral examination, which includes a brief presentation in German. The AM examinations are based on a departmental reading list. No master’s thesis is required.