Reed College
Reed College

History–Literature

Junior Qualifying Examination

Essay Instructions

Write a single essay of not more than 1,200 words. Your essay should summarize and critically engage the attached article's major arguments and conclusions, and assess the article's significance as a work bringing together the disciplines of history and literature. To those ends, you should aim to address the following questions: 

  1. General summary and critical assessment: What are the author's primary questions, principal  claims, and major conclusions? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the author's major  arguments and the evidence employed to prove those claims? When taken as a whole, do the  author's principal arguments lead to their conclusions in a logical and coherent manner? 
  2. Scholarly significance: How does the author situate their principal research question(s) and  major arguments in the context of other scholarship? What conversations with other scholars  does the author promote and develop? How might the author's methodology, principal concepts  or modes of questioning be of significance to scholars researching other topics?  
  3. Interdisciplinary engagement: How does the author put history and literature into dialogue with each other? How does the author blend methods and ideas from different disciplines? How might the author’s approach to blending history and literature be applicable to your own area(s) of scholarly interest? 

While these questions are intended to guide you, remember that you must write a coherent essay, not  simply provide a list of answers to the questions listed above. In this vein, be sure to provide an  appropriate title for your essay. When referring to the assigned article, please cite the work following the format of either the Chicago Manual of Style (footnotes) or Modern Language Association (parenthetical citations and bibliography). You need not and should not do additional reading and research when writing this essay. 

As a reminder, the honor principle applies to the Qualifying Examination. Your essay should be your  own work, and you should not ask others for feedback. Using generative artificial intelligence or large language models such as Chat GPT to compose all or part of your paper will be considered academic  misconduct.

The History and Literature committee meets to review the quals, which are evaluated with the students’ names concealed. The faculty consider the following criteria to determine a grade of pass, conditional pass, or fail:

  1. Did the student demonstrate a good understanding of the article?
  2. Did the student accurately identify and explain the article’s main argument?
  3. Did the student accurately describe the article’s main sources and persuasively assess the author’s use of those sources as historical evidence?
  4. Did the student effectively discuss the contributions that the article is making to broader scholarship and the intellectual conversations in which the article is engaged?
  5. On the whole, does the student grasp the conventions, including citation, of scholarly writing, and are they able to discuss a scholarly argument in a way that is clear, accurate, and analytical?

Format Instructions

  • Put the word count at the end of the essay. 
  • Use the Chicago Manual of Style or the Modern Language Association style guide for your citations.
  • Submit the essay as a Word doc or Google doc.

Due Date Instructions

Once the Qual materials are distributed via email, students are expected to turn in their responses for evaluation. If they do not, they will be regarded officially as having failed, unless illness, injury or  family emergency prevented them from completing it.