The primary texts used for Part 2 of Comprehensive Examination in English are listed below in reverse chronological order. Please note that the text for the upcoming examination is shown in bold. 

Spring 2013: Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

Fall 2012: Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables

Spring 2012: Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

Fall 2011: Milton, Samson Agonistes

Spring 2011: Lee, Native Speaker

Fall 2010: Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh and "Imaginary Homelands" (pages 9 to 21) in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticisms 1981-1991 (1992)

Spring 2010: Austen, Persuasion

Fall 2009: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Spring 2009: Wharton, The House of Mirth

Fall 2008: Gay, The Beggar's Opera

Spring 2008: O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

Fall 2007: Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

Spring 2007: Ellison, Invisible Man

Fall 2006: Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner  

Spring 2006: Thoreau, Walden

Fall 2005: Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Spring 2005: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Fall 2004: Toomer, Cane

Spring 2004: Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel

Fall 2003: Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

Spring 2003: Brönte, Jane Eyre

Fall 2002: Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Spring 2002: Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

Fall 2001: Kingston, The Woman Warrior

Spring 2001: John Donne’s Poetry

Fall 2000: O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

Spring 2000: Conrad, The Secret Agent

Fall 1999: E. A. Robinson’s Poetry

Spring 1999: Meredith, The Egoist

Fall 1998: Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (?)

Spring 1998: DeLillo, Libra

Fall 1997: Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

Spring 1997: Pearl

Fall 1996: Sterne, Tristam Shandy

Spring 1996: Plath’s Poetry

Fall 1995: Poe’s Poetry

Spring 1995: Shakespeare, King Lear

Fall 1994: Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Spring 1994: Malory, Morte D’arthur

Fall 1993: Frost’s Poetry

Spring 1993: Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Fall 1992: Milton, Paradise Lost

Spring 1992: Thoreau, Walden

Fall 1991: Mann, The Magic Mountain

Spring 1991: Wharton, Summer

Fall 1990: Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

Spring 1990: Sterne, Tristam Shandy

Fall 1989: Morrison, Beloved

Spring 1989: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Fall 1988: Poetry of Keats and Stevens

Spring 1988: Shelley, Frankenstein and Melville, Moby Dick

Fall 1987: Stoppard, Travesties and Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest

Spring 1987: Dickinson’s Poetry

Fall 1986: Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Spring 1986: Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

Fall 1985: Joyce’s “The Dead” and Wharton’s Ethan Frome