The preliminary exam for Plan B doctoral students will have the following three parts:
1. Major field [approx. 1/3 of total number of texts]. The major field should be chosen in consultation with the committee. The field must be a recognized or emerging area of inquiry in rhetoric. Possible major fields include, but are not limited to:
- composition pedagogy
- critical technical communication
- cultural rhetorics
- digital rhetoric
- feminist rhetorics
- multimodal composition
- public rhetorics
- rhetoric and technology
- rhetorics of science and medicine
- usability studies
- WAC/CAC/WID
- workplace writing
2. Theoretical field [approx. 1/3 of total number of texts]. The theoretical field should be chosen in consultation with the committee and designed to better contextualize possible dissertation topics. Possible theoretical fields include, but are not limited to:
- agency theory
- classical rhetorical theory
- critical race theory
- democratic theory
- feminist theory
- multiliteracies theory
- new materialisms
- organization theory
- postcolonial theory
- publics theory
- queer theory
- rhetorical epistemologies
- transfer theory
- translingual theory
3. Content domain or methods area [approx. 1/3 of total number of texts]. The content domain or methods area should be chosen in consultation with the committee and designed to lead to a dissertation project. Students pursuing a dissertation project focused on extant archives, corpora, or bodies of material should prepare a content domain. Students who plan on conducting an empirical dissertation should prepare a methods area.
- Content domains should include both primary and secondary sources (~50% each) from or about a body of material that could form the core of a dissertation project. Possible content domains might include a selection archival materials, a collection of aesthetic texts/media, a corpus of genre exemplars, and associated scholarship on these specific items or similar content domains. (Note: If the type of primary source item chosen falls outside the scope of the items policy, the number selected should be adjusted to ensure a comparable workload.)
- Methods areas should include both practical guides and scholarly exemplars (~50% each) from an appropriate research tradition. Common examples will include, but are not limited to, ethnography, interview methods, survey design, grounded theory, computational approaches, or usability methods.