Public Intellectuals Program
THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS PROGRAM

The Ph.D. in Comparative Studies for the Public Intellectual is an interdisciplinary program for students interested in advanced study and life as a public intellectual. While "public intellectual" often connotes a famous name, public intellectuals also include journalists, artists, and architects, legislators, clergy, museum curators, environmental planners, community organizers, as well as teachers and scholars whose work defines, shapes and influences public issues.

The program explores historical, conceptual, and practical relationships among such areas as public policy, mass media, literature, aesthetics, ethics, gender, culture, and rhetoric.

To be a “public intellectual” today is to be unafraid of contemporary theory. Our goal is to combine theoretical with concrete analysis and to strive for this integration in every core course, producing students who are theoretically confident and knowledgeable about the world they hope to understand and ultimately change to some degree.

Curriculum
The curriculum for the Ph.D. in Comparative Studies Public Intellectuals Program is organized as follows: (A) two, semester-long required core courses; (B) courses in public intellectual theory and method; (C) a minimum of three (3) theme courses; and (D) fifteen (15) credits in electives. In addition, students need to complete five more courses as electives. These can be chosen from Ph.D. core courses or from other graduate programs in the university. A practicum, if undertaken, will count as elective credit, and the student’s advisory committee will determine the degree of credit. Students undertaking a practicum before the completion of the program core courses and/or before establishing an advisory committee will be required to have the practicum approved and credits established by the Executive Committee.

The Curriculum Committee will reevaluate and revise the curriculum on a three-year cycle and provide recommendations to the Executive Committee.

Grading: Students enrolled and faculty teaching in the program will be notified that procedures for grading are as follows: A, A-, expected progress, B+ improvement needed, B, lowest passing grade.

The core curriculum is based on the principle that developing a reflexive awareness of one's own context and its implications is the cornerstone of any expression of political and social responsibility. Necessarily interdisciplinary, such awareness requires a theoretical understanding of history, of power, of psychical life, of politics, of philosophy, of literature and the arts, of society and culture, as well as a practical and empirical awareness of prevailing political and social structures. A diversity of approaches and disciplines is important, as well as representation of works and ideas from multiple cultural contexts and discourses.

The core courses (Public Matters I and Public Matters II) cover the general areas of knowledge for all students in the program, and come out of conversations in various program committees as well as course syllabi. The first course includes social, cultural, literary, and political theory, but also examples and case studies of what to do with that theory, both in scholarly work and in public intellectual activity. The second course picks up theories and themes from the first, continuing the conversation begun there, concentrating on applications and practice, including rhetoric and the processes of public discourse and action. A central theme of both courses is the public and public intellectuals in the context of the possibilities for social action within institutions and movements, and the two-semester core is designed to link up larger scholarly considerations of theoretical and global frameworks with the kind of concrete social, institutional, and public problems and issues our students will confront in South Florida and other localities.

Both courses are fully interdisciplinary in that they give priority to integration of disciplines, paradigms, approaches, and methodologies. Frequent guest lecturers are one way that this will be made possible. The courses do not, however, attempt to introduce all of the themes of the program. Rather, like other courses in the program, they seek ways of integrating the rigor and precision of particular disciplines with the breadth and heuristic value of interdisciplinary work.

Degree Requirements
MINIMUM STANDARDS: Ph.D. students will take a minimum of 51 credits in courses in three (3) areas: required core courses in Comparative Studies; Ph.D. approved courses offered in themes in the public intellectuals curriculum; and electives from 7000-level courses or 6000-level courses within departments and programs. No grade lower than B may apply to the degree. To continue in the program students must maintain a B (3.0) grade point average on all work attempted toward the degree. Students are required to complete a minimum of ten (10) seminars, seven at the 7000-level, which count towards their Ph.D. degree.


Distribution requirements
6 credits Required core courses
6 credits Public Intellectual Theory and Method courses
9 credits Student’s major theme
15 credits Electives
3 credits Advanced Research and Study
12 credits Dissertation

PUBLIC MATTERS CORE COURSE: Students admitted to the program may take no more than six (6) credits before registering in the core course sequence. Students who do not complete the courses with a passing grade must retake and pass the course at the subsequent offering in order to remain in good standing.

QUALIFYING EXAMS: The first exam is a written exam given upon completion of the required core courses and is administered and evaluated by the core seminar faculty and the curriculum committee. The first exam will be based on reading lists that include, but are not limited to, course assignments. All students will take the exam when they have completed the required courses.

The second exam is taken upon completion of the student's other course work and is administered and evaluated by the student's advisory committee. The second exam is on a theme and a dissertation proposal, and is based on a bibliography developed by the student and approved by the student’s committee.

Students who fail an exam may retake it one time only.

LANGUAGE/RESEARCH TOOLS REQUIREMENT: Proficiency is required in the use of two research tools. At least one of these tools must be a proven intermediate-level knowledge of a language other than English. The other tool, if not a language, should be demonstration of a skill relevant to life as a public intellectual, e.g., planning and organizing a public issue conference, publishing a substantial critical essay or journalistic work in a public venue, or developing a media production or live performance. Satisfaction of the requirement must be approved by the program director.

SATISFACTORY COMPLETION OF A DISSERTATION: After approval by the dissertation committee, the student will present the prospectus to faculty and students. The dissertation, an original research project, will be defended before the student’s committee and others. Only the committee will vote on approval.