Departmental Honors
To be eligible for departmental honors, students must have a minimum grade point average of 3.6 for courses in the major. Departmental honors will be conferred only on students who have submitted a superior senior thesis that clearly demonstrates originality and excellent scholarship. Please note that the senior thesis is not required for the major.
Majors interested in competing for Departmental Honors should take
the Senior Seminar in the fall of their senior year. They should also identity during the fall a faculty member who is willing to supervise their thesis work, and who will be responsible for assigning the final grade. They should also enroll in in CPLS V3997 ("Senior Thesis in Comparative Literature and Society") for the spring term.
The honors thesis is a rigorous research work of approximately 40-50 pages, including a bibliography formatted using MLA style. It may be written in English or in another language relevant to the student's scholarly interests. Departmental Honors
will be granted to those students whose work is deemed deserving of
honors by a committee of faculty members that will be constituted for
that purpose. For the 2007-08 academic year, the final version of the
honors thesis will be due on
Monday, April 13, 2009. The thesis
should be turned in on the due date as hard copy to the DUS, who will forward it to the
members of the faculty committee that will adjudicate on the awarding of honors.
Please keep in mind that,
according to Columbia College rules, no more than 10% of the majors graduating in a department or program in a given year may be awarded Departmental Honors.
