What is a Fields Exam?

A fields exam is usually more specialized than a comprehensive exam and focuses on particular subfields within a discipline. It maintains similar components to a comprehensive exam in that it involves the construction of core bibliographies, an essay and an oral examination. Students can not progress in the Media Studies doctoral program without passing their fields examination.

Qualifying Meeting

The first step of the Fields Examination is the qualifying review meeting with the Graduate Chair and the student’s Supervisory Committee, ideally undertaken in the fall of year two. The purpose of the meeting is to review the student's progress to that point and give the student the opportunity to communicate with the committee.

Defining the Fields to be Studied

The substance of the Fields Examination depends on the student's particular research and teaching interests. The student has an important role in determining exam areas. In delineating those areas in collaboration with their committee, the student is in many ways defining their intellectual and professional areas. The three fields will be configured as follows:

• Field One: the history and theory of a medium and/or related media
• Field Two: cultural/social theory and/or political economy
• Field Three: an elective field that provides a comparative perspective (i.e. Queer Theory, Indigenous Studies, Disability Studies.)

Working with the Supervisory Committee, the candidate should construct core bibliographies in each field. Taken together, the fields should define the areas in which the student is planning to teach as well as the scholarly contexts for the student's projected research.

Fields Essay & Oral Examination

The Fields essay should be approximately 30-35 pages and explore the three fields and their interconnections, discussing the key issues and scholarship that constitute them, and identifying the kinds of research questions, scholarly issues, and debates in which the candidate plans to intervene. The completed essay provides the basis for an oral examination, to be conducted by the student's Supervisory Committee (ideally within three weeks of receiving the essay). The oral examination will run up to but not over 90 minutes in length.

After the oral examination, students are provided with one of the following assessments:

• passed with no revisions
• passed with minor revisions
• adjourned, pending major revisions

If revisions are needed, the student will complete the necessary work and resubmit the essay, upon which the committee will make a final Passed or Failed determination.

Upon passing the Fields exam, the student may proceed in preparing their thesis proposal, and will be required to give a 20-minute public presentation of their research, followed by a Q&A. Normally this would occur in the Fall semester of Year 3.

The thesis proposal is usually undertaken after the successful completion of the Fields Examination and is normally submitted in the Fall semester of Year 3 in the program.

The thesis proposal is a formal articulation of the student’s program of work. This document should be approximately 20-25 pages (double-spaced, 12-point font, not inclusive of the bibliography).

The proposed research should be original, shedding new light on the existing literature. The proposal must include the following elements:

• Abstract + Keywords
• Introduction
• Body
• Chapter Outline
• Timeline
• References
• Appendix, if applicable

Upon approval of the proposal, the student proceeds to undertake the research for the thesis.

For full details on the regulations and expectations around the completion of the doctoral thesis and the final defense, please visit the Thesis page hosted by Western's School of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies (SGPS). 

At Western, faculty members must be approved by the School of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies to serve as supervisor for a doctoral thesis. The following faculty are eligible to supervise doctoral theses in Media Studies. Click the links to visit their profiles and learn more about their work.