Our admissions are highly selective.  At most we will accept two students from any applicant pool. These decisions are based on the student’s prior training, writing sample, and letters of reference. Perhaps most important to our evaluation, however, is your personal statement. In this short text, identify potential research areas and situate these within broader interpretive questions in conversation with the scholarship that shapes your work. Although you will be trained as a scholar of religions in the United States, broadly conceived, your scholarly perspective will be determined by the diverse and dynamic field of religious studies. As you consider why you seek to acquire a doctorate, consider what you can contribute to this venture. Be bold. In the end, you may switch topics many times over the course of your career, but it is your mode of inquiry that will define your acumen as a scholar.

Students admitted to the Ph.D. program are expected to possess or quickly acquire a proficiency in two scholarly languages. Our field defines languages in the broadest sense, namely as methods of communication. Recent students have received credit for this requirement through studies of Spanish, Yiddish, and Urdu, as well as computer programming, accounting, and musicology. Students are encouraged to select languages that would be most relevant to their future research and scholarly conversation in the study of religions.

Students are required to take twelve courses, and this is normally done during the first two years of study. A minimum quality requirement, set by the Graduate School, must be met. This stipulates that a student must earn a grade of Honors in two graduate courses.

Although students should seek to take courses with the principal teaching faculty in this field, it is expected that students will explore other subfields within the Department of Religious Studies and other departments within the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Students should imagine that at least half of their coursework will be completed in courses besides those taught by American Religious History teaching faculty, including courses from other units, including other schools at the university.

Graduate seminars at Yale are designated either as research or reading seminars. Students are encouraged to use their research seminars to develop original contributions to scholarship, and to use their reading seminars to foster their bibliographic acumen. Prior to taking their qualifying exams, students will prepare one research article for potential publication in a scholarly journal, and they will also prepare one review essay on recent scholarship that bears directly on their dissertation area. (The former is usually begun in a research seminar; the latter is the standard final assignment of most reading seminars.) The review essay might be a useful tool to begin the development of a qualifying exam list.

The qualifying examination is taken after the conclusion of required coursework and must be completed before admission to candidacy. Ordinarily, students take their exam in their third year of residence. Preparation consists of a combination of course work and supplementary individual readings. The examination is not meant to test the student’s ability as a research scholar. Research papers and the dissertation will do that. Rather, the exam provides substantive grounding in defined areas of scholarly expertise, thus “qualifying” students to teach and conduct research in these fields.

Each student will be tested in the required four fields in a two-hour oral examination. The student’s adviser will chair the committee, and the committee will normally contain four persons, one to examine the student in each of the four designated fields. Each exam list should include approximately sixty books; these lists should be drafted by the end of year two in consultation with examining faculty. The subjects of these exams will vary depending on the students. There is no required written component to the exams in this program, although some students in consultation with one or more examiners may decide to incorporate a written component (e.g. a syllabus or review essay). 

The qualifying exam will be taken no later than the spring of a student’s third year of residency. During this exam the four examiners direct questions to the candidate based on the comprehensive exam lists and the student’s unfolding research areas. The primary purpose of the oral exam is to test the student’s ability to engage in the regular public work of research presentation, pedagogical engagement, and scholarly exchange.

The dissertation proposal should be completed as soon after the qualifying exam as possible, no later than the fall of the fourth year. The proposal is worked out in consultation with three or four faculty who will comprise the student’s dissertation committee. Although the adviser is normally a member of the teaching group in American Religious History, students are welcome to include committee members from other departments and schools at the university and, in certain circumstances, from another university. This committee will meet with the student for a prospectus colloquium that gathers the dissertation committee to assess the scope, significance, and feasibility of the topic and the student’s preparation to accomplish it in a reasonable time.

After approval by this committee, a two-page, single-spaced summary of the proposal is submitted to the entire graduate faculty in Religious Studies and then, if none object, to the Dean of the Graduate School. After acceptance of the prospectus, the student is admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D.

At the prospectus colloquium each student will stipulate when they expect to submit a first chapter draft. Soon after the first chapter is completed, the committee will meet with the student for a “chapter conference” to assess the chapter and think constructively together about the dissertation-in-progress. 

Students normally begin writing their dissertation in the fourth year and normally will have finished by the end of the sixth. The completed dissertation will be submitted by the student to the Graduate School (learn about GS guidelines and deadlines) and then distributed to at least three readers designated by the student (normally, the dissertation committee) who will assess its quality. The reports written by these readers will be submitted to the graduate faculty in the Department of Religious Studies for their approval. 

There is no final defense of the dissertation. In recent years, however, some students have chosen to schedule a conference with the committee to mark the completion of the degree. This event gives candidates the opportunity to present the results of their research and think with the committee about future possibilities for its publication. If the student chooses this option, the conference should be scheduled well in advance to accommodate faculty schedules, and will occur after the submission of reader reports. 

Faculty in American Religious History commit to a collaborative advising model. When doctoral students arrive at Yale, they do not have a designated adviser. At the beginning of their first year, the Teaching Group in American Religious History will meet with incoming students to discuss curricular offerings and the student’s goals for their year. At the end of their first and second year, students will meet with relevant members of that Teaching Group along with any other faculty with whom they have developed mentoring relationships. These end-of-year meetings are opportunities for students to reflect with faculty about their experiences and their emerging research interests.