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ApplyGRADUATE COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION READING LIST SELECTED BY THE GRADUATE FACULTY
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The candidate is responsible for all writers and works in List A, at least three writers from List B, and at least three writers from List C.
LIST A
POETRY:
Elizabeth Bishop. Selected Poems
T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land, Four Quartets
Robert Frost. North of Boston, Mountain Interval.
Langston Hughes. One of the Following Collections: The Weary Blues, Fine Clothes to the Jew, Shakespeare in Harlem. (Poems in these collections may be pieced together from works in Hughes’ Collected Poems.)
Sylvia Plath. Selected Poems
Wallace Stevens. “Sunday Morning” and Other Selected Poems
PROSE:
Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man
William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying; Light in August or The Sound and the Fury; “Barn Burning”; “Dry September”; “The Bear” (version in Go Down, Moses)
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms, In Our Time
Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior
Toni Morrison. Beloved and One of the Following: Sula or The Bluest Eye
Flannery O’Connor. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories or Everything That Rises Must Converge
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men
Eudora Welty. A Curtain of Green
DRAMA:
Susan Glaspell. Trifles
Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman
Eugene O’Neill. One of the Following: Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Ice Man Cometh, or Moon for the Misbegotten
Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire
LIST B
PROSE AND DRAMA (CHOOSE AT LEAST THREE FROM THE LIST THAT FOLLOWS):
Oscar Zeta Acosta. The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo or The Revolt of the Cockroach People
Edward Albee. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Zoo Story
Julia Alvarez. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Rudolfo Anaya. Bless Me, Ultima
Sherwood Anderson. Winesburg, Ohio
Gloria Anzaldua. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Isaac Asimov. I, Robot
James Baldwin. Go Tell It on the Mountain or Going to Meet the Man
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones). Dutchman or The Slave
John Barth. Lost in the Funhouse
Donald Barthelme. Sixty Stories.
Saul Bellow. Seize the Day or Herzog
Ray Bradbury. The Martian Chronicles
Truman Capote. In Cold Blood
Ana Castillo. So Far from God or The Mixquiahuala Letters
Willa Cather. My Ántonia or Death Comes for the Archbishop
Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep
Sandra Cisneros. The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek
Edwidge Danticat. Krik? Krak!
Don DeLillo. White Noise
Junot Diaz. The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao
Philip K. Dick. The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
W.E.B. DuBois. Souls of Black Folks, “Returning Soldiers”
Louise Erdrich. Selected Novel or Stories
Horton Foote. Orphans’ Home Cycle
Jonathan Franzen. The Corrections
William Gaddis. The Recognitions
William Gass. In the Heart of the Heart Country
Kaye Gibbons. Ellen Foster
Jessica Hagedorn. Dogeaters
Dashiell Hammett. The Maltese Falcon
Lorraine Hansberry. Raisin in the Sun
Robert A. Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land
Joseph Heller. Catch-22
David Henry Hwang. M. Butterfly or The Dance and the Railroad
Gish Jen. Mona in the Promised Land
Ha Jin. Waiting
Denis Johnson. Jesus’ Son
George S. Kaufmann and Moss Hart. You Can’t Take It with You, The Man Who Came to Dinner
Jack Kerouac. On the Road
Tony Kushner. Angels in America I and II
Chang Rae Lee. Native Speaker
Sinclair Lewis. Main Street or Babbitt
Jack London. One Novel or Selected Stories
Audre Lorde. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
David Mamet. One Selected Play
David Markson. Wittgenstein’s Mistress
Bobbie Ann Mason. In Country
Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian or Suttree
Carson McCullers. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter or The Ballad of the Sad Café
N. Scott Momaday. House Made of Dawn
Lorrie Moore. Self-Help
Cherríe Moraga. Heroes and Saints
Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita or Pale Fire
Joyce Carol Oates. Bellefleur, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Tim O’Brien. The Things They Carried
Américo Paredes. George Washington Gómez
Suzan-Lori Parks. The American Play or Topdog/Underdog
Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar
Katherine Anne Porter. Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Thomas Pynchon. The Crying of Lot 49 or Gravity’s Rainbow or Mason/Dixon
Ishmael Reed. Mumbo Jumbo
Marilynne Robinson. Gilead or Housekeeping
Philip Roth. Goodbye, Columbus or Portnoy’s Complaint or American Pastoral
J.D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye
Ntozake Shange. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf: A Choreopoem
Sam Shepherd. One Selected Play
Leslie Marmon Silko. Ceremony
Anna Deavere Smith. Fires in the Mirror or Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
Lee Smith. Oral History or Fair and Tender Ladies, or On Agate Hill
Gertrude Stein. Three Lives
William Styron. The Confessions of Nat Turner
Amy Tan. The Joy Luck Club
Piri Thomas. Down These Mean Streets
Anne Tyler. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
John Updike. Rabbit Redux or Rabbit, Run or all of the following: “Separating,” “The Happiest I’ve Been,” “A & P,” and “The Lifeguard
Luis Valdez. Zoot Suit
Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five
Alice Walker. The Color Purple
David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest or Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Nathanael West. Miss Lonelyhearts or The Day of the Locust
Edith Wharton. The Age of Innocence
August Wilson. Selected Play
Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward, Angel
Richard Wright. Native Son, Black Boy, or Uncle Tom’s Children
LIST C
POETRY (CHOOSE AT LEAST THREE FROM THE LIST THAT FOLLOWS):
A.R. Ammons. Garbage
Gloria Anzaldua. Selected Poems
John Ashberry. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Gwendolyn Brooks. Selected Poems
Lorna Dee Cervantes. Selected Poems
Judith Ortiz Cofer. Selected Poems
Billy Collins. Selected Poems
Countee Cullen. Selected Poems
e.e. cummings. Selected Poems
Rita Dove. Selected Poems
Mark Doty. My Alexandria
Allen Ginsberg. Selected Poems
Nikki Giovanni. Selected Poems
H.D. Selected Poems
Louise Erdrich. Selected Poems
Jorie Graham. The Dream of a Unified Field
Lyn Heijinian. My Life
Randall Jarrell. Selected Poems
Robinson Jeffers. Selected Poems
James Weldon Johnson. Selected Poems
Yusef Komunyakaa. Neon Vernacular
Denise Levertov. Selected Poems
Philip Levine. Selected Poems
Audre Lorde. Selected Poems
Robert Lowell. Selected Poems
Claude McKay. Selected Poems
James Merrill. Selected Poems 1946-1985
W.S. Merwin. Selected Poems
Marianne Moore. Selected Poems
Pat Mora. Selected Poems
Mary Oliver. Selected Poems
Ezra Pound. Selected Poems
Theodore Roethke. Selected Poems
Anne Sexton. Selected Poems
Charles Simic. Selected Poems
Robert Penn Warren. Selected Poems
Adrienne Rich. Selected Poems, including “I Am in Danger—Sir—,” “Diving into the Wreck,” “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,” and “Storm Warnings”
Edwin Arlington Robinson. Selected Poems, including “The Mill,” “Miniver Cheevy,” “Mr. Flood’s Party,” and “Richard Cory”
Carl Sandburg. Selected Poems
Richard Wilbur. Selected Poems
William Carlos Williams. Selected Poems
Charles Wright. Selected Poems
Bernice Zamora. Selected Poems
A candidate may also submit a list of readings to supplement, but not replace, the readings from the core (“A”) list above. The supplementary list should be submitted for approval with the declaration of intent to take the comprehensive examination form.
Rev. 1 August 2014
