Honors
Honors
All students complete a graduate seminar as part of the Drama Major. Superior students have the opportunity to complement their study at the graduate level with an Honors project.
To qualify for honors, the student generally must have a GPA or 3.5 or above in the Drama Major. Occasionally exceptions are made for students with a lower GPA in the major, but their honors project must demonstrate exceptional achievement in order to compensate for the lower GPA. Students declare their interest in pursuing honors during spring of their junior year. Candidates for honors choose advisors for their individual projects in consultation with the director. All faculty whose course offerings contribute to the major potentially may serve as an honors advisor.
In addition to the one 400-level seminar required for all majors, candidates for honors enroll in at least on additional quarter of independent study (Drama 399). Given its cross-departmental approach, the Drama Major allows for two types of honors projects: writing an extended research paper or executing a production project.
Typically research papers submitted for honors are 25 pages in length. These papers must present a sustained argument rather than exposition or a synthesis of primary and secondary research. This sustained argument must take account of existing literature in the field. However, the originality of the thesis weighs less in determining whether an essay meets the standards for honors than the clear articulation of a thesis and mastery of scholarly prose and documentation. (Research papers may follow either MLA or Chicago style.)
A production project may take one of several forms: the student may submit a playscript, serve as a dramaturg, direct or design a production, or adapt nondramatic material for dramatic presentation. However, performing a role in a production not of one's own scripting may not count toward honors. In addition to executing the production project, the honors candidate must submit a separate dossier, typically 25 pages in length, which includes substantive written and visual documentation of the production process. This dossier must demonstrate a clear interpretive point of view, discussing why the honors candidate made the artistic choices that resulted in the production project.
May 1 is the final deadline for the submission of honors projects. The Committee for the Program in Drama serves as the honors committee and decides whether or not to forward the honors project to the Weinberg Committee on Superior Students and Honors (CSSH), which makes the final decisions on honors.
