phd dissertation university of chicago

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Dissertation Policy

Doctoral dissertations are original contributions to scholarship. As a condition for receipt of the doctorate, all students are required to execute a publication agreement with ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing granting ProQuest non-exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and sell their dissertations. If a dissertation includes copyrighted material beyond fair use, the author must obtain permission from the holder of the copyright.

All dissertations must follow the instructions provided in the University-Wide Requirements for the Ph.D. Dissertation, available from the  Dissertation Office  on the first floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library.

More information on dissertation requirements can be found within the student manual .

Dissertation Office

The Dissertation Office provides information on the University’s dissertation policies.  The Dissertation Office helps students understand dissertation  formatting and publication requirements , and assists with the submission process.  The office supports the graduate program administrators as they manage dissertation submissions and departmental approval, and they coordinate dissertation publishing and embargoes with ProQuest.

Dissertation Fee

To access more information about your dissertation fees, please refer to the Dissertation Office.

Student Manual

Dissertation requirements.

Doctoral dissertations are original contributions to scholarship. As a condition for receipt of the doctorate, all students are required to submit their dissertations to Knowledge@UChicago , the University’s open access repository. If a dissertation includes copyrighted material beyond fair use, the author must obtain permission from the holder of the copyright.

The public sharing of original dissertation research is a principle to which the University is deeply committed, and dissertations should be made available to the scholarly community at the University of Chicago and elsewhere in a timely manner. If dissertation authors are concerned that making their research publicly available might endanger research subjects or themselves, jeopardize a pending patent, complicate publication of a revised dissertation, or otherwise be unadvisable, they may, in consultation with faculty in their field (and as appropriate, research collaborators), restrict access to their dissertation for a limited period of time according to the guidelines outlined by the Dissertation Office. If a dissertation author needs to renew an embargo at the end of its term or initiate an embargo after graduation, the author must contact the Dissertation Office with the embargo request. Embargo renewals may be approved only in rare instances, and in general no more than one renewal will be allowed.

All dissertations must follow the instructions provided in the University-Wide Requirements for the Ph.D. Dissertation, available from the Dissertation Office on the first floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library in the Center for Digital Scholarship.

Thesis Preparation and Defense

Thesis committee.

Students must select the members of their thesis committee at some point following the successful completion of their candidacy exam, but no later than October 1st of their third year in residence. Such a committee is comprised of the student’s research supervisor as well as two additional members of the University of Chicago faculty, one of whom must have an appointment in the Chemistry Department. If necessary, due to changes in staffing, alterations in research direction, or developing collaborations, the membership of the committee can be changed at any point in time with written notice provided to the Associate Chair and the Director of Graduate Studies.

Thesis Preparation and Submission

The dissertation office.

Several resources related to preparing and submitting your thesis are available through the  UChicago Dissertation Office .  Here you can find the current  University-wide requirements for dissertations  and other policies, an overview of the thesis preparation process, and a useful  dissertation requirements checklist , among other resources.  You should seek out information about these requirements early in the writing process, when it is most useful.

The final copy of your dissertation must be uploaded to the Dissertation Office site by the  deadline specified by the Dissertation Office  each quarter.

At the time of uploading, you must submit the  Department Approval Form  to the Department Office (Searle 126). You must complete this form and have it signed by your Advisor in the top right-hand corner. The Director of Graduate Studies will not be able to approve your thesis unless the Departmental Approval Form has been signed by your research advisor.

• UChicago Dissertation Office
• University-wide requirements for dissertations
• Thesis submission deadlines
• Dissertation requirements checklist
• Department Approval Form

Final Oral Examination

Each Ph.D. candidate shall schedule a final oral examination with his/her dissertation examining committee. This normally occurs after the dissertation is written, but prior to submitting the final copy to the Chairman and the Office of Academic Publications. The candidate shall provide each of their committee members a copy of their thesis two weeks prior to the defense date.

Public Seminar

Each Ph.D. candidate shall discuss his dissertation in a public seminar. This is normally done prior to the final oral examination.

Detailed Dissertation Procedure

As soon as a student is ready to plan their dissertation defense, they should fill out  this internal form  for the Department. Feel free to reach out to Vera for any questions regarding timing or any other information. 

Planning the Dissertation Defense 

A student who is ready to plan their dissertation defense should set a defense date and time with their dissertation committee. All members of the committee must be available at the date and time chosen. Otherwise, any date and time during normal working hours is acceptable. Quarterly deadlines affect whether you will be able to receive the degree in a particular quarter, not when the defense may be held. 

You will schedule your own Zoom meeting for your defense inviting your three faculty committee members and anyone else that you wish to attend your defense. Once in person again, after the date and time are chosen, a room can be reserved by contacting the appropriate building reservation office. 

At least two weeks before the defense, you should email the following details to Melinda Moore,  [email protected] : date, time, and zoom meeting link (later, room location of defense), title of dissertation, names of the members of your committee. This is to enable the posting of the defense on-line and as posters. 

Following your defense, the Chair of your committee is responsible to obtain committee signatures on the “Report of Final Examination for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.” The Chair will then submit the form to the departmental office, which will obtain the Director of Academic Programs and Graduate Studies approval and submit the form to the PSD Dean of Students office. 

Quarter of Graduation: Deadlines for Turning in the Dissertation 

As you plan your defense, you will also be thinking about your quarter of graduation, which is often but not always the same quarter as the defense. There are  deadlines  each quarter for (1)  applying to receive the degree , (2)  uploading the dissertation , (3)  submitting the Departmental Dissertation Approval Form , and (4) complying with any requirements from the Dissertation Office. 

The deadline for submitting an Application for Degree is 4:30 pm on the last day of the first week of the quarter when you wish to graduate. The Application for Degree is submitted on-line, via  my.uchicago.edu   portal. Before you do this, you should check your Expected Graduation Date on this page and adjust it to the appropriate quarter (if it is not showing the quarter you want to apply). This will allow you to access the Application for Degree on this page. 

The Dissertation Office is responsible for reviewing the dissertation’s editorial form to be sure it complies with the University’s requirements. The web address is  phd.uchicago.edu . You should familiarize yourself with deadlines and requirements, and plan to submit a draft of the dissertation as you prepare it. The Department of Chemistry does not have any editorial requirements other than the Dissertation Office’s requirements. 

The final copy of the already defended dissertation, with all required revisions and corrections made, must be uploaded to the Dissertation Office’s portal by a deadline posted on the Dissertation Office’s website: usually the Friday of the 7th week of the quarter (5th week of Summer Quarter). After this upload, with a deadline of the 

Wednesday of the following week, the Departmental Dissertation Approval Form must be submitted. This short form, which is sent to you at the time of the upload or can be obtained from the departmental office, will confirm the Department’s approval of your dissertation. The Department of Chemistry requires that your advisor (and pro forma advisor if there is one) sign in the upper right hand corner of this form. The form can then be submitted to the departmental office, which will obtain the Director of Academic Programs and Graduate Studies approval and submit the form to the Dissertation Office. 

After the uploading of the dissertation and the submission of this form, the Dissertation Office will send you notice of any further corrections that need to be made or forms that need to be filled out. 

Financial Considerations and Coordinating with Payroll 

The University requires students to be in a registered student status during the quarter when they receive the Ph.D., with the following exception: if the completed dissertation is uploaded by 4:30 pm Friday on the first week of the quarter, a student can receive the Ph.D. that quarter without having to register. 

Registration is an important issue, because it implies that tuition must be paid. If a student is supported in a tuition-supporting position (RA or TA), the tuition is covered. If a student is not supported by this or other funding (e.g., a fellowship), he or she should ask to be registered in a Reduced Tuition status. In that status, a student’s tuition is reduced to a lower amount which he or she must pay. Another funding source (e.g., the student’s advisor) should not be paying this reduced amount, because it has been reduced for the reason of making it more manageable for the student who must pay it. 

A student may remain on the payroll in student employee status until the end of the third month after the beginning of the quarter when he/she receives the Ph.D. (i.e., 3/31, 6/30, 9/30, or 12/31). After that, the student must go on another payroll status (e.g., postdoctoral, paraprofessional, temporary, etc.) if he/she continues to be employed at the University. 

For help with issues relating to visa status and planning for Optional Practical Training (OPT), the student should consult the Office of International Affairs . 

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PhD Program Requirements

The following is a general overview of Department of Philosophy PhD program requirements. If you read through this webpage and still have questions, feel free to read the complete, definitive set of requirements .

Throughout the entirety of their time in the program, all students will have a faculty advisor who is both responsible for giving them guidance and advice and regularly reporting to the department on their progress through the program. In the week before the official start of their first year, students will attend a mandatory orientation about the formal requirements and informal expectations governing the graduate program. Entering PhD students are assigned a faculty advisor with whom they will meet to discuss their coursework options and subsequently check in with at least once a quarter for their first two years in the program to make sure they are on track and conforming reasonably to program expectations and requirements. Students may opt to change advisors with the consent of the new faculty advisor. During their third year in the program, students will enroll in the Topical Workshop where, under the supervision of the current Director of Graduate Studies, they will be advised as to how best to prepare for their Topical Examination and will begin to meet with the various faculty members who are most likely to serve on their dissertation committee. Once a student has passed their Topical Examination and has an approved dissertation project, the chair of their dissertation committee becomes their primary advisor.

Course Requirements

All first-year PhD students enroll in the two-quarter-long, faculty-led First-Year Seminar. Its purpose is threefold: (1) to lay the groundwork for a philosophical lingua franca among the members of the first-year class, (2) to foster intellectual solidarity among the members of the cohort by stimulating the regular exchange of philosophical ideas among them, and (3) to have students undertake a series of short written assignments that introduce them to philosophical writing at a graduate level.

During their first two years in the program, PhD students are required to complete a variety of graduate-level courses. Such coursework is meant to provide students with the general breadth of knowledge that will serve as the foundation upon which they will carry out the more specialized task of writing a doctoral dissertation.

Starting with students who enrolled in the PhD program in 2022-23, students must enroll in courses for one of two different kinds of credit:

• (Q)uality Credit: To receive a Q-credit for a course, a student must complete all the requirements for the course and be awarded a quality grade (B- or higher).
• (P)ass Credit: The requirements for receiving a P-credit for a course are established by the instructor. At a minimum, a student must register in the class and attend regularly, but they need not be required to submit a paper for the course or do all of the coursework that would be required to assign to that student a quality grade.

This separation of course credits into Q-credits and P-credits is meant to provide students with the flexibility to construct for themselves a course curriculum that allows them to both broaden their horizons by exploring a diverse array of topics that may be of only peripheral interest to them, while, at the same time, affording them adequate time to devote focused attention to those specific courses that most directly support their main lines of research.  

PhD students are required to complete 8 courses for Q-credit, all of which must come from the Department of Philosophy's course offerings. In addition, students must complete 8 courses for P-credit, up to two of which can be awarded for classes offered in other departments (this can include courses in which the student has received either a grade of P or a quality grade of B- or higher). In a typical quarter, a student will enroll in three classes and, at some point during the quarter (the timing is flexible), will choose either one or two of those classes to complete for Q-credit. 

In addition, the courses in which a student enrolls must satisfy certain area distribution requirements. In particular, students are required to take at least one course for Q-credit in each of the following four areas: (I) Contemporary Practical Philosophy; (II) Contemporary Theoretical Philosophy; (III) History of Philosophy: Ancient or Medieval Philosophy; and (IV) History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy (up to and including the first half of the Twentieth Century). Students must also satisfy a logic requirement, usually by taking a graduate course in logic.

Paper Revision and Publication Workshop

The aim of the Paper Revision and Publication (PRP) Workshop is to provide our graduate students with support and assistance to prepare papers to submit for publication in academic philosophy journals. Preparing papers to submit to journals for review and revising papers in response to the feedback received from journal editors and referees is an essential part of professional academic life, and students applying for academic positions with no publications to their name are at a disadvantage in today’s highly competitive job market. While students are strongly encouraged to continue to seek personalized advice about publishing from their dissertation committee members, the Department of Philosophy has determined that the need exists to  provide its graduate students with more standardized programming, in the form of an annually recurring workshop, that is specifically aimed at supporting their initial efforts to publish in academic journals. The PRP Workshop was designed with the following three aims in mind: (1) to provide students with a basic understanding of the various steps involved in publishing in academic journals and to create a forum in which students can solicit concrete advice from faculty members about the publishing process; (2) to direct and actively encourage students to submit at least one paper to a journal for review on a timeline that would allow accepted submissions to be listed as publications on a student’s CV by the time they go on the academic job market; and (3) to create and foster a departmental culture in which the continued revision of work with the ultimate aim of publication in academic journals is viewed as an essential aspect of the professional training of our graduate students and in which both faculty and students work together to establish more ambitious norms for publishing while in graduate school. 

Topical Workshop

In their third year, students will take a Topical Workshop, which meets regularly in both the Autumn and Winter Quarters, and which is taught by the current Directory of Graduate Studies. In this workshop, students develop, present, and discuss materials that they plan to use in their Topical Examination, such as dissertation project overviews and preliminary chapter drafts.  The main purpose of the Topical Workshop is to help students establish expectations for what will be required for them to advance to candidacy, to advise students on issues such as the overall direction of their research and the composition of the dissertation committee, and to initiate regular conversations between students and the faculty members who are most likely to serve as their dissertation committee chair.  While preparation for the Topical Examination may continue during the Spring Quarter and, if necessary, over the summer, at the conclusion of the Topical Workshop, students should have a clear sense of the subsequent steps that must be taken in order for them to pass their Topical Examination and advance to candidacy in a timely manner.

Foreign Language Study

There is no official foreign language requirement that all PhD students must meet. Nevertheless, many students will want to acquire competence in one or more languages other than English, depending on their area of specialization. Moreover, if it is deemed necessary, a student's dissertation committee may impose upon a student a formal requirement to demonstrate linguistic competence in a foreign language. For example, a student intending to write a thesis on Ancient Greek Philosophy or Hellenistic or Roman Philosophy will likely be required to pass the University's foreign language exam in Greek or Latin, respectively. Therefore, all students should consult with their faculty advisors (or the Director of Graduate Studies) as to which linguistic competencies may be required for their planned course of study. Students are encouraged to discuss language exam procedures and protocols with their advisors.

Topical Examination

During their third year, in connection with the Topical Workshop, students will establish, with their prospective dissertation committee chair, concrete plans for the Topical Examination. Those plans will include: (1) a determination of the faculty members who will serve on the dissertation committee, (2) the expected character of the materials to be submitted by the student on which the Topical Examination will be based, and (3) the expected date of the Topical Examination. Though the details will vary (depending on the subject matter, the state of the research, etc.) and are largely left up to the discretion of the committee, the materials must include a substantial new piece (around 25 double-spaced pages) of written work by the student. This could be a draft of a chapter, an exposition of a central argument, or a detailed abstract (or outline) of the whole dissertation.

The Topical Examination is an oral examination administered by the members of a student's dissertation committee with the aim of evaluating the viability of the proposed dissertation project and the student's ability to execute that project within a reasonable amount of time and at a sufficiently high standard of quality to merit awarding them a PhD. Students will be admitted to PhD candidacy only after they have officially passed their Topical Examination. The Department's normal expectation is that students will have advanced to candidacy by the end of the third week of Winter Quarter of their fourth year.

Required Teaching

The Department of Philosophy views the development of teaching competence as an integral part of its overall PhD program. Different types of teaching opportunities gradually prepare students to teach their own classes. The department also helps train its doctoral students to become excellent teachers of philosophy through individual faculty mentorship and the year-round, discipline-specific pedagogical events offered through (1) the mandatory and optional elements of its non-credit Pedagogy Program and (2) additional events from the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning on campus . Here is the department’s Pedagogical Training Plan .

As part of their pedagogical training, PhD students are required to teach in the University’s undergraduate program. Normally, during their time in the program, PhD students will serve six times as an instructor—usually five times as a course assistant to a faculty instructor and once as an instructor of a stand-alone “tutorial” course. They usually complete one course assistantship in their third year and two in their fourth year. Students then lead a tutorial in the fifth year. In their sixth year, they teach twice as course assistants in departmental courses. (For further details, see the department’s Pedagogical Training Plan .)

Types of Courses Taught

The first teaching opportunities for doctoral students come in the form of course assistantships. Course assistants work with a faculty instructor, generally for College courses. Specific duties vary depending on the course but usually include holding office hours, leading discussion sections, grading papers and exams, and training in pedagogical methods. The instructor responsible for the course in which a doctoral student serves as an assistant monitors the student’s teaching progress in that course and mentors that student on the art of facilitating productive philosophical discourse and encouraging student participation in the context of their discussion sections. Students will also receive further pedagogical instruction through Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning programs and departmental workshops.

Once a PhD student has gained experience as a teaching assistant, that student is permitted to lead a tutorial. These tutorials allow undergraduate philosophy majors to work intensively on a single topic or text and to improve their oral discussion skills in an intensive discussion-format setting. Each year, graduate students teach stand-alone tutorials on a topic of their choice, typically related to their own research. This affords students an excellent opportunity to hone their ability to teach material drawn from their dissertation. In these cases, the design of the syllabus of the course is developed in consultation with a member of the faculty, who monitors the student's teaching progress over the duration of the stand-alone course and offers counsel and instruction relevant to that student’s work as a solo instructor. Prior to teaching their tutorial, students take the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning’s syllabus design course.

Building a Teaching Dossier

Over the course of a doctoral student's career, that student together with the department will gather various materials containing the syllabi of the courses that that student has taught, written reports by faculty teaching mentors on that student’s work in those courses, and, last but not least, undergraduate evaluations of those courses. When a PhD student prepares to go on the academic job market, one of that student’s faculty recommendation letters will document and survey the highlights of her teaching career at the University of Chicago.

Pedagogy Program

Dissertation and Defense

Dissertation committees.

Dissertation committees work with PhD students to conceptualize, draft, revise, and publish their dissertation work. Each committee will have at least three members: the chair, a second reader, and a third reader. Two of these members, including the chair, must be departmental faculty members. External committee members (either outside the department or outside the university) are permitted, and may either serve on the committee in addition to the three departmental committee members, or alternatively can serve in place of a departmental faculty member as the second or third reader. For joint-degree students, the requirements of the composition of their committee will be determined by both departments in which the student is enrolled and may differ from the requirements just outlined.

Dissertation committee chairs and other committee members meet regularly with students, on an individual basis, to discuss ideas or drafts of sections or chapters. In addition, the dissertation committee as a whole meets in person at least once yearly (and often more) with the student to discuss the overall argumentative structure of the thesis, chart the intellectual trajectory of the work, and set guidelines for its completion. Writing a dissertation is an arduous process, and departmental faculty provide rigorous feedback to dissertation-phase students in order to keep them on track to graduate with their PhD in a timely fashion.

Forms of Dissertations

The PhD dissertation is the last and most important piece of writing that a doctoral student completes. Historically it has typically taken the form of a sustained argument developed over a number of chapters, running roughly between 150 and 250 pages in length. A variant form which is increasingly popular in philosophy departments in the English-speaking world is the “3- or 4-paper dissertation,” consisting of several interrelated papers developing aspects of, or perspectives on, a single theme.

The overall length and form of a dissertation should be a matter of discussion between the student and their committee. Since the dissertation is a main source for the first publications that a student will produce (either before or after receiving the degree), it is advisable for the dissertation’s chapters to take the form of pieces of work that are suitable to be turned into journal articles, both conceptually and in length (bearing in mind that many journals in the field set length limits of between 8,000 and 12,000 words, with the higher limits more typical in journals in the history of philosophy). Because the dissertation is also the primary document that will establish a student’s expertise in their area of specialization, it is important that, even if a student chooses to write a 3- or 4-paper dissertation, it should be sufficiently unified to substantiate such a claim to expertise.

Dissertation Defense

Students consult with dissertation committee members months in advance about when to schedule their defense. The defense is a public event: along with committee members, other faculty and students, family members, and the general public are welcome to attend. The exam starts with students giving a short, formal presentation about their dissertation: its major claims, intellectual aims, and intervention in the field. Then committee members, faculty, and students ask questions, and a discussion ensues. At the end of the defense, committee members give the student advice about their performance at the defense, improving the project, and publication.

After the defense, students make any necessary revisions and reformat their dissertation before submitting it to the university’s dissertation office. The final granting of the PhD degree is conditional upon the completion of these revisions and the submission of the final revised version of the dissertation to the university.

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Knowledge@uchicago.

• University of Chicago Library Catalog This link opens in a new window & more less... Find items in all campus libraries, including books, periodicals, sound recordings, videos, DVDs and more.
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses This link opens in a new window & more less... Includes citations for materials from the first U.S. dissertation (1861) to those accepted as recently as last semester. Starting in 1997 full-text is often available. If full-text is not available information about ordering the document is provided.
• WorldCat (OCLC) This link opens in a new window & more less... WorldCat is a database that allows researchers to search the combined catalogs of hundreds of libraries around the world. It contains more than 52 million records for books, journals, audiovisual materials and more. This source can help researchers find items, verify citations, and identify which libraries hold a particular title.
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University of Chicago Convocation Programs

University of Chicago authors are welcome to add their theses to Knowledge@UChicago . They may embargo their work or limit it to the UChicago community.

Researchers can find master's and bachelor's theses in the repository by selecting Thesis . In Spring 2021, some programs in the Social Sciences Division began requiring that students add their MA theses. These appear in the MA Thesis Archive .

Browse collections to find records by division or school.

Library Catalog

Researchers can find records for many master's theses in the University of Chicago Library Catalog . The Library's print copies of theses circulate and may be borrowed like a book (usually from Mansueto ). Researchers may visit the Library to see a thesis, and they may place an interlibrary loan request through their local library if they do not have borrowing privileges at the University of Chicago Library.

Most master's theses filed before 1990 were deposited in the Library. Requirements were similar to the requirements for doctoral dissertations, but a distinction was made between master's theses and master's papers. Master's papers had different requirements and were not made available through the Library. By 1980 or so, most programs were accepting more master's papers than theses. By 1990 or so, the Library no longer received either master's papers or master's theses. Currently, most master's programs call these works theses, but print copies are not deposited in the Library.

Subject specialists can help with exceptions for their disciplines, and there are always some exceptions. For example, see the database for Masters' Papers in Art History & Visual Arts .

The University of Chicago Library filmed many master's theses filed before 1994. When the University of Chicago Library's Photoduplication Department closed, this microfilm was sent to UMI, now ProQuest.

Researchers my find the record for a thesis in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses . Full text may be available online, or a researcher may need to purchase a copy from ProQuest . The Publication Number for a master's thesis usually begins with TM.

Researchers who do not have access to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses may be able to use this subscription database at a nearby university.

If the University of Chicago Library does not hold a master's thesis, there may be a copy at another library. Check WorldCat or WorldCat.org .

Check University of Chicago Convocation Programs  to see when a student received a degree and to confirm the department or academic program. The thesis title may appear, and sometimes a program includes handwritten annotations.

If the Library does not have the thesis, perhaps it is held by the author's department.

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Theses & Dissertations

Citing a published thesis, citing an unpublished thesis, citing a thesis in online database or repository.

• CMS 14.224: Theses and dissertations

Titles of unpublished works appear in "quotation marks"—not in italics . This treatment extends to theses and dissertations, which are otherwise cited like books.

The kind of thesis, the academic institution, and the date follow the title. Like the publication data of a book, these are enclosed in parentheses in a note but not in a bibliography.

If the document was consulted online, include a URL or, for documents retrieved from a commercial database, give the name of the database and, in parentheses, any identification number supplied or recommended by the database.

For dissertations issued on microfilm, see 14.120 . For published abstracts of dissertations, see 14.197 .

Note-Bibliography

First-name Last-name, "Title of Thesis: Subtitle," (Publisher, Year).

      Mihwa Choi, “Contesting Imaginaires in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty,” PhD diss., (University of Chicago, 2008).

Short Note:

Last-name, "Title of Thesis."

Choi. “Contesting Imaginaires ."

Bibliography Entry:

Last-name, First-name. "Title of Thesis: Subtitle." Year.

Choi, Mihwa. “Contesting Imaginaires in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty.” PhD diss. University      of Chicago, 2008.

Author-Date

Text Citation:

(Last-name Year)

(Mihwa 2008)

Reference Entry:

Last-name, First-name. Year. "Title of Thesis: Subtitle."

Choi, Mihwa. 2008. “Contesting  Imaginaires  in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty.”  PhD diss.       University of Chicago.

Note -Bibliography

Note #. First-name Last-name, "Title of Thesis: Subtitle," Unpublished thesis type, University. Year.

Barry C. Hosking, "The Control of Gastro-intestinal Nematodes in Sheep with the Amino-acetonitrile Derivative, Monepantel with a Particular Focus on Australia and New Zealand," PhD diss., (Ghent University, 2010).

Note #. Last-name,"Title of Thesis."

Barry C. Hosking, "The Control of Gastro-intestinal Nematodes."

Bibliography:

Last-name, First-name. "Title of Thesis: Subtitle." Unpublished thesis type. University. Year.

Hosking, Barry C. "The Control of Gastro-intestinal Nematodes in Sheep with the Amino-acetonitrile Derivative, Monepantel with a Particular Focus on Australia and New Zealand." PhD diss., Ghent University, 2010.

(Hosking 2010)

Last-name, First-name.  Year.  "Title of Thesis: Subtitle." Unpublished thesis type. University.

Hosking, Barry C.    2010.  "The Control of Gastro-intestinal Nematodes in Sheep with the Amino-acetonitrile Derivative, Monepantel with a Particular Focus on Australia and New Zealand." PhD diss., Ghent University.

Note #. First-name Last-name, "Title of Thesis: Subtitle," Database Name (Identifier if given), Year, Internet address.

      12. Meredith Stewart, "An Investigation into Aspects of the Replication of Jembrana Disease Virus, " Australasian Digital Theses Program (WMU2005.1222), 2005, http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20051222.104106.

Note #. Last-name, "Title of Thesis."

21. Stewart, "An Investigation into Aspects."

Last-name, First-name. "Title of Thesis: Subtitle." Database Name (Identifier if given), Year. Internet address.

Stewart, Meredith. "An Investigation into Aspects of the Replication of Jembrana Disease Virus ." Australasian Digital Theses Program (WMU2005.1222),  2005. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20051222.104106.

(Stewart 2005)

Last-name, First-name. Year. "Title of Thesis: Subtitle."  Database Name  (Identifier if given), Internet address.

Stewart, Meredith. 2005. "An Investigation into Aspects of the Replication of Jembrana Disease Virus ." Australasian Digital Theses Program  (WMU2005.1222),    http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20051222.104106.

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Department of Art History

Dissertations

Dissertations completed in the Department of Art History, listed by the year in which the student defended.

• "Between Virtual and Real: A New Architecture of the Mogao Caves (Dunhuang, China), 781-1036 CE," Zhenru Zhou
• "Vera Molnar's Programmed Abstraction: Computer Graphics and Geometric Abstract Art in Postwar Europe," Zsofia Valyi-Nagy
• "Inventing Contemporary Chinese Architectural Culture in the Age of Globalization 1979-2006," Zhiyan Yang
• "'A Tragic Suburban Mentality': Managerial Lyricism in Contemporary Art," Jadine Collingwood
• "Henry the Lion and the Art of Politics in Northern Europe, c. 1142-1195," Luke Fidler
• "Interchanges: Construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System and Artistic Practice, 1956-1984," Hanne Graversen
• "Roaming, Gazing, and Listening: Human Presence and Sensory Impression in Song Landscape Art," Meng Zhao
• "The City's Pleasures: Urban and Visual Culture of Garden Spaces in Shanghai, 1850s-1930s," Xi Zhang
• "Making Merit in the Tableau: Early Sixth-Century Chinese Stele," Dongshan Zhang
• "Caught by Surprise: Affect and Feminist Politics in the Art of Magali Lara," Maggie Borowitz 
• "Monochrome Painting and the Period Body in Andrea del Sarto's Cloister of the Scalzo," Christine Zappella 
• "(Re)Making the View: The Shifting Imaginary of West Lake, from the 13th to the 19th Century," Yunfei Shao 
• "The Visual Culture of English Medicine, 1348 - 1500," Carly Boxer
• "From Gold to Green: Visualizing the Environment in the Italian Renaissance," Chloé Pelletier
• "Making Spaces: Site-Based Practice in Contemporary Chinese Art in the Long 1990s," Nancy Pai Suan Lin
• "From Mouth to Hand: Mopa Mopa Images in the Northern Colonial Andes," Catalina Ospina 
• "How to Photograph the Air: Photography, Cinema, and the Problem of Atmosphere in German Modernism, 1893-1933," Katerina Korola
• "From the Ground Up: Yona Friedman and the Postwar Reimagining of Architecture," Jesse Lockard
• "Ruthenians in Early Modern Rome: Art and Architecture of a Uniate Community, 1596 – 1750," Anatole Upart
• "Unsettling the Spiritual Conquest: The Murals of the Huaquechula Monastery in Sixteenth Century Mexico," Savannah Esquivel
• "Likeness, Figuration, Proof: Geometry and the Arabic Book, 1050-1250," Meekyung MacMurdie
• "The Disputed City: Art, Architecture, and the Performance of Argument in Scholastic Paris (c.1120–c.1320)," Martin Schwarz
• "Beyond Treaty Ports: Chinese Photography 1860-1916: Practitioners, Contexts, and Trends," Tingting Xu
• "The History of Idolatry and the Codex Durán Paintings," Kristopher Driggers
• "Non Est Hic: Figuring Christ's Absence in Early Medieval Art," Nancy Thebaut
• “The Art of the Periodical:  Pan , Print Culture and the Birth of Modern Design in Germany, 1890 – 1900,” Max Koss
• "The Whole World is (Still) Watching: Early Video, the Televisual, and Nonviolent Direct Action, 1930s-1970s," Solveig Nelson
• "Criticism without Authority: Gene Swenson, Jill Johnston, Gregory Battcock," Jennifer Sichel
• "Evolving Photography: Naturalism, Art, and Experience, 1889-1909," Carl Fuldner
• " Water, Ice, Lapis Lazuli: the Metamorphosis of Pure Land Art in Tang China," Anne Feng
• " Le Roman de la Poire : Constructing Courtliness and Courtly Art in Gothic France," Elizabeth Woodward
• "Unfolded Worlds: Allegory, Alchemy, and the Image as Structure of Knowledge in Early Modern Northern European Scientific Books," Alexandra Marraccini
• “Consequences of Drawing: Self and History in Jacques-Louis David's Preparatory Practices,” Tamar Mayer
• “Seizing the Everyday: Lettrist Film and the French Postwar Avant-Garde,” Marin Sarvé-Tarr
• “Surrealism and the Art of Consumption,” Jennifer Rose Cohen
• “The Mancheng Tombs: Shaping the Afterlife of the ‘ Kingdom within the Mountains ’  in Western Han China (206BCE- 8CE),” Jie Shi
• “Kazimir Malevich and Russian Modernism,” Daniel Phillips
• “Engraving Identities in Stone: Stone Mortuary Equipment of the Northern Dynasties (386-581 CE),” Jin Xu
• “Past Black and White: The Color of Photography in South Africa,  1994-2004,” Leslie Wilson
• “Systems Depictions: A. R. Penck and the East German Underground, 1953-1980,” Hannah Klemm
• “Body Analyses / Poetic Acts: Ambivalences of Austrian Performance Art After 1945,” Caroline Schopp
• “Allan Kaprow and the Dialectics of Instruction, 1947-1968 ,” Emily Capper
• “Great Expectations: The South Slavs in the Paris Salon Canvases of Jaoslav Čermák and Vlaho Bukovac,”  Rachel Rossner
• “‘Writing Calculations, Calculating Writing’: The Art of Hanne Darboven ,” Victoria Salinger
• “The Art of Play: Games in Early Modern Italy ,” Kelli Wood
• “The Materiality of Azurite Blue and Malachite Green in the Age of the Chinese Colorist Qiu Ying (ca. 1498-ca.1552) ,” Quincy Ngan
• "Contested Spaces: Art and Urbanism in Brazil, 1928-1969," Adrian Anagnost
• “Mt. Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine:  Place and Space in Pilgrimage Art,” Kristine Larison
• “Planctus Provinciae: Arts of Mourning in Fifteenth-Century Provence ,” Rainbow Porthé
• “Amateurs: Photography and the Aesthetics of Vulnerability ,” Anna Lee
• “A Movable Continent: Collecting Africa in Renaissance Italy,”  Ingrid Greenfield
• “Ornament and Art Theory in Ancient Rome: An Alternative Classical Paradigm for the Visual Arts,”  Nicola Jane Barham
• “The Soft Style: Youth and Nudity in Classical Greece,”  Angele Rosenberg
• “Entangled Modernities: The Representation of China's Past in Early Twentieth Century Chinese and Japanese Art,”  Stephanie Su
• “Representing Difference: Early 20th Century Japanese and Korean Art,”  Nancy Lin 
• “Asia Materialized: Perceptions of China in Renaissance Florence,”  Irene Backus
• “Art on the Border: Galerie René Block and Cold War West Berlin,”  Rachel Jans
• “Creative Disruption: Contemporary Russian Performance Art,”  Michelle Maydanchik
• “Locating Identity: Mixed Inscriptions and Multiple Media in Greek Art, ca. 630–336 BCE,”  Ann Patnaude
• “Ephemeral Monument, Lasting Impression: The Abbasid Dar al-Khilafa Palace of Samarra,” Matt Saba
• “Making Danish Modern, 1945–1960 , ”  Maggie Taft
• “Exhibiting Modernity: National Art Exhibitions in China during the Early Republican Period, 1911–1937,”  Kris Ercums
• “Salon Caricature in Second Empire Paris,”  Julia Langbein
• “Art Photography and the Contentions of Contemporary Art: Rhetoric, Practice, and Reception,”  Phil Lee
• “Arts of Enshrining: The Making of Relics and Bodies in Chinese and Korean Buddhist Art from the 10th to the 14th Centuries,”  Seunghye Lee
• “The Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema,”   Mia Liu
• “The Civic Cornucopia of Ornament: The Florentine Picture Chronicle’s (1470–75) Somatic Visioning of the Festive City in the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici,”  Iva Olah
• “A Coat that Doesn't Fit: Jean Dubuffet in Retrospect, 1944–1951,”  Jill Shaw
• “Ben Enwonwu: His Life, Images, Education, and Art in the Context of British Colonialism in Nigeria,”  Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis
• “National Socialist Exhibition Design, Spectatorship, and the Fabrication of Volksgemeinschaft,”  Lawrence Michael Tymkiw
• “By Mind and Hand: Hollis Frampton’s Photographic Modernism,” Lisa Zaher
• “Quest for the True Visage: Sacred Images in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Art and the Concept of Zhen,”  Sun-ah Choi
• “Towards a New Reading of Aumônières,”  Nancy Feldman
• “Dimensions of Place: Map, Itinerary, and Trace in Images of Nanjing,”  Catherine Stuer

• “Different Objects: Repositioning the Work of Four ‘African Diaspora Artists,’”  Ian Bourland
• “Picturing the Yangzi River: Particular Landscapes in Southern Song China,”  Julia Orell
• “A Painter of Cuban Life: Victor Patricio de Landaluze and Nineteenth-Century Cuban Politics,”  Evelyn Carmen Ramos
• “Art at the limits of Modernization: The Artistic Production of Beatriz González 1962–1978,”  Ana Maria Reyes
• “Building a Community through Painting: Fourteenth-Century Chinese Scholars,”  Christina Yu
• “Mutable Authority: Reimaging King Solomon in Medieval Psalm Illustration,”  Kerry Boeye
• “The Aesthetics of Encounter (Mediated Intimacies in Recent Art),”  Kris Cohen
• “Domestic Arts: Amelia Peláez and the Cuban Vanguard (1935–1945),”  Ingrid Elliott
• “Rebellious Conformists: Avant-Garde Exhibitions in Mexico City and Buenos Aires,”  Harper Montgomery
• “Privacy and Abstraction: American Painting, Late Modernism, and the Phenomenal Self,”  Christa Robbins
• “The Art of Punishment: The Spectacle of the Body on the Streets of Constantinople,”  Galina Tirnanic
• “Responding to the World: Contemporary Chinese Art and the Global Exhibitionary Culture in the 1990s,”  Peggy Wang
• “Pedagogy, Modernism, and Medium Specificity: The Bauhaus and John Cage,” Jeffrey Saletnik
• “Inventing 'Documentary' in American Photography, 1930–1945,”  Sarah Miller
• “Masks and Puppets: Metamorphosis and Depersonalization in European Avant-Garde Art Criticism, 1915–1939,”  Joyce Cheng
• “Tracing the Texture of Stone: Unearthing the Origins of Modern Korean Painting from the Archaeological Remains of the Past,”  Christine Hahn
• “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans: Low Painting and Entertainment Culture in Renaissance Venice,”  Chriscinda Henry
• “Nothing to Look at: Art as Situation and its Neuro-Psychological Implications,”  Dawna Schuld
• “Landscapes of Conversion: Franciscan Politics and Sacred Objects in Late Colonial Mexico,”  Cristina Gonzalez
• “Gestures of Iconoclasm: East Berlin's Political Monuments from the Late German Democratic Republic to Postunified Berlin,”  Kristine Nielsen
• “Picture-Loving: Photomechanical Reproduction and Celebrity in America’s Gilded Age,” Eileen Michal
• “Abstraction and Einfühlung: Biomorphic Fantasy and Embodied Aesthetics in the work of Hermann Obrist, August Endell and their Followers, ”  Stacy Hand
• “Theatricalizing Death in Performance Images of Mid-Imperial China,” Jeehee Hong
• “A Vicarious Conquest of Art and Nature at the Medici Court,” Lia Markey
• “An Eye for the Feast in Late Medieval Burgundy,” Christina Normore
• “Sculpture Parks, Sculpture Gardens, and Site Specific Practices in the US, 1965-1991,” Rebecca Reynolds
• “Putti, Pleasure, and Pedagogy in Sixteenth-Century Italian Prints and Decorative Arts,”  Alexandra Korey
• “Jewish Expressionism: The Making of Modern Jewish Art in Berlin,”  Celka Straughn
• “Figures en buste in Medieval China: Three Studies,”  Yudong Wang
• “Narrating Sanctity: The Narrative Icon in Byzantium and Italy,”  Paroma Chatterjee
• “Bodies of the Avant-Garde: Modern Dance and the Plastic Arts, 1890-1930,”  Ellen Andrew
• “Ethnicity and Esoteric Power: Negotiating Sino-Tibetan Synthesis in Ming Painting,”  Karl Debreczeny
• “On the Lips of Others: Fame and the Transformation of Moctezuma's Image,”  Patrick Hajovsky
• “Chinese Modern: Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum as a Crucible for Defining Modern Chinese Architecture,”  Delin Lai
• “Creative Pathologies: French Experimental Psychology and Symbolist Avant-Gardes, 1889-1900,”  Allison Morehead
• “Rebuilding Bungalows: Home Improvement and the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative,”  Anne Stephenson
• “Robert Hooke Fecit: Making and Knowing in Restoration London,”  Matthew Hunter
• “Antiquity to Antiquarianism: Chinese Discourses on Antiquity from the Tenth to Thirteenth Century,”  Yun-Chiahn Sena
• “‘Realized Day-Dreams ’ : Excursions to Authors’ Homes,”  Erin Hazard
• “Layers of Being: Bodies, Objects, and Spaces in Warring States Burials,”  Joy Beckman
• “Building a Sacred mountain: Buddhist Monastic Architecture in Mt. Wutai during the Tang Dynast, 618-907 C.E.,”  Wei-Cheng Lin
• “The Origins of the American School Building: Boston Public School Architecture, 1800-1860,”  Rachel Remmel
• “Between Seeing and Knowing: Shifting Standards of Accuracy and the Concept of Shashin in Japan, 1830-1872,”  Maki Fukuoka
• “The Body and the Family: Filial Piety and Buddhist Art in Late Medieval China,”  Winston Kyan
• “Sites of Lost Dwelling: The Figure of the Archaic City in the Discourses of Urban Design, 1938-1970,”  Anthony Raynsford
• “Images and Memory: The Construction of Collective Identities in Seventeenth-Century Quito,”  Carmen Fernandez
• “Experiment in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting: The Art of Carel Fabriitus,”  Lisa Pincus
• “Making the Scene: Assemblage, Pop Art and Locality in 1960s Los Angeles,”  Ken Allan
• “Reframing Viceregal Painting in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Politics, The Academy of San Carlos, and Colonial Art History,”  Ray Hernandez
• “Collecting Objects/Excluding People: Chinese Subjects and the American Art Discourse, 1870-1900,”  Lenore Metrick
• “Politics on the Cloister Walls: Fra Angelico and His Humanist Observers at San Marco,”  Allie Terry
• “Last Judgments and Last Emperors: Illustrating Apocalyptic History in Late and Post-Byzantine Art,”  Angela Volan
• “I Cannot Paint You But I Love You: Portraiture and the Pre-Raphaelite Search for the Ideal-Elizabeth Siddall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jane Burden, and William Morris,”  Amy Bingaman
• “The Moor's Last Sigh: Boabdil and the Black Image in American Orientalism, 1816-1893,”  James Brunson
• “Photography and the Imperceptible: Bertillon, Galton, Marey,”  Josh Ellenbogen
• “Rubbernecking and the Business of Disaster,”  Emily Godbey
• “Better than the Prodigies: The Prints of Hans Burgkmair, Jorg Breu, and the Marvels of the New World,”  Stephanie Leitch
• “Representing Sappho: The Classical Tradition in Nineteenth-Century French Painting,”  Rachel Lindheim

Admissions Overview

2025-26 admissions theme: environmental humanities.

The Department of English currently has a themed admissions process. This means that the cohort of students admitted each year shares a particular area of research or methodology. Previous themes have included Black studies, Pre-1900 literature, and Poetry and poetics. This year’s theme is described below. Such a themed approach to PhD admissions has pluses and minuses: it allows the department to focus course offerings and programming, but strong applicants may be excluded by the particularity of a given year’s theme. We have nonetheless decided to continue with themed admissions at present. Note that the department anticipates that each theme is broadly salient and will be realized in varied ways. All themes are conceived as inclusive of multiple time periods and subfields.

For the 2025-2026 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is prioritizing applications focusing on literature and culture in relation to environment, ecology, and space. Possible areas of interest include (but are not limited to) the environmental humanities; built environments and literature; geography and urbanization; the atmosphere and setting of literary and artistic works and circles; ecopoetics; the poetics and politics of space.  We encourage applications from students wishing to work in all historical periods, and on texts from and about any region of the world. We welcome hybrid scholars working in creative and critical modes or across media, or doing public humanities and public-facing work that foregrounds environmental and spatial concerns.   For more information on faculty and current graduate students in this area, please visit the  department website .

You may indicate up to five Areas of Study in which you are interested, in ranked order.  

Admissions Themes

 Year 2 (2025–26): Environmental, ecological, and/or spatial matters, including eco-aesthetics, built environments and literature, geography and urbanization, and environmental e/affects. Prospective students might also consider connections to the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization.

Year 3 (2026–27): Transnational literature, migration, and movement, including decolonial literatures, speculative fictions, the movement of cultural meaning, and translation.

Request More Information Here  

Request More Information

Students applying to the PhD program in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago must complete an online application and upload the following to that application:

• Scanned transcripts from all college-level, degree-track programs. [Note: For Spring 2020 transcripts, ‘Pass’ grades and letter grades will be regarded as equivalent as we evaluate applications for admission to our PhD program.]
• 3-4 confidential letters of recommendation (recommenders may upload directly or you may use a service like Interfolio).
• A 15-20 page writing sample (double-spaced; page count does not include bibliography)
• A statement of academic purpose, 1-3 pages, single-spaced

The online application for the 2024-25 academic year will open in October. 

The application deadline for Autumn 2024 will be: December 14, 2023  

Learn more here

English Proficiency

Applicants for whom English is not a primary language may be required to submit current scores from the Test of English as a Foreign Language ( TOEFL ) or the International English Language Testing System ( IELTS ). Current scores are no more than two years old at the time of application submission. A complete description of the English proficiency policy may be found at  this website , and questions about the English proficiency requirement should be directed to  [email protected] .

For more information on English proficiency requirements refer to the  UChicagoGRAD webpage .

Frequently Asked Questions

Information for applicants impacted by covid-19.

The English Department as well as other Graduate programs at the University of Chicago share a desire to identify the most promising students for admission, and assess a wide variety of factors on a holistic basis. Faculty and admissions committees are aware of the disruptions impacting not just academic coursework and grading systems, but also research, travel, internships, employment, and many other activities. In light of the unprecedented challenges associated with COVID-19 facing individuals, institutions, and organizations, UChicago will evaluate applicants with these significant impacts in mind.

The University fully expects that admissions committees will evaluate all applicants with this in mind during future admissions cycles, including respecting decisions, whether made by institutions or individual students, to grade courses in Spring 2020 on a Pass/No Pass or other basis.

Does the Department of English accept applications by mail? No. The department, with the rest of the Humanities Division graduate programs, only accepts  online applications .

GRE & GPA

Does the Department of English require the GRE exam? No.  The department does not require  any  GRE exam scores.

Does the Department of English Admissions Committee have cutoff levels for GPAs? No. The Admissions Committee does not have specific cutoff levels for GPAs, nor does the Department report average GPAs. Please note that the Admissions Committee generally considers your writing sample, statement of purpose, and recommendation letters to be of most relevance.

Questions about Application Materials

My writing sample is over 20 pages long. Will my application still be considered?

Your application will still be considered if your writing sample is over the recommended upper limit of 20 pages. This recommended limit is not absolutely fixed, but we strongly suggest that applicants try to adhere to it as closely as possible. If you are unable to reduce the paper you want to use as a writing sample in your PhD application to 20 pages, please consider providing an 20-page excerpt from that paper and supplying a brief (one-page or less) abstract that contextualizes the function and place of the excerpted section within the paper as a whole. Place the explanation and writing on one pdf.

What is the deadline for uploading all application materials?  

All application materials  must  be uploaded on the application  by the application deadline  to guarantee inclusion with your application. We cannot guarantee that materials uploaded after the deadline will be included in the review process as your application may have already been reviewed by the committee. We strongly prefer that faculty recommendations be uploaded by the application deadline. If this is impossible, recommenders should contact Humanities Admissions at [email protected] .

Do page counts refer to single- or double-spaced pages?

 The writing sample should be 15-20 pages double-spaced. The statement of academic purpose (also referred to as the Candidate or Personal Statement, or the "Statement of Intent") should be 1-3 pages single-spaced. Additional PhD application information can be found on the  Division of Humanities Admissions  webpage.

Master's Degree

Does the Department of English offer a master's degree? No. The Department of English does not offer a terminal MA degree. We recommend that students interested in master's-level work consider applying to the  Master of Arts Program in the Humanities  (MAPH). MAPH provides students with strong pedagogical support, including writing colloquia, a core course, and master's thesis workshops.

Department of English students can earn an MA while on the PhD track, providing they do not already hold an MA in English.

Does the PhD program have different requirements for students who already hold a master's degree in English? The admissions committee will review the transcripts of students entering the program with an MA in English to evaluate if any of their previous graduate course work will be counted as fulfilling requirements in our program. Typically, students who enter the program with an MA in English must take at least one year of course work, plus an additional two courses in their second year of the program. (By contrast, students who enter the program with a BA degree are required to take two full years of courses.)

• University of Chicago Admissions FAQ
• Division of the Humanities Admissions

Miscellaneous

Should I contact faculty with whom I would like to study before applying?  

It is not necessary or advantageous to contact individual faculty regarding your application. 

Once I've submitted my application, how can I check that my materials were received?  

Once your application is submitted, you can log in to the submission site to track the receipt of your application. As the Admissions Office receives your application materials, they will update your checklist.

Does the Department of English fund all admitted students?

All incoming doctoral students receive a comprehensive funding package to support them in their scholarly and pedagogical training and are eligible to be registered for up to 9 years. The funding package includes:

• An academic year stipend (and teaching remuneration)
• Full tuition aid
• Health insurance premium aid

How many applicants does the PhD program receive per year and how many of these applicants are admitted? In recent years, we have received around 500 applications a year and have admitted anywhere from 2% to 5% of those applicants into our PhD program.

I would like to apply for a joint degree program at the University of Chicago. How can I go about doing this? Please refer to the  Division of the Humanities  page regarding joint degree information. 

I am currently enrolled in a PhD program at another University and would like to transfer to the University of Chicago. How can I do this? The PhD program in English does not accept transfer students. For admission, you must apply as would any other prospective student, regardless of your academic background. The admission committee will assess your academic progress and see what graduate courses, if any, may be counted toward your PhD course work at University of Chicago.

How many times a year do you accept PhD applicants?  We only accept new PhD students in the fall. The application portal opens in early October and closes mid-December. We recommend that you check the Division of the Humanities page . 

I am an international applicant. Where can I find more information about resources available for international students at the University of Chicago? For more information about international student resources at UChicago see the Division of the Humanities Resources for International Students .

How can I fulfill the Foreign Language Requirement? Graduate students must prove they are proficient in one language other than English to meet the Department's requirement. There are a number of ways in which students can fulfill the Foreign Language Requirement:

• For students who want to study a new language: Taking (a) two quarters of classes in a language here (100 level or above) or (b) six weeks in an intensive summer course in a language here (100 level or above) and receiving grades of A or A- in those courses.
• For students who want to continue training in a language they’ve already begun studying: Taking (a) two quarters of classes in that language at the level the placement exam indicates) or (b) six weeks in an intensive summer course in a language here, also at the level where the placement exam indicates) and receiving grades of A or A- in those courses.
• Subject to review by Director of Graduate Studies: Taking (or getting credit for) two years of a language in an undergraduate or another graduate program.
• Receiving at least a B grade in a one-quarter graduate literature course, or a 200-level undergraduate literature course, in the literature of one language, taken at this University. Texts must be read in the language, and the student must have taken classes in this language previously.
• Receiving an A or A- grade in the one-quarter graduate course, German 33300: German for Research Purposes (or similar courses in other languages, should those be developed), providing that the student selects a set of literary and critical texts (as described in no. 4, above) to use as “sources from their own field of study” in fulfilling the course requirements. It is the student’s responsibility to see that the course instructor understands this requirement and communicates to the Director of Graduate Studies that the student has met it.
• Subject to review by Director of Graduate Studies: Taking other intensive summer language courses elsewhere funded by a FLAS grant.
• Taking one of the following course sequences in Computer Sciences (either during the year or in the summer) and receiving at least a B grade in both quarters: (1) CS 10100 and 10200, Introduction to the World Wide Web 1 & 2; (2) CS 10500 and 10600, Fundamentals of Computer Programming 1 & 2; (3) CS 12100 and 12200 Computer Science with Applications 1 & 2; or (4) CS 15100/16100 and 15200/16200 (Honors) Introduction to Computer Science 1 & 2.

Can prospective students schedule campus visits? For information about campus tours, please visit  UChicagoGRAD . The Department of English hosts an Open House each year, solely for prospective students who have  already  been admitted to the PhD program. If other prospective students have questions about the program, they should e-mail department staff at  [email protected] .

• Humanities Division Financial Aid
• Humanities Division Financial Aid For Prospective Students

Physical Sciences Division

International student information, international student information , overview  .

The Office of International Affairs (OIA) at the University of Chicago works directly with international students on questions and issues related to their student visas.

The OIA advisors for PSD are listed below:

• Applied Data Science – Angelica Cazares
• Masters Program in Computer Science – Sarah FitzMaurice
• Financial Mathematics – Sarah FitzMaurice
• All other PSD Programs – Shashi Dyamenahalli

Visa versus Status

This page from OIA provides an overview of a student’s   visa and how it relates to a student’s status in the United States.

Status is the legal category under which the visitor was admitted to the U.S. For degree-seeking students, this commonly is F-1 or J-1 status.

The duration of status is based on the form I-20 or DS-2019. Students whose visas expire while they are in the United States should review the following information from OIA and reach out to their relevant OIA advisor with any questions:

A visa is only an entry document and can expire while you are in the U.S. There is no issue if your visa expires while you are legally present in the U.S.   As long as your  status  is still valid and you continue to follow all immigration regulations, you can continue to remain in the U.S. even if your  visa  has expired.   The status does not end when the visa expires.

However, you will require a valid visa anytime you seek entry into the U.S.  If your visa expires and you are traveling internationally, you will need to get a new visa before returning to the U.S.

Students should carefully consider the academic calendar prior to making plans to leave the US to renew a visa. In-person degree-seeking students are expected to attend courses in-person. PhD students should note that remote work is not permitted for teaching or research positions for the University.

Program Extensions

The program end date on a student’s I-20 or DS-2019 should always reflect when you are going to finish registration . If you require additional classes to finish your academic program or are a PhD student who requires additional time to complete your dissertation, you may apply for an extension of your I-20 or DS-2019.

More information about the program extension process is available online.

Extensions of your I-20/DS-2019 must be based on academic necessity only and cannot be based on non-academic factors (like more favorable job prospects or timing for benefit applications). Extensions must be approved in advance by your program and OIA.

Verification of Completion  

International students who plan to apply for Optional Practical Training (OPT) will need to receive a completed verification of completion form prior to applying for OPT. The verification of completion form and additional details about the application process are available on OIA’s website.

PhD students’ verification of completion forms require signature from the Dean of Students Office. Please email [email protected] for assistance.

MS students’ verification of completion forms can be completed by their Student Affairs Administrator.

Quick Links for International Students  

• Maintaining a full-time course load
• Leave of Absence and Withdrawal
• Program Extension of I-20 or DS-2019
• On-Campus Employment
• Tax Responsibilities for International Students
• Curricular Practical Training (CPT)
• Optional Practical Training (OPT)
• STEM OPT Extension  
• International Graduate Student Advisory Board (IGSAB)
• UChicagoGRAD International Student Initiatives
• Tax Information for Graduate Students

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PhD in Accounting

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Chicago Booth has one of the preeminent PhD accounting programs. Our faculty conduct groundbreaking scholarly work, and our graduates have played a central role in the evolution of modern accounting research.

As a PhD student in accounting at Booth, you’ll have the freedom to explore and cultivate your research interests from day one—wherever they lead.

You’ll join a collaborative research community and work with prominent scholars whose groundbreaking research is recognized for its impact on the academic literature, accounting practice and policymaking, securities regulation, and elsewhere. In addition to your stipend, you may apply for research and conference travel funding from our research centers and the Stevens Doctoral Program. In research workshops and conferences, you’ll present your work and hear about the work of fellow researchers. 

Our Distinguished Accounting Faculty

As measured by research productivity and impact, Chicago Booth has one of the best accounting faculty groups in the world. The group includes Philip G. Berger, Hans B. Christensen, Merle Erickson, Christian Leuz, Michael Minnis, Valeri Nikolaev, Haresh Sapra, Douglas J. Skinner, and Abbie J. Smith, as well as an outstanding group of research-active junior faculty. The school is committed to maintaining the quality of this group.

These distinguished scholars are also teachers and mentors who will advise you, coauthor papers with you, supervise your thesis, help you find an outstanding job, and serve as colleagues throughout your career.

Philip G. Berger

Wallman Family Professor of Accounting

Hans B. Christensen

Chookaszian Family Professor of Accounting and David G. Booth Faculty Fellow

Anna Costello

Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Accounting

Merle Erickson

Professor of Accounting

Joao Granja

Associate Professor of Accounting and Jane and Basil Vasiliou Faculty Scholar

Christian Leuz

Charles F. Pohl Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting and Finance

Bradford Levy

Assistant Professor of Accounting

Charles McClure

Associate Professor of Accounting

Michael Minnis

Deputy Dean for Faculty and Fuji Bank and Heller Professor of Accounting

Maximilian Muhn

Valeri Nikolaev

James H. Lorie Professor of Accounting and FMC Faculty Scholar

Madhav Rajan

Dean and George Pratt Shultz Professor of Accounting

Thomas Rauter

Amoray Riggs-Cragun

Assistant Professor of Accounting and Kathryn and Grant Swick Faculty Scholar

Delphine Samuels

Associate Professor of Accounting and James S. Kemper Faculty Scholar

Haresh Sapra

Charles T. Horngren Professor of Accounting

Douglas J. Skinner

Sidney Davidson Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting

Abbie J. Smith

Boris and Irene Stern Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting

Christopher Stewart

Assistant Professor of Accounting and Fama Faculty Fellow

Associate Professor of Accounting and Kathryn and Grant Swick Faculty Scholar

Anthony Welsch

Anastasia A Zakolyukina

Alumni success.

The American Accounting Association periodically awards a prize for seminal contributions to the accounting literature. Graduates of the PhD Accounting Program are regular winners of this prestigious prize.

Our PhD graduates in accounting go on to faculty positions  at some of the world's most prestigious institutions.

Kalash Jain, MBA '23, PhD '23

Assistant Professor of Business, Accounting Division Columbia Business School, Columbia University His research examines the impact of information processing frictions and investor decision making on asset prices and firm investment. His dissertation area is in accounting.

Sinja Leonelli, MBA '23, PhD '23

Assistant Professor of Accounting Stern School of Business, New York University Sinja's research primarily examines misconduct reporting, regulation and enforcement, and the use of ESG information by stakeholders such as regulators, employees, and consumers. Her dissertation area is in accounting.

Shirley Lu, MBA ’21, PhD ’21 

Assistant Professor of Business Administration Harvard Business School, Harvard University Shirley Lu studies Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure, with a focus on climate change and gender diversity. Her dissertation area is in accounting.

Spotlight on Research

Chicago Booth Review frequently highlights the work of accounting PhD students, faculty, and alumni.

One Way Discrimination Creeps into the Supply Chain

A Q&A with Chicago Booth’s Anna Costello about how the pandemic affected which suppliers got paid on time.

AI Reads between the Lines to Discover Corporate Risk

“Corporate risk exposures are often subtly implied in conference call discussions rather than explicitly stated,” write Chicago Booth PhD student Alex G. Kim and Booth’s Maximilian Muhn and Valeri Nikolaev.

Civilization is Based on Accounting

A Q&A with Chicago Booth’s Ray Ball on accounting’s past and future.

Financial Data Privacy Could Help Fight Poverty

Historical data can shape future outcomes, helping to determine whether a prospective borrower has access to a home, car, or other opportunities, write University of Utah’s Mark Jansen, Chicago Booth PhD student Fabian Nagel, and Booth’s Constantine Yannelis and Anthony Lee Zhang.

A Network of Support

Doctoral students at Booth have access to the resources of several research centers  that offer funding for student work, host workshops and conferences, and foster a strong research community.

The Chookaszian Accounting Research Center The Chookaszian Accounting Research Center coordinates accounting research at Chicago Booth and hosts research brown bags and workshops. It also publishes the Journal of Accounting Research , one of the top accounting research journals in the world.

George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State Dedicated to examining issues at the intersection of politics and the economy, the Stigler Center supports research in the political, economic, and cultural obstacles to better working markets.

Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation Chicago Booth’s destination for people committed to tackling social and environmental problems, the Rustandy Center supports the work of PhD students and others who are focused on transforming the social sector.

Inside the Student Experience

For Andrew Sutherland, PhD ’13, coauthoring research with Booth faculty was a highlight of the Stevens Program.

Video Transcript

Andrew Sutherland, ’13: 00:09 In accounting, there's tons and tons of research on these big public firms that have an army of investor relations people and they constant disclosing things. That's where most of the research was happening, but there's this whole other half of the economy, these private firms, that we didn't really know a lot about. We didn't know a lot about how they got credit. What was interesting to me is that a lot of time, firms are able to get credit without even providing any financial statements or any information whatsoever to the bank. The reason they're able to get credit is that they have a credit score. So in other words, the information is coming, not from the form itself, but from another bank who had dealt with them in the past. What really struck me was there wasn't really a lot of research out there on this information channel. That's when I decided I wanted to learn a little bit more about what this reporting channel does to contract and help firms get credit and how it changes banks' incentives to lend.

Andrew Sutherland, ’13: 01:01 Basically, the firms that have a good credit record or a long track record of borrowing successfully were the ones that were able to shop around. We would think that's a good thing, that giving firms more choice about who to borrow from kind of increases social welfare, you get better matching between lenders and firms. Kind of the dark side is that the firms that have had payment trouble that have defaulted or missed some payments on loans sort of get shut out of the credit part. You have a harder time starting any new relationships with outside lenders. That's kind of a cost.

Andrew Sutherland, ’13: 01:34 The second cost is that information sharing changes the game for lenders. So, if participating in this credit bureau basically allows outside lenders to pick off the firms that are doing better, then that destroys the incentive for lenders to kind of invest in relationships to begin with. That's sort of the second dark side of information sharing, if you will.

Andrew Sutherland, ’13: 01:54 So, I coauthor on a number of projects with the junior faculty member here named Mike Minnis. I probably talked to Mike more than I talk to my wife. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But, I mean, as a PhD student, there's only so much you can learn in class, and having a faculty member to work with that's kind of gone through the ropes and understands the review process, that's done something on their own, it gives you a really good opportunity to learn. That's something, I think that was absolutely instrumental in my success

Current Accounting Students

PhD students in accounting come to Chicago Booth with a wide range of interests and goals. Recent dissertations have focused on everything from machine learning to the impact of fiscal monitoring, and graduates have gone on to positions at some of the world’s preeminent institutions, including Columbia Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Current Students

Samuel Chang Jonas Dalmazzo Jewel Evans Lingyu Gu Yanzi (Yvonne) Han Grant Hayes Maria Khrakovsky Alex Kim Ginha Kim Andrew McKinley Pietro Ramella Hanbyul Yoon

Program Expectations and Requirements

The Stevens Doctoral Program at Chicago Booth is a full-time program. Students generally complete the majority of coursework and examination requirements within the first two years of studies and begin work on their dissertation during the third year. For details, see General Examination Requirements by Area in the Stevens Program Guidebook below.

Download the 2023-2024 Guidebook!

Center for Digital Scholarship

Dissertation Access in Knowledge@UChicago

Most (90% since Summer 2021) of our recent dissertations may be viewed in Knowledge@UChicago, the University's open access repository. Please note that authors may choose to delay access to their work for a limited time.

• 2023-2024 Winter 91% (29 No, 289 Yes, 318 Total)
• 2022-2023 92% (39 No, 429 Yes, 468 Total)
• 2021-2022 89% (53 No, 409 Yes, 462 Total)

Dissertation authors may decide whether or not to make their work available in Knowledge@UChicago , and participation varies within the divisions and schools.

97% Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine

95% The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

94% Division of the Physical Sciences

92% The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

92% The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies

86% Division of the Humanities

85% Division of the Social Sciences

80% The Divinity School

76% The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice

63% The Law School

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Intelligent Power Electronics at Grid Edge (IPEG) Lab

College of engineering, pietro minerva successfully defended his ms thesis.

Mr. Pietro Minerva successfully defended his MS thesis on July 29, 2024. He joined IPEG lab in August 2023 . IPEG lab wishes him the best of luck in his career and next chapter of his life. Congratulations, Pietro!

Thesis Title: Efficient and Grid Friendly DC Charging Station

Thesis Summary:

This thesis outlines an accurate design procedure for the CLLC converter in the DC charging stations, which is suitable for First-Harmonic-Approximation (FHA) assumption. It works closely to the resonant frequency in a narrow switching frequency interval above it in both operating conditions, with ZVS and a reasonable operating voltage range for a DC bus in the DC microgrid.

To enable G2V operation, a closed-loop voltage controller and a closed-loop current controller to achieve constant voltage (CV) charging and constant current (CC) are implemented. Instead, the discharging mode (V2G) operates with soft-start under constant voltage (CV) operation, and a voltage closed loop controller is implemented. Both control strategies have been validated through simulations, demonstrating soft switching for both full-bridges. Also, in this thesis, an algorithm that aims to minimize the losses incurred from injecting energy from the fleet of EVs in the charging station into the grid is proposed. The algorithm updates the power to be drawn from each EV based on the arrival state of charge (SOC), recalculating it every time there is an EV arrival or departure from the charging station.