The Colloquium Comps option for the Senior Integrative Exercise offers students the chance to integrate the skills and knowledge they have acquired as English majors by reading, discussing in small groups, and writing about a list of works organized around a theme, topic, or literary question. The list, provided by the department, draws upon works from the range of the major. The intellectual pleasure and rigor of this comps option balances breadth, close reading, and critical analysis through group and individual work.

The colloquium process begins in the fall with a group proposal arguing for minor modifications to the list (the proposal process is described in more detail below). Students may begin reading and planning over winter break, and then, following a syllabus that each colloquium group devises, will conduct regular, self-directed seminar meetings throughout winter term.

To inform their discussions, students will do supplemental research on the list’s primary texts and critical questions. In the last few weeks of winter term, students individually will compose either one or two comparative essays on topics of their own choosing, with a total count of approximately 5,000 words.  Students who choose to write a single essay should discuss at least three texts from the list.  All students should demonstrate attention to the breadth of the list; e.g., in terms of eras, genres, traditions, and/or critical claims, and make appropriate use of their research. After writing first drafts, students will revise their work through a structured process of peer review.

Finally, in the spring, the colloquium work will culminate in a group presentation given at the departmental symposium.

2025-26 Colloquium Comps

  • Coordinators: Constance Walker & Pierre Hecker

Backtalk

Literary works are de facto written in relation to other literary works. Yet some works respond more deliberately and specifically to their predecessors than others: some, for instance, appropriate and imitate the forms and/or themes of individual earlier works, while others push back against and radically recast earlier texts for their own purposes. This year’s colloquium list features several groups of texts and their ur-texts, and invites you to explore how and why the texts talk back to each other. What happens, for example, when an atheist writes an elegy? Or when Jim’s story replaces Huck Finn’s as the heart of the narrative? Or when Zadie Smith puts Chaucer’s “salacious, outrageous, unapologetic” Wife of Bath in a modern London pub?

(Also, see the secret menu of related but not required texts.)

Narrative

Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (novel, 1884)
Percival Everett, James (novel, 2024)

Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” (Breton lai, c.1390)
Zadie Smith, The Wife of Willesden (play, 2021)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (novel, 1818)
Victor LaValle, Destroyer (graphic novel, 2018)
Gwen E. Kirby, “Mrs. Frankenstein” (2023)

Sophocles, Antigone (c. 442 BC)
Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (2017)

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (novel, 1847) added
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (novel, 1966) added

Lyric

John Milton, “Lycidas” (1638)
P. B. Shelley, “Adonais” (1821)
Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865)
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “Frederick Douglass” (1895)
W. B. Yeats, “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory” (1918)
W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (1939)
Gwendolyn Brooks “We Real Cool” (poem, 1959) moved up from secret menu
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” (1962)
Lorna Dee Cervantes, “Poema para los Californios Muertos” (1982)
Derek Walcott, “Eulogy to W. H. Auden” (1983)
Yusef Komunyakaa, “Facing It” (1988)
Seamus Heaney, “Clearances” (1990)
Mary Jo Bang, “The Role of Elegy” (2007)
Terrence Hayes, “The Golden Shovel” (poem, 2010) moved up from secret menu
Ocean Vuong, “Anaphora as Coping Mechanism” (2016) updated

Drama

William Shakespeare, Macbeth (play, c. 1606)
Macbeth (Guthrie production directed by Joe Dowling, 2025)
Vishal Bhardwaj (writer/director), Maqbool (film, 2003) 
DVD available at Circulation Desk: (Circ Desk); PR2823.A23 B37 2004
https://bridge.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01BRC_INST/1tn7c8c/alma991012034539702971

Ella Hickson, The Writer (play, 2019)
In Libe: PR6108.I32 W75 2018
https://bridge.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01BRC_INST/1tn7c8c/alma991018673314502971

Criticism

Birgit Spengler, from Literary Spin-offs (2015)
Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (essay, 1984)
Peter Widdowson, “‘Writing back’: contemporary re-visionary fiction”. Textual Practice 20(3), 2006, 491–507

Secret menu:

Nick Dear (writer) and Danny Boyle (director), Frankenstein (NTLive, 2011))
Benedict Cumberbatch as Creature: https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/frankenstein-bc-as-creature
Jonny Lee Miller as Creature: https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/frankenstein-jlm-as-creature

Alasdair Gray, Poor Things (novel, 1992)

Akira Kurosawa (director), Throne of Blood (film, 1957)
DVD available at the Carleton Circulation Desk: PN1997.9.J3 T576 2003
https://bridge.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01BRC_INST/1tn7c8c/alma991000660949702971
 Streamable version via Kanopy:
https://bridge.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01BRC_INST/1tn7c8c/alma991018234235702971
 https://www.kanopy.com/en/carleton/video/113265
 Blu-ray available from St. Olaf:
https://bridge.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01BRC_INST/1tn7c8c/alma991018473603302971

Billy Morissette (writer/director), Scotland, PA (film, 2001)
DVD available at the Carleton Circulation Desk:  PN1997.2 .S26 2002
https://bridge.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01BRC_INST/1tn7c8c/alma991005809799702971
 https://www.kanopy.com/en/carleton/video/11278705

Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, The Island (play, 1973)
Seamus Heaney, Burial at Thebes: A version of Sophocles’ Antigone (play, 2004)

Criticism: Derecho, A. “Archontic literature: A definition, a history, and several theories of fan fiction.” Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the internet, 61-78. (2006).

A. In the Fall of senior year students submit a written group proposal consisting of:

  1. A list of two or three texts the group wishes to add to the departmental Colloquium list. The group may also propose a subtraction.
  2. A rationale for the proposed additions or deletions. The explanation should address:
    • How these texts contribute to a conversation about the topic;
    • How the list changes as a result of your choices;
    • How the questions that the topic poses can be worked through with your additional texts;
  3. The proposal should be at least two pages long. 

Examples of successful proposals are in Dropbox.

B. The final Colloquium Comps will consist of:

  1. Approximately 5,000 words of essay writing due at the end of winter term of senior year
  2. A public presentation by the group at the English Comps symposium in the spring term on what was learned in the process of constructing a syllabus, discussing the works on the list, and writing the essay(s).

C. What does an ideal Colloquium Comps Essay look like?

  • Successfully addresses a literary, critical and/or theoretical question or problem
  • Articulates a cogent and insightful thesis in answer to this question or problem
  • Develops this thesis into a coherent and illuminating argument
  • Argument is based upon well-chosen evidence
  • Shows the pertinence of such evidence by sophisticated analysis, close reading, and/or careful exposition
  • Shows mastery of a broad range of relevant literary, critical, methodological and/or theoretical concepts and texts
  • Paper clearly exhibits an extremely effective organizing structure
  • Is precisely and/or eloquently written
  • Is almost entirely free from mechanical error

Examples of successful Colloquium Essays are in Dropbox.

Key Dates & Deadlines, 2025-26

Junior Year

Spring Term:

  • Thursday, May 8, Common Time: Mandatory Comps meeting
  • Advising week: Conversation with advisers about Comps options
  • Colloquium list sent to majors and posted on department website

Senior Year

Fall Term:

  • Weeks 1-5: Colloquium students will meet together and discuss ideas for potential additions or deletions to the list. The group(s) will draft a proposal (see guidelines above).
  • Noon on Thursday, October 23: Group proposal due – The proposal must be uploaded to Moodle according to the instructions posted there. Revisions of the proposal may be required.
  • Tuesday, October 28, Common Time: Research visit with reference librarian Adam Lewis
  • Tuesday, November 4, Common Time: Meeting with czars to discuss planning for winter term (including schedule, syllabus, and best practices).

Winter Term:

  • 1st week: Colloquium starts to meet. The term’s schedule should be set.
  • 2nd week: Meeting with czars to discuss expectations for the essays and the development of literary arguments that draw on the breadth and depth of the list.
  • 6th week: Preliminary work on possible essays should be underway.
  • 7th week: First drafts distributed for peer review.
  • 8th week: Peer reviews returned and discussed.
  • 9th week: Second round of peer review for penultimate drafts.
  • Last day of classes (Wednesday, March 11): Final essays due by 5 p.m. Check the comps submission guidelines for further instructions.

Spring Term: 

  • Students receive evaluations of their essays. Revisions to essays, if required, due at noon, Monday, April 27 (beginning of 5th week).
  • Saturday, May 9: Group presentation at the English Comps Symposium.