Comprehensive Exercise Requirements

  1. The Asian Studies Chair will select a Comps advisor and one other reader for the project.
  2. The student must work out a proposal, in careful consultation with the Comps advisor and readers, by the fourth week of the fall term of the senior year. The student must then submit the proposal to the Asian Studies Chair by the sixth week of the term, and appear before the Asian Studies Committee by the eighth week of the term to secure Committee approval for the project. A student who will be off-campus fall term of senior year, must present a proposal by the end of his or her junior year.
  3. A first draft of the full-length Comps paper must be submitted to each of the two readers no later than the ninth week of the student’s next-to-last term at Carleton (usually the winter). This draft will be read, critiqued, and returned to the student by the end of the first week of the student’s last term.
  4. Deadline for submission of the completed project, including a one-page abstract (both must be submitted in hard-copy and electronically), is the end of the fourth week of the student’s final term at Carleton.
  5. The student will defend the completed project in an oral examination with the two readers. The student will also discuss the Comps at a meeting arranged by the Asian Studies Chair and open to Asian Studies faculty, Asian Studies students, and other interested persons on campus.

Comps Proposal

The Comps Proposal should adhere to the following format:

  1. Statement of the problem to be examined: This may take the the form of a hypothesis; a statement of fact which the project will undertake to explain or examine; the opposing sides of a continuing argument to which the project will add another opinion; etc.
  2. Preparation: The student should provide a list of courses taken or to be taken at Carleton or elsewhere and any other experiences that are relevant to the successful undertaking and completion of the project.
  3. Method of study: The student should indicate as clearly as possible the disciplinary method or methods to be used in investigating the stated problem of research.
  4. Resources: When applicable, the student should indicate the non-Carleton facilities and faculty to be utilized in the collection of data and completion of the project (i.e., institutes, libraries, museums, performing arts groups, experts, etc.).
  5. Bibliography: The proposal should include a preliminary bibliography, consisting of the major books and articles the student has already read, or has yet to read.
  6. Implications of the study: The student should indicate what she/he expects to learn from the study; how the study relates to what others have done with the problem; how the study furthers understanding of the problem or adds a new dimension to understanding; etc. In short, what contributions does the student anticipate s/he will make by studying from the particular perspective proposed?

Sample Comps titles

  • Avalokitesvara and Kuan-yin: The Evolution of a Goddess
  • Bombay: An Analysis of Cultural Interaction As Seen in Architecture and Urban Planning
  • Brahmanical Versus Untouchable Explanations of Untouchability
  • The Carleton Mission in China Becomes Carleton-in-China: The Secularization of the Carleton College Enterprise in Campus Publicity
  • Commentary to Guo Luoji’s “A Call to the People”
  • “Excuse me, you’re exploiting my space.” The Social History and Emerging Voice of Asian Indian Women in the United States and Trinidad
  • Exceptional Women in Chinese Folktales
  • Humans and Nature: Zhang Xianliang’s “Half of Man is Woman” and Tang Poetry
  • Impact of American PL 480 Wheat on Indian Foodgrain Agriculture
  • The Implications of the 1950s Marriage Law and Marriage Model in the People’s Republic of China
  • The New Frontier: The Failure of Chinese Assimilationist Policies in Xinjiang
  • Non-Party Marxism in India: The Function of Marxism as a Legitimating Mechanism
  • The Role of Historical Memories in the Evolution of the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict of 1979
  • Rural Decline in Post-War Japan: The Politics of Self Image
  • Second and Final Chance at Democracy in Hong Kong: Comparative Study of the Young Plan of 1946 and the Patten Plan of 1992
  • The Skills to Survive and the Strength to Adapt: The Socialization of Hindu Girls
  • State-Sangha Relations in Sri Lanka
  • The Tamil Saivite Bhakti Movement in History
  • Tradition and Modernity in the Indian theater: Hayavadana and Sakharam Binder
  • True Loyalists?: Hongren and Gong Xian in the Ming-Qing Transition Period
  • Western Drugs and Ayurvedic Herbals: A Study in Ethnopharmacology