Procedure
In order to facilitate these goals, it is essential that a proposal first be prepared carefully in consultation with your adviser. Once your adviser approves, it should be circulated among other faculty members at least one month prior to the actual colloquium. This allows for sufficient time for the other committee members to give critical feedback and request revisions if necessary. Initial committee requests for extensive revisions should be done two weeks prior to the actual colloquium with written comments. The student then must provide the revised document back to the committee one week prior to the meeting or reschedule the colloquium for later.

Thus your proposal should be as detailed as possible re your schedule and plans, as well as be circulated at least two weeks in advance. There is a formal approval paper to file as a result of this colloquium's successful conclusion with all committee members' signatures. This should be submitted to the Head of the HR Field Committee for filing in the HR records.

Constitution of the Dissertation Committee
A dissertation committee itself must consist of three faculty members from the Religious Studies department (which includes the adviser), and one faculty member from another department at UVA. This is a minimum, and it is possible to have additional faculty members participate. The faculty member from another Department is called the "Dean's Representative", and should ideally be a faculty member the student has worked with in the past. In addition to serving to stress our interdisciplinary and collegial approach to the teaching and training of graduate students, the Dean's Representative also ensures to the Dean that nothing inappropriate is done by the department in granting a PHD, as well as provide an impartial witness to the procedures in case anything goes amiss that affects the PHD exam negatively. S/he also provides quality control, since they have a clear idea as to what PHD exam is at UVA. A doctoral student should consult with his/her adviser from the beginning of his/her studies about locating an appropriate faculty member. Barring exceptional circumstances, this person cannot be a non-UVA faculty.

If the student and his/her adviser feel there are compelling reasons for inviting a scholar from outside of UVA to be the external faculty member, the adviser must secure permission from the Chair of the Religious Studies Department, and then petition the Dean of the Graduate School to allow this. This petition should be submitted by the adviser in the form of a one-page letter outlining the request and its rationale, and signed by the adviser and Chair; in addition, the external faculty's CV should be submitted. These materials are necessary because there are random "degree audits" performed, and in such contexts, it is necessary to document the credentials of everyone on a thesis committee. These petitions are generally granted, assuming the credentials are in order.

One should note the problem of how the non-UVA faculty member will be present at the actual final thesis defense if they live outside of driving range. Possibilities include a separate invitation for a lecture to be given at UVA at that time, consultation via technological means, and so forth.

General Guidelines
After the successful completion of all required course work, within nine months the student must finish the comprehensive examinations and the thesis proposal defense. All comprehensive examinations should be completed prior to the thesis proposal defense. A candidate must first present a dissertation proposal to his/her field committee at least a month before the actual meeting to allow for close evaluation. The dissertation proposal should be a ten- to twenty-page presentation [excluding the bibliographical materials] which is divided into the following nine sections:

1. Purpose of the dissertation
2. Central questions to be considered/answered and relevant background information (for the non-specialists on the committee)
3. Contribution to scholarship (beginning with survey of current work on the topic)
4. Source materials
5. Methodology
6. Chapter Outline
7. Tentative timeline
8. Bibliography - as complete as possible

If the field committee approves of the proposal it shall be made available to the faculty of the department for comment. Thereafter the dissertation proposal will be the topic for a colloquium set by the appropriate field committee. All interested members of the departmental faculty will be invited to attend and participate in that discussion. People in other departments may also be invited, at the discretion of the field committee.

Faculty personnel participating in the colloquium will decide by vote whether the candidate has made a satisfactory defense of his/her proposal. An affirmative decision (simple majority) will allow the candidate to proceed with that topic. In the event of a negative decision (a simple majority), the candidate's field committee may: (i) appeal the decision to the departmental faculty as a whole; or (ii) request the candidate to re-design the proposal; or (iii) demand that the candidate choose another topic. In case of (iii) the colloquium process will have to be repeated.

Structure of the document Please use the following templates to structure your proposal. It should be quite different than the type of documents produced to apply for field work funding proposals. Title page The title page should list the title of the proposed thesis along with the members of the dissertation committee specifying which is the adviser. Spaces should be marked for the signature of all four faculty, and upon successful completion of the proposal defense, the entire document along with this signed cover page must be given to the head of History of Religions to insert in the student's file as an official record of dissertating status. See below for an outline of this page. Purpose of the dissertation A brief introduction that provides a general overview of the disseration's central questions, its thesis, and argument. This should be approximately one page in length and provide a succinct summary. Central questions to be considered/answered and relevant background This is an elaboration of the first section, and focuses on discrete questions that your dissertation will address. Here you should include relevant background information that may be obvious to your adviser and other specialists in your field, but which are vital for enabling other members of the committee to understand your project. Contribution to scholarship (beginning with survey of current work on the topic) Indicate what work has been done previously in the field. Who are the important figures? How do they relate to each other? What are the major gaps, and where do you think scholarship should go from here? Situate your own work in terms of previous scholarship. What makes your own work an important one? How does your approach and concerns relate to previous research? Also describe what you yourself perceive of your own work's methodology, driving rationales, etc. Source materials You should carefully note down all texts you will be focusing on during your research with author names/dates and bibliographic citations. In particular, indicate clearly which texts you plan on translating and/or reading particularly carefully. Also provide a description of what these texts are about, and how they all interlink in your planned thesis. Methodology Describe concretely and in detail how you plan to go about accomplishing your research aims, and the type of theoretical methodology you will be utilizing. Chapter Outline Describe the separate chapters you envision with as much detail as possible on what you plan to do with each chapter. You should give the overall thesis and its chapters projected titles. This section should show the dissertation's arguments chapter by chapter, and clearly specify the central points of each chapter. Tentative timeline Give a projected overall timetable for field work, writing up, and so forth with specific dates. Bibliography - as complete as possible Provide a detailed and full bibliography of the main relevant works in both primary and secondary source literature.

Approval Form for Dissertation Thesis Proposal Colloquium in Advance of beginning the Dissertational Research Please use this precise form to obtain signatures, including the above title. Date: Student's name: Title of Thesis: Thesis adviser: [The remaining categories should have the faculty's name typed, and leave a blank line for signatures] Departmental committee Member #1: Signature: _________________________________________ Departmental committee Member #2: Signature: _________________________________________ External Committee Member: Signature: __________________________________________