Assess graduate students' understanding of structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to literary texts by asking them to (a) define key concepts (e.g., sign/symbol, langue/parole, binary oppositions, deep structure, différance, deconstruction, intertextuality), (b) contrast methodological assumptions (systemic structures and stable meaning vs decentered signification and multiplicity of readings), and (c) apply these frameworks to brief passages to justify differing interpretive outcomes and implications for authorial intent, reader role, and textual authority.