As you begin collecting citations that you know will be on the list, you should be thinking about the different subcategories you wish to group them into. These should be divided into one "area" bibliography and another "theory" bibliography, with 3 or 4 subcategories for each. As the handbook states, "The theoretical section, building on readings in graduate courses, covers the student's subdisciplinary concentrations: e.g., "Language and Society," "Theories of State Formation," or "Culture and Power." The area section addresses relevant regional, historical, and ethnographic literatures: e.g., "Gender and Generation in South Asia," "East Asian Popular Religion," "Maya Kingdoms." Taken together, the readings in the subsections should constitute an 'argument' or intellectual conversation."
As you define your categories, there are a few ways to think about whether you are successfully identifying a theme or problem that will serve to tie together a body of literature and to move you further toward the dissertation proposal. This can be a bit difficult. Some ideas of ways to test your categories to see if they make sense as subcategories of your bibliography: try writing an undergraduate or graduate syllabus on the category. Would a class like this make sense? What would it need to include? Or, try to imagine an annual review article on the theme or concept (or cluster of concepts) defined in your subcategory, and ask the same questions. Finally, some students will find it useful to "graph" the concept (connecting it to other concepts and ethnographic work by means of lines or arrows, perhaps distinguishing between a core and related terms or works). You needn't do all of these exercises, but you may find one or more of them useful.
In assembling and categorizing your bibliographies, you will tack back and forth between the citations you include and the categories you create. As you add citations, they will likely outgrow your original categories, and your categories will also require additional citations. At this point you'll return to review articles and literature review sections that sum up your main area and theoretical concerns, in order to further build your lists. Then the question becomes, how do you know if you have sufficiently covered the categories or themes you have defined? Going back to the tests described in the previous paragraph, you should include all the works that would be an undergrad and graduate syllabus on the topic, as well as all the works that should be in an annual review article, or all the works without which the graph of your category or concept would be incomplete.
You should not include: works that would tend to weaken the central core of your category, by introducing extraneous issues; anything that you think would be deleted from the annual review article by a scrupulous editor; anything that is a commentary on on a commentary, without original material; anything that is there only because you like it, have read it, or because it looks interesting.
This process should take place in consultation with your committee, either in a group or in individual meetings. Committees and students develop a variety of strategies for dealing with new texts that come up in the course of the reading period, communicating during the reading period and preparing the exam questions. These procedures are not set at the department level, but emerge out of your conversations with your committee, which should take place at least once and possibly several times during the bibliography and exam process.
Similarly, the department does not have a required minimum or maximum for exam bibliographies. This will depend in part on the fields you have designated for inquiry in your exams, and on your conversations with your committee. Most exam bibliographies fall within the 200-250 range, for books, articles, and book chapters.
In addition, you should feel free to consult other faculty members (not on your committee) and your student colleagues for further suggestions on how to refine your categories and what to put on your list. If there is anyone else taking exams around the same time as you, you should think about starting a reading/studying partnership at this point (see below for more discussion about this).
Once you have reached consensus with your committee on your lists and have worked with them to set up a date for your exam (this might already have taken place, depending on your schedules; however, since only you and your committee participate in exams, they are relatively easy to schedule), you will enter the next phase of the process, reading and taking notes on your bibliographies.
The amount of time between getting your list approved and taking the exam will vary, but tends to be about a semester. Students recommend getting your bibliographies finished as early as possible to leave more time for reading. Sometimes, however, there's a lag before final approval, especially if some members of your committee are traveling, on leave, etc. You need not wait for final "approval" to begin the process of reading for your exams, as long as you have had some conversations with your committee so that you know are all basically on the same page.