Graduate Programs
Graduate Studies in History
Graduate students at the annual graduate student conference
Students enjoy the benefits of our mid-sized graduate program: a varied curriculum combined with personal attention from faculty. Together our MA and PhD programs enroll approximately 40 students with diverse backgrounds and a variety of goals. Some are honing skills that will advance their careers in secondary teaching, while others will seek - and land - academic posts. Our students have also found careers in public history, including museums and archives, while others have gone on to careers in law and business.
To see some of our alumni success stories, check out our newsletter, where we regularly post updates from our alumni. Regardless of their goals, however, all of our students are trained to work as historians. Our program emphasizes original research based in primary sources, and it features courses in historical methodology, public history, and pedagogy. A vibrant community of scholars - both students and faculty - creates a lively learning environment.
Students select a concentration in United States, European, World, or Public History, but everyone receives broad training, taking courses in minor fields, languages, or in other graduate programs. Students also take at least one comparative seminar, usually team taught, in which a theme is explored across national boundaries, such as gender, race, or urban history.
Steve Porter
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of History
360 Arts & Sciences Hall
The master's program in history at UC offers students a diverse and challenging postgraduate training in history. MA students typically complete their degrees in two years, with most of the coursework taking place in small graduate seminars and reading colloquia. Over the course of their MA training, all of our students have the opportunity to present papers and conduct primary archival research in the US and abroad, often with funds provided by the department or through other university-based sources. Many of our MA graduates use their degree to propel themselves into successful careers in museum work, historical societies, government service and secondary education. Other students choose to continue their graduate study by enrolling in doctoral programs in history, both in our own department and in other top history programs around the country.
For teachers and other working professionals that are seeking a graduate degree in History, there is a non-research track MA degree. Students wishing to enroll in the non-research track must declare such when they apply for the program. Students who choose this track must complete 32 hours of coursework, choose an area of concentration, and fulfill all program requirements other than the research seminars, HIST 9040 and HIST 9041 (8 credit hours). (Non-research option students may convert to the research option upon consultation with the Director of Graduate Studies.)
Part-time students who take 8 credits per semester will still be able to complete the degree in four semesters or two academic years. All required courses are offerred annually. Many of our graduate seminars are scheduled in the evenings, starting at 5:00 or 6:00pm to permit schedule flexibility.
The UC History Department is home to a selective and successful PhD program. While the program is designed to train future university teachers and researchers, a number of our PhDs have gone on to distinguished careers in government service and a range of other professions, including business and law. Our doctoral program is small by design as we usually admit between 2-5 students a year. This is one of our greatest strengths as it gives our doctoral students ample opportunity to work closely with faculty. Our doctoral students also benefit from generous funding for research and writing through departmental, university, and Taft Center funding.
The History Department offers a joint Ph.D. initiative in Modern Jewish History and Culture, offered in partnership with the Pines School of Graduate Studies at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, Ohio.
For more information, please visit https://modernjewishhistory.net
History graduate students and faculty are involved with a range of important and exciting interdisciplinary programs at UC, including Asian Studies, European Studies, Historic Preservation (with DAAP), and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In these programs, historians engage with sociology, anthropology, economics, planning, geography, and languages and literatures to deepen their knowledge of particular areas of study.
Asian Studies
Asian Studies is an interdisciplinary program devoted to the study of the languages, cultures, economics, history, geography, and politics of Asian countries. The Asian Studies graduate certificate is an interdisciplinary program that draws on courses offered through anthropology, art history, history, geography, economics, political science, planning, and other fields.
European Studies
The European Studies program provides opportunities for studying the multifaceted nature of a changing Europe—its history, languages, cultural, political, economic, and social fabric, as well as its relations with the United States and the world. European Studies offers an annual fall workshop in which grad students and faculty from a number of departments meet together to discuss a common theme related to European history, society, and culture. The workshop is followed by a two-quarter graduate research seminar that allows students to develop a research topic related to the general field of European Studies. MA or PhD students in history with an interest in Europe can find out more about graduate coursework by consulting the European Studies web page.
Historic Preservation
This program is designed to provide students with an appreciation for the issues and techniques involved in preserving the artifacts of the past. College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning (DAAP) offer a joint graduate certificate in this area. Coursework for the certificate may also contribute to the coursework requirements for the MA and PhD in Historic Preservation.
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
The Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at the University of Cincinnati offers one of the oldest and most respected programs in women's studies in the country. The WGSS department consists of both a core group of faculty as well as a diverse body of affiliated professors from a wide range of disciplines. WGSS offers a certificate of concentration for graduate students in history that consists of three core courses and two electives.
The application deadline for Fall 2025 admission both the PhD and MA program is January 1, 2025. The following materials should be uploaded through the Graduate School's central application system:
- Three letters of recommendation
- Statement of Purpose
- A writing sample
Most, and often all full-time UC History graduate students are offered considerable funding packages upon notification of admission. This includes a Graduate Assistantship stipend (tied to part-time work in the department as a teaching assistant or, less commonly, another form of a graduate assistant), a full-tuition scholarship, and the option of a health insurance award.
Additionally, our graduate students have access to various sources of funding for pursuing aspects of their program that cost money. Most frequently, this pertains to research or conference travel, during the schoolyear and summer, but it could also apply to things like training workshops, databases or microform collections, or technology. The sources for such funding come from within the department as well as other sources from around the university, including the Taft Research Center, UC Graduate College, and Graduate Student Government. Some notable sources of funding within the department for these types of endeavors include:
Werner E. Von Rosenstiel Fund
Werner E. Von Rosenstiel, a devoted friend of the department who studied at UC as an undergraduate, has generously endowed a fund that provides grant money for conference and research travel as well as language study to students specializing in modern European history. Students in other fields who have a research interest in modern Europe are also eligible to apply. Awards range up to $2,000 per year. Money from the Von Rosenstiel Fund are also used to provide enhancements for select scholarships.
The Zane L. Miller Fellowship in American City History
Every year the Department of History grants a Miller Fellowship to support a doctoral student pursuing work in American urban history: the history of cities, their regions, neighborhoods and suburbs, past and present. Currently the fellowship provides $1,000 as a supplement for other fellowships, grants or scholarships. The award is named for the University of Cincinnati's famed urban historian, Zane L. Miller, currently emeritus in the Department of History. Miller served on UC's faculty from 1966, the year he earned his PhD at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Richard C. Wade, until his "retirement" in 1999. While at UC, Miller authored numerous books and articles, mentored dozens of doctoral students, and for many years edited an urban book series at The Ohio State University Press. Miller is still an active scholar and mentor. He edits a new book series at Temple University Press, titled "Urban Life, Landscape and Policy." He lives in Pace, Florida.
Herbert Shapiro Scholarship in African American History
Every spring the Department of History provides a Herbert Shapiro Scholarship to support a graduate student studying American History with a specialization in African American History. This award is named in honor of former UC History professor, Herbert Shapiro. Fondly remembered for his riveting teaching, impactful research, and social activism, Dr. Shapiro taught at UC for over three and a half decades, from 1965 to his 2001 retirement. He began his time at at UC after several years on faculty at Morehouse College in Atlanta. In addition to being a pioneer in the study of African American history as an academic discipline, Dr. Shapiro was a first-hand participant in the Civil Rights Movement, a cause to which he remained committed throughout his life. He was the first person at UC to direct graduate students in the field of African American history.
Barbara Ramusack Graduate Fellowship
Offered to students working in a field of non-Western History, this award is named in honor of Professor Barbara Ramusack, a leading scholar of South Asian history. Ramusack was particularly a trailblazer in the field of women and reproductive health in South Asia, boasting an impressive publication record and having served as a wonderful mentor to generations of graduate students in the department and beyond. Having earned her PhD from the University of Michigan, Ramusack taught in the UC History Department from 1967 to 2009, when she became Professor Emeritus.
Roger Daniels Summer Fellowship
Every spring the Department of History offers a Roger Daniels Fellowship to support doctoral research during the approaching summer. This award is named in honor of Roger Daniels, former Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History at UC. Daniels authored numerous, field-shaping books, most concerning immigration and the incarceration of Japanese-Americans. Daniels joined the Department of History as chair in 1976, becoming emeritus professor in 2002. During his years at UC, Daniels was a strong supporter of the department's doctoral program, and he directed the dissertations of many students. His later publications included, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants (2004); and expanded editions of Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (2002, original edition published in 1990); and Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (2004, original edition published in 1997).
John K. Alexander Teaching Awards
Every spring the Department of History offers two (sometimes more) awards to those graduate students who demonstrated excellence in teaching, whether as a teaching assistant or in teaching their own course. This award is named after long-time UC History professor, John K. Alexander. Having earned his PhD from the University of Chicago, Alexander joined the department in 1969, earning a reputation as an exceptionally talented, popular, and demanding instructor over his 43 years of teaching UC students. Before becoming Professor Emeritus in 2012, Alexander inspired many thousands of undergraduates while also offering graduate seminars and graduate advisement in the Early American Republic and related fields.
The University of Cincinnati and surrounding area are rich in materials for historical research. Not only will students have access to the large university library collection, but also can gain access to several local archive collections.
Langsam Library
The University of Cincinnati Libraries currently hold about 4.4 million volumes, making it the thirty-sixth largest academic library in the United States, and it subscribes to about 50,000 scholarly journals. Langsam Library the main research library on campus, is especially strong in European history for which there is a special endowment, in twentieth century American history, urban history and in women’s studies. Finally, Langsam Library’s collection of online databases of both secondary and primary materials is one of the largest in the country and is expanding rapidly.
A Cincinnati Turner athletic festival held on the banks of the Ohio River, 1889. German American Collection, ARB UC Libraries
UC’s Archives and Rare Books (ARB) Department, located in Blegan Library, contains several distinct and valuable collections. Rare books focus especially on North American Indians, travel and exploration, and 18th century British literature. The urban collection documents the growth and development of Cincinnati (it is the depository for all official city records) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. And, finally, the German Americana Collection, one of the largest in the nation, includes books, pamphlets, journals, newspapers and manuscripts pertaining to German immigrants in America, particularly in the Ohio Valley.
Facsimiles of medieval manuscripts in Burnam Classics Library
For scholars interested in medieval history, the Burnam Classics Library (the world’s largest with about 300,000 volumes and located in Blegan Library) collects anything printed in Latin which includes virtually all medieval texts published, edited or reprinted from the 17th century to the present.
Page from Paolo Mascagni’s Anatomiae Universai Icones (1823-1832) in the Winkler Center Collections
Finally, the collections of the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions (located in the Harrison Health Sciences Library) will prove especially useful to scholars of the history of health and medicine. Included are 35,000 volumes on the history of medicine dating from 1500 to the present; a large manuscript collection; oral histories; 5,000 photographs; and 2,000 historic medical artifacts and instruments.
In addition, UC is a member of the OhioLink system of research libraries that allows faculty and students to search a central computer catalog of 46 million books, 24 million electronic journal articles, and 100 electronic journal databases--and to order from your computer screen any item for delivery within two working days to the Langsam Library front desk.
Newspaper, from CRL collections
UC is also a founding member of the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, which has a collection of 5 million volumes (many now digital) not available at any library in the United States except the CRL, plus tens of thousands of newspaper titles. Although it has substantial collections of North American and European materials, in recent years it has focused mainly on collecting rare materials from South America, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
Klau Library
The Klau Library at Hebrew Union College, two blocks from the UC campus, has a vast collection on Jewish history and culture which includes: 530,000 books, 1,200 current periodical subscriptions, 2,500 manuscript codices and many thousands of manuscript pages, 19,000 microfiche & 19,000 reels of microfilm, 100,000 digital images from manuscripts and early printed books, 3,300 sound recordings. In addition, the Klau Library’s Rare Book Room has 14,000 volumes plus posters, maps and manuscripts.
Next door, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives preserves about 15 million documents recording Jewish history in the Western Hemisphere, including the archives of the Jewish Reform Movement in America.
For scholars interested in pursuing the history of Catholicism, extensive research resources are available at The Athenaeum of Ohio/Mount St. Mary’s Seminary on the east side of Cincinnati. Collecting since 1833, the Eugene H. Maly Library contains about 120,000 volumes devoted to every aspect of the Catholic faith, culture and history. In addition to the reference and circulation collections, Maly Library includes a Special Collection of over 11,000 books that concentrates on church history and liturgical books. This collection includes 35 manuscripts and 22 incunabula, dating to as early as the 12th century.
“Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia” from the mid-1800s
Students interested in the history of Catholicism may also want to drive to Columbus, two hours north of Cincinnati, to use the collections at the Pontifical College Josephinum. The 120,000 volume library holds many unique and rare resources, including Catholic newspapers, manuscripts dating from the 1800s, a well-preserved Complete Works of Martin Luther from 1555, highly detailed and colorful Medieval illuminated manuscripts, and Vatican ephemera.
Cincinnati Public Library
Other libraries in the local area will prove equally useful to scholars doing historical research. Collecting since 1853, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, located downtown about two miles from UC’s Clifton campus, is the second largest public library in the United States. It holds 11.7 million volumes, 4 million microfiche, and 150,000 reels of microfilm. The library’s collections are especially rich in nineteenth-century books and periodicals from both America and Europe, and also has extensive manuscript holdings pertaining to Cincinnati and the Old Northwest.
Cincinnati Museum Center
Also downtown, the Cincinnati History Library and Archives at the Cincinnati Museum Center, collecting since 1831, has accumulated 90,000 books and 20,000 linear feet of manuscripts covering the history of the entire Ohio Valley.
Print by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) in the Lloyd Library Collection
The Lloyd Library and Museum, also located downtown, is a private collection open to the public that has about 60,000 books and 4,000 serial titles, mainly on the history of science, medicine, and pharmacy. Its collection includes thousands of rare books and prints from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Other Archive Collections Near Cincinnati
Virgil Anderson String Band, photograph. Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College
In addition, there are dozens of other specialized research libraries and archives within a two-hour drive of Cincinnati.
For example, scholars interested in the Appalachia will want to take a day trip to Berea College’s Archives, Manuscripts and Artifacts Collections (located in Hutchins Library on the Berea College campus in the town of Berea, Kentucky, south of Cincinnati). The Weatherford-Hammond Mountain Collection, started in 1914, includes over 21,000 volumes of published material on all aspects of the region’s history and culture. And the Southern Appalachian Archives includes organizational records, personal papers, oral histories, photographs, and non-commercial audio and video recordings that document regional history and culture especially in the areas of activism, education, folklore, traditional music, and religious expression in more than one hundred sixty separate collections.
Quaker Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, 1844
Historians interested in the history of Quakers will want to visit Earlham College about an hour drive north of Cincinnati. There the Arthur and Kathleen Postle Archives and Friends Collection has one of the four or five largest Quaker Collections in the world, with more than 13,000 books and nearly as many pamphlets, some going back to the 17th Century when the Society of Friends was founded. These works are supplemented with an extensive collection of Quaker genealogical materials. Personal diaries, letters, and detailed records of monthly and yearly meetings reveal the lives of thousands of Quaker men and women.
Russian Erotic Art, Art and Artifacts Collection, Kinsey Institute Library
Also within a two hour drive from the UC campus, the Kinsey Institute Library in Bloomington, Indiana, specializes in sex, sexuality and gender. It houses over 30,000 books, 80,000 photographs, 8,000 film titles, and 4,000 video titles. In addition, it has a large manuscript collection, plus an art and artifact collection of 7,000 items.
Other special collections close to Cincinnati and useful to historians include the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort, the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, the Indiana Historical Society in Bloomington, and the Filson Historical Society in Louisville.