Academic Programs

The major in History provides students with a broad range of choices. Students may concentrate their studies in any part of the world or era in history. The major also provides a carefully designed sequence of courses that teach students how to practice history as a discipline, from the critical examination of existing knowledge, to the techniques of original historical research. These techniques can be applied using an almost limitless variety of sources, including diaries, journals, film, literature, visual images, and government documents. Students may also minor in History or pursue, in addition to a BA, other interdisciplinary certificates such as historic preservation, public history, etc.

Major Requirements
A History major consists of 36 credits and is structured to reflect the department’s philosophy and pedagogical goals. Students begin with two survey courses chosen from among European, U.S., Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American, African, and world history. Building on this broad overview, students take a gateway course, “Introduction to Historical Thought and Methods” (HIST 3000), where they are introduced to historiography, critical thinking and intensive writing and rewriting. Five upper-division elective courses give students the freedom to develop their own field of special interest, while one course (at any level) in any area other than American or European history and one course (at any level) from pre-1800 history ensures a breadth of knowledge. The capstone “History Research Seminars” (HIST 5000) offer History majors experiential learning, allowing the students to integrate their training in critical thinking, research skills and writing to produce an original piece of scholarship. All History majors should consult with the department’s Director of Undergraduate Advising when they declare their major.

• Major Details & Curriculum

Minor Requirements
A History minor consists of 18 credit hours and allows students to experience some of the philosophy and pedagogical goals of the department. Students are required to enroll in 6 credit hours of 1000-2000 level history elective courses. Moving from this broad perspective, students next take “Introduction to Historical Thought and Methods” (HIST 3000). They then will need to enroll in two 3001-6000 level History elective courses. Finally, a student will need to take an additional 3 credit hours of History electives, at any level. All History minors should consult with the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies when they declare their minor. All History minors should consult with the department’s Director of Undergraduate Advising when they declare their minor.

• Minor Details & Curriculum

Students have the option of double-majoring in History and other disciplines. It’s frequently the case that students interested in other areas, including teaching, law, area studies, and medicine, need complete only a handful of additional course in order to satisfy the History major. The UC College of Arts and Sciences offers flexible degree requirements that encourage multiple areas of study. Some of the most common pairings are Anthropology, Archaeology, Economics, Geography, International Affairs, Journalism, Languages, Law and Society, Political Science, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

The history department actively participates in the following programs:

• Asian Studies
• Catholic Studies
• European Studies
• Historic Preservation
• International Human Rights
• Latin American Studies
• Legal Studies
• Medical Humanities
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Religious Studies
• Social Justice
• War, Peace, and Security
• Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Students who want to show future employers the full breadth and depth of their preparation in their subject areas may choose to become dual majors. This is common within the College of Arts & Sciences but students with majors in other colleges can also become dual majors, which means they will have completed both the general education requirements and major requirements in both colleges. Others with more restrictive schedules may choose to pursue a Cross-College major, which means that they will have completed all general education and major requirements in their home college, but only the major requirements for History.

One common example of the Cross-College major involves students in CECH pursuing a BS Ed. As you can see in the chart below, those who choose this path will only need to complete five additional upper-division classes in History to receive the Cross-College major. Students in CECH preparing to teach secondary Social Studies will already have earned the History minor through their coursework, and simply have to declare it for it to show on their transcripts. 

• Full-time, funded MA students and PhD students in their first two years follow the same set of course requirements, with some flexibility occasionally applied for PhD students depending on their previous graduate training and goals. Per university requirements, funded graduate students must enroll in 12 or more credits per semester (fall and spring), which typically means three courses per semester since History graduate courses are usually worth four credits each. Full-time, funded MA students will thus have earned 48 credits when they graduate after having spent two years earning their degree. Part-time, unfunded students may earn an MA with 32 credits. (Information on applying for graduation – including the need to apply for it early -- may be found in the UC Graduate Handbook.) Full-time funded students, whether MA or PhD, take the following coursework in Years 1 and 2, with flexibility sometimes available for certain PhD students to reflect their previous MA training. Part-time students take these courses over a longer period of time.
• A first-year, first-semester sequence of two courses: Historical Methodologies and a comparative Topics seminar. The Topics course features a different, broad-based theme each year (i.e., war and society, epidemics) with a handful of different faculty members each leading a class on that theme as it applies to their particular area of expertise.
• A practicum in teaching and professionalization, offered either in the fall or spring semester.
• A two-semester research seminar, taken in the spring of Year 1 and fall of Year 2. With the support of the course instructor, a scaffolded course structure, and classmates, each student produces an article-length essay or public history product based on original research and the careful, sustained analysis of historical documents and relevant scholarship.
  • MA students participate in an MA defense once their research seminar has concluded where they discuss their research project and corresponding training with the seminar instructor and two other faculty members who served as their advisors for the research project.
  • PhD students, in consultation with their PhD advisor and Director of Graduate Studies, often take the research semester a second time, in the spring of Year 2 and fall of Year 3, commonly using the course to write a chapter of their dissertation.
  • All students in the research seminar present their work at the Queen City Colloquium, the department’s grad-student run research conference held each spring.
• Readings courses offered by the department. Some focus on a particular area, time, and theme while others are more comparative in nature.
• Coursework and internship experience in public and digital history, which is required for students pursuing our Public History Concentration and optional for others. Questions about our public history program may be answered by any of the following faculty members: Dr. Rebecca Wingo, Dr. Tracy Teslow, or Dr. Anne Steinert.
• Electives in other departments of the university, which may include, among other things, coursework in foreign languages and digital or other specialized skills relevant to the student’s interests and goals.

Student Requirements: Beyond the curricular requirements described above for the first two to two and a half years of the PhD program, PhD students are additionally responsible for the following:

• Primary Advisor: Before or during their first year, the student secures the commitment of a primary faculty advisor within the department.
• PhD Exams Committee Formed: By the end of their second year, the student secures the commitment of two additional faculty advisors who will serve, along with the primary advisor, as the committee for the student’s PhD Qualifying Exams.
• PhD Qualifying Exams: PhD Exams are completed by the end of Year 3, at which point the student enters into the period of “PhD candidacy,” known colloquially as “ABD” (“all but dissertation”). The exams consist of two components: fields and dissertation proposal. For the former, the student trains in the scholarship of three different scholarly fields relevant to the discipline of history, with each field directed by a different committee member. For the latter, the student writes and shares with the committee a proposal for their emerging dissertation. The proposal is mainly developed with the counsel of the primary advisor, with the other two committee members also helping to advise the student. One member of the exams committee may be different for the fields and proposal components if deemed sensible by the student, their primary advisor, and the other relevant faculty members.
  • The fields and proposal components of the exams are each further divided into a written and orals component. For the fields, the student writes one or more responses (i.e., essays) for each field based on prompts provided by the committee members. The student also submits for committee review a proposal describing the student’s emerging dissertation. Assuming each committee member deems the written submissions acceptable, the student meets with the committee to discuss their fields and dissertation proposal. These discussions may occur at the same meeting or with the meeting about the proposal occurring days or even several weeks after the orals exam for the fields.
  • Further details on the exams, including the range of timetables and length of orals exams, are detailed in the History Graduate Student Handbook [See Handbook button below (accessible to current History graduate students).]
  • If the committee deems that the student has satisfactorily completed all aspects of the PhD Exams (fields and dissertation proposal, both written and oral components), then the student advances to the PhD Candidacy stage.
• Teaching of Self-Designed Course: Before graduation, each PhD student must teach a course of their own design. The topic of the course is usually closely aligned with the student’s research interests, albeit calibrated for the intended student audience, and is frequently given as one of the department’s freshmen seminars
• Dissertation Committee: One semester (fall or spring) after a student passes their PhD Exams, the student must have formed a dissertation committee, with the agreement of each committee member, that meets the overlapping requirements of both the UC Graduate College and the History Department. The committee may consist of between three and five members. The overlapping requirements are:
  • UC Graduate College: At least three UC faculty. Further details, including special circumstances, may be found in the UC Graduate Handbook.
  • History Department: At least two faculty whose primary affiliation is with the UC History Department and one committee member whose primary affiliation is not with the UC History Department. This latter member may be either a UC faculty member or be affiliated elsewhere. Thus, an acceptable committee could consist, for example, of three members, with two UC History professors and one UC professor from another UC department. Another acceptable committee might consist, for example, of four members, with three from UC History and one from either another UC department or another university.
• Dissertation Defense: The student and their primary advisor set a date for the dissertation defense when they – often in consultation with other members of the dissertation committee – determine the dissertation is defensible. The defense is open to the public and lasts up to two hours. If the committee deems the dissertation and the student’s defense of it as passable, then the student may graduate with a PhD. Information on applying for graduation – including the need to apply for it early -- may be found in the UC Graduate Handbook.

The Department, Faculty, Curricula, & Graduate College

Applicants should familiarize themselves with the History Department, our graduate programs (including the curricula -- page down to the “Graduate Studies” area), and relevant faculty.

With around 25 active graduate students and 40 full-time and affiliated faculty (tenured and tenure-track, with PhD’s), we are a small-medium department with regional, chronological, and thematic specializations that include public/digital history, the United States, early modern and modern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and Asia from the medieval period through the twentieth century. Thematic specializations of faculty members include the history of war and society, the environment and urban history, women and gender, African Americans and race, imperialism, science and medicine, technology, law and society, religion, human rights, politics and international relations, narcotics, and cultures of commerce and capitalism. Multiple professors have won teaching awards and have published award-winning books.

Our graduates have gone onto an array of relevant jobs and career paths (in academics, public/digital history, and beyond), as described in “Graduate Studies” portion of our website, linked above. Our MA graduates additionally boast a track record of being admitted to competitive PhD programs, including at such prestigious universities as Princeton, Columbia, Northwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania.

See the website links just above for more information on the graduate programs, faculty, and department overall.

Here is a link to the university’s Graduate College Handbook (university-wide), which also includes a lot of useful information if you have additional questions about things like the university admissions process and financial support.

Applying

Deadline: January 1 each year, for fall matriculation. Only one admission and matriculation cycle for students wanting to attend full-time with funding. Students wanting to matriculate at another time of the year on a part-time without funding (not common) should contact the Director of Graduate Studies.

Applicants to MA program must have a Bachelor’s degree before matriculating and applicants to PhD program must have a Master’s degree before matriculating (or the international equivalents). The degrees are typically in History although they are sometimes in ‘sister’ disciplines like art history, political science, sociology, literature, or law.

Required application materials: academic transcripts, CV, statement of purpose, writing sample, and (for international students, as relevant) English proficiency scores. The applications portal offers further details on the requirements. The UC Admissions Office can help answer questions about them.

• In the past, the department has often allowed for a short grace period for the letters of recommendation to be submitted by your referees, of perhaps several days to a week. That, however, is not guaranteed so it’s best to ensure that all your materials have been submitted by the deadline.
• The writing sample must be of your own work, preferably one that gives the departmental committee a sense of your ability to engage in original research or at least an ability to cogently analyze and communicate complex information. There is no absolute length for the writing sample but it is usually preferable to avoid sending more pages than the typical scholarly article in the humanities or social sciences (i.e., up to approximately 35 pages).

Most questions about the application process are typically handled through the UC Graduate College  and UC Admissions office rather than the History Department. The UC Admissions Office, for instance, handles application logistics, fee waiver requests, required documents, and related inquiries. Here is a helpful page addressing frequently asked questions during the admission process.

Admissions decisions are handled by History Department’s Graduate Admissions Committee, which changes yearly, with input from the broader departmental faculty. If applicants are admitted or waitlisted, they will typically be informed by later February or earlier March. The department’s Graduate Admissions Committee carefully considers a range of factors in making its admissions and funding recommendations, including the cogency of an applicant’s stated goals, the relevance of an applicant’s training for the degree sought and for the applicant’s stated goals, evidence of an applicant’s relevant aptitude and experience, and alignment of an applicant’s goals and interests with the department’s faculty and other resources.

The Admissions Committee can only consider those application materials submitted to the UC Admissions office as part of the official application process. That is, the committee cannot consider the prospects of an applicant’s success before the deadline or provided through email or other means.

PhD applicants in particular commonly communicate with one or possibly more prospective advisors during the application process. See link to faculty below.

click here to apply

Funding

Incoming, full-time MA and PhD students are nearly always funded, including full tuition, a Graduate Assistantship (GA) stipend, and the option of a health insurance award. (Some modest university fees are not covered by the above awards.)

Full-time MA students receive this funding for their full two years in the program.

Full-time PhD students receive either four or five years of funding, depending, respectively, on whether they received their MA from the UC History Department or elsewhere.

GA stipends for the 2024-25 academic year were between $17,000 and $18,000 for MA students and over $24,000 for PhD students. The service responsibilities connected to the stipend usually involve students serving as teaching assistants or, less commonly, as research assistants or in other capacities designed to advance one’s training and goals while also supporting department needs.

A much smaller percentage of students (i.e., part-time) are self-funded.

Our graduate students regularly receive additional funding – especially from the department, university, and Taft Research Center – for things like research and conference travel, technology, transcription services, and opportunities to enhance their professionalization, language, and technical skills. The generous donors responsible for departmental fellowships, grants, and prizes are celebrated at such annual departmental events as Friends of History and the end-of-year Awards Reception. They include such former faculty members and other supporters of the department as Gene and Dottie Lewis, Zane Miller, John and Dorothy Hermanies, Peter and Betsy Niehoff, Werner and Anne Von Rosenstiel, Herbert Shapiro, Roger Daniels, John K. Alexander, Barbara N. Ramusack, and Hilda L. Smith.