Program Overview

The History and Culture graduate program specializes in cultural and intellectual history, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary work. While its geographic focus remains European and American, the course of study emphasizes the production and dissemination of knowledge in global contexts. Students are trained to consider a range of intellectual and cultural problems of pressing contemporary relevance from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

The program emphasizes the training of teachers alongside scholars, and preparation for non-academic as well as academic careers. Through opportunities such as internships, seminars, and workshops, students can receive additional training in various areas, including, but not limited to, publishing, digital media, museum curation, and philanthropic organizations.

Curricular Components

• Historiography – exposes students to numerous historical approaches over a variety of subjects and time periods, with the goal of understanding the kinds of questions historians ask and the various methodologies they use to study that past, via historical works critical to our collective understanding, and historiographical conversations between and among historians.
• Methodology – covers methodological and/or theoretical approaches within history or from another discipline, via theoretical texts as well as work by scholars who use that theory.
• Extradisciplinarity – develops familiarity with the scholarly perspectives, literature, and methods of an extra-disciplinary field, beyond history.
• Research – develops the methods of historical scholarship, such as archival work, primary source analysis, and thesis and argument development, resulting in the preparation of a publishable paper, and supported by working closely with faculty members with expertise in the subject matter.