History

Master of Arts in History

Introduction

Welcome to the Department of History’s Master of Arts in History Program. This handbook serves to introduce the curriculum and offer information and advice for the successful negotiation of your graduate studies. In all cases, should you have any questions, please feel free to contact the graduate director or other members of the graduate committee.

Program Goals


The faculty of the Department of History have established the following goals for the M.A. in History program:

  • To provide students with a thorough awareness of the breadth and complexity of the discipline of history
  • To expose students to a wide range of historical topics and methodologies
  • To train students in the efficient and accurate analysis of any historical argument that they encounter
  • To create an atmosphere where graduate students enjoy the intellectual benefits and support of a cohort of peers taking shared coursework
  • To offer those students currently working as teachers an opportunity to explore new dimensions of historical inquiry
  • To provide those students considering further study toward the Ph.D. with the tools to succeed at that level.

Emphasis on Historiography

The history M.A. program has a curricular-wide emphasis on historiography. By historiography we mean the issues addressed by such questions (to give but a few examples) as: How have different scholars approached and written about this topic? What sources and methods have they used? What are major points of consensus or disagreement (if any) on this topic? What is the "state of the question"? How have views of the issue changed over time? Have teaching texts kept up with the latest scholarship? Thus, in addition to increased mastery of informational content, graduates of our program will be made aware of the multiple levels of history and how they are and have been communicated in different ways to diverse audiences.