History, PhD

Overview

The department offers graduate programs in two broad areas: America, with tracks in the history of the United States and in the history of the Atlantic World; and, modern Europe, with tracks in the history of the Holocaust and in Genocide Studies. (Please note that applicants to the modern Europe program must intend to pursue one of these two specialized tracks.) Both of these areas of study are augmented by instruction in non-Western areas. Our close ties with the American Antiquarian Society and Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge are wonderful assets for graduate students in United State history. The department offers a graduate internship for credit at Old Sturbridge Village.

Graduate course work includes reading seminars (colloquia), research seminars, and individual tutorials for both reading and research purposes. Graduate students may also register in upper-division undergraduate courses at a graduate level that requires more intensive work. First- and second-year students in the doctoral program take three courses each semester, one of which must be expressly devoted to the production of a research paper. Faculty advisers help incoming students design their programs, which may include courses in other departments or colleges in the Worcester Consortium.

Ph.D. Requirements

Briefly put, the Ph.D. is awarded after you have:

1) met your residence requirement,

2) passed your annual reviews,

3) taken two years of course work,

4) met your language requirement(s),

5) passed an oral examination in three fields,

6) written an acceptable dissertation.

History Faculty

Graduate History Courses

• HIST 301 - Era of the American Revolution
• HIST 302 - The Early American Republic
• HIST 303 - U.S. Urban History
• HIST 304 - Special Topics in American History
• HIST 305 - Renaissance and Reformation
• HIST 306 - Africans in the Americas, 1500-1888
• HIST 307 - Exploring Early American History at Old Sturbridge Village
• HIST 310 - Research Seminar
• HIST 311 - American Consumer Culture
• HIST 312 - History of Sexuality: 1750 to the Present
• HIST 313 - Gender and the American City
• HIST 314 - The American Civil War
• HIST 315 - The Age of Lincoln
• HIST 316 - Special Topics: African-American Internationalism
• HIST 317 - Reconstruction: America after the Civil War, 1865-1877
• HIST 319 - History of American Women
• HIST 320 - The Black Radical Tradition
• HIST 322 - History of the American South
• HIST 323 - The Civil Rights Movement
• HIST 324 - Russian Visual Culture
• HIST 325 - Blacks & Reds: African Americans, Socialists, and Communists in the 20th Century
• HIST 326 - Comparative Colonialism
• HIST 327 - The Caribbean in the Era of Slavery, 1492-1886
• HIST 328 - Early Modern Britain
• HIST 329 - Women in European History
• HIST 330 - History of the Armenian Genocide
• HIST 331 - Origins of Modern America, 1877-1914 (formerly America in the Gilded Age)
• HIST 332 - Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism: Intellectual History of China
• HIST 334 - History of Racism in Modern Europe
• HIST 335 - The Atlantic World
• HIST 336 - Gender, War and Genocide in 20th Century Europe
• HIST 337 - The Holocaust Perpetrators
• HIST 338 - America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1917-1991
• HIST 341 - Jewish Popular Culture
• HIST 343 - American Antiquarian Society Seminar in American Studies
• HIST 345 - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East Since 1945
• HIST 348 - History of the Middle East
• HIST 349 - Early Modern France, 1559-1792
• HIST 350 - Baseball in the Blackstone Valley
• HIST 352 - The Holocaust Through Letters and Diaries
• HIST 355 - History of Jews In Eastern Europe
• HIST 357 - Jewish Children in Nazi-Occupied Europe
• HIST 360 - Rescue and Resistance During the Holocaust
• HIST 362 - Genocide, Denial, Facing History and Reconciliation
• HIST 364 - The European Mind, History & Theory, 1700-2000
• HIST 365 - Life and Death in the City: Occupied Europe, 1939-1945
• HIST 366 - Refugees
• HIST 376 - Collective Memory and Mass Violence
• HIST 377 - America’s Founding Fathers: Memory and Meaning
• HIST 380 - Women in Chinese History - 1600 CE to Present
• HIST 386 - The Vietnam War
• HIST 392 - Yiddish Literature and the History of Jewish Secular Culture
• HIST 393 - African American Social and Political Movements
• HIST 394 - Graduate Research Symposium
• HIST 395 - Dangerous Women
• HIST 397 - Master’s Thesis
• HIST 398 - Doctoral Dissertation
• HIST 399 - Graduate Readings