The program for the Ph.D. degree provides a framework within which students can acquire the following training and experience: (1) broad exposure to a general area of interest and to its current literature and controversies; (2) more intense training in the special field in which the student intends to conduct research and do his or her primary teaching; (3) a sound but more limited introduction to a second field; (4) training in research procedures and methods; (5) appropriate linguistic competence; and (6) the completion of a dissertation judged to be a significant piece of historical research and writing.
Ph.D. students must complete 72 points of course work (equivalent to 184-point courses). In each of the first three years, students must complete 24 points of course work, by August 15 at the latest. Students must maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above. All students must take the course Approaches to Historical Research and Writing I, HIST-GA 3603, as well as their major area Literature of the Field course in their first year. The following major fields are available: Africa, African Diaspora, Atlantic World, East Asia, Medieval Europe, Early Modern Europe, Modern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and the United States. In addition, students must complete a research seminar and research paper by May 15th of the first year.
Each doctoral student must designate a major field, within which the subject of the student’s dissertation falls and presumably the field in which the student expects to be principally involved as a writer and teacher. Major Fields should be broad enough so that they can prepare students to teach an upper-level undergraduate course or a graduate colloquium, but narrow enough so that students can develop professional competence in a body of literature. Major fields may be defined in chronological and geographical terms, or they may be partly thematic. In each case, a student’s major field should be worked out in discussion with his or her adviser and with at least one additional faculty member who has agreed to participate in examining it. Each doctoral student also must choose, by the end of the third semester, a second field and a second field adviser, who will examine the student in the qualifying exam. A second field may have the same dimensions as the major field, or it may be thematically defined. In every case, however, the second field may not be contained within the student’s major field but must introduce some significant new area or dimension. Second fields may also be arranged in some fields in which no major fields are available and may be comparative or transnational. Archival management and historical editing also qualify as second fields, without respect to the major field. Women’s history and public history, if comparative, also qualify as second fields without respect to the major field.