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Graduate Studies

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The History Faculty collaborates with the Program in Science, Technology and Society and the Anthropology Program in the Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS). See academic requirements.

Coursework

Students entering the doctoral program take at least ten subjects in the doctoral program prior to taking general exams in their third year. There are three required courses: a seminar in historical methods, a seminar in social theory and analysis, and an introduction to science, technology, and society. Students are also strongly recommended to take a two-semester methodology/writing sequence in their second year. Five elective seminars complete the Program’s ten-subject requirement.

Requirements

Languages:  All students must demonstrate a reading knowledge in one language other than English. For international students this language may be English.

Research papers: At the end of their first and second years of graduate study, students demonstrate scholarly competence by the submission of research papers. The second-year paper should be a research paper of publishable quality.

General Examinations: Students take general qualifying exams when they have completed coursework, usually at the end of the second year or beginning of the third year. The exam consists of three parts:

  1. A general area of concentration. Each student selects one of the following three areas: social and cultural perspectives on science and technology; history of science; history of technology.
  2. A field of history (e.g., Imperial Russia and Soviet history) or a field of one of the social sciences (e.g., theory and method in the study of culture).
  3. This part, tailored to each student, examines the range and depth of understanding of the history or social study of a particular science or field of engineering (e.g. the history of modern biology, the social study of information technologies).

Dissertation: Upon a student’s satisfactory completion of the general exams, s/he selects a dissertation committee of three professors, who help direct the student’s dissertation and evaluate it on completion.