A. Program Description. Graduate students pursue MA and PhD degrees in fields ranging from ancient to modern times and touching on nearly all parts of the world. There are nine major divisions of study (e.g. United States, Russia and Central Asia, Europe, History of Science, etc.) and numerous areas of specialization within these divisions. Graduate students can take courses in a host of affiliated programs as well. The Department is embracing more global, transnational and comparative history and graduate students can pursue supporting fields of study in comparative gender, comparative environmental, comparative colonialisms, comparative ethnicity and nationalism, and historiography.

B. Special Programs. The UW library system ranks among the top 10 largest in North America with over 5 million volumes as well as very large microform holdings. In addition to the extensive collections in Suzzallo and Allen libraries, graduate students can also access research materials held in specialized collections such as: East Asia, Near East, Slavic and East European, South East Asia, Pacific Northwest, etc. The History Department sponsors the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest and partners with Political Science as co-sponsors of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. Both Centers support graduate students and undertake public programs. History has strong ties to many other units including the Jackson School of International Studies, American Indian Studies, American Ethnic Studies, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, Philosophy, Astronomy, Classics, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, Education, English, and Near Eastern Languages and Civilization.

C. Financial Aid. All admitted students are offered a multi-year funding package. This usually includes fellowships in the first year, and a combination of teaching assistantships, staff assistanstships, research assistantships, and fellowships in successive years.

D. Degree Requirements. The Department of History requires students to have an MA in History in order to be eligible to apply for the PhD program. Consequently, students who hold an MA in a field other than History or a B.A. degree must apply for the MA program.

A student normally completes the MA program in four or five quarters. During this period the student must complete 36 credits of graduate-level coursework, including the required HSTRY 500: Historical Perspectives course and any courses required of students specializing in a particular field of history. The student works with the two faculty supervisors to establish the Masters Supervisory Committee and to define the scope of the student’s two fields of specialization and the coursework (field courses, special topics courses, independent study, and other History content courses) as well as any foreign language proficiency needed to prepare the MA fields for examination. In addition, the student must complete a research seminar paper (through a two-quarter research seminar), fulfill the foreign language requirement if required at the MA level, and successfully pass an oral examination covering the two MA fields and the seminar paper.

A doctoral student normally takes two years to get to the PhD General Examination and achieve candidacy (one year of Masters work and one year of PhD work for students admitted to the MA program; two years of PhD work for students admitted to the PhD program). Prior to the General Examination, the student must complete 60 graduate-level credits including the required HSTRY 500: Historical Perspectives and HSTRY 571: Orientation to a Career in History, HSTRY 572: Dissertation Prospectus, and any courses required of students specializing in a particular fieldof history. The student works with the four supervising faculty to establish the PhD Supervisory Committee and to define the scope of the student’s four fields of specialization and the coursework (field courses, special topics courses, independent study, and other History content courses) as well as the foreign language proficiency needed to prepare the fields for examination. In addition, the student must complete a research seminar paper (through a two-quarter research seminar), fulfill any foreign language requirement, and pass the written and oral examinations covering the four PhD fields of specialization. After achieving candidacy, the student must present a dissertation prospectus to the faculty and graduate students of the History Department. The student then focuses on researching and writing the dissertation and preparing it for the PhD Final Examination (dissertation defense). During this time, the student must complete a minimum of 30 credits of doctoral dissertation credits. All requirements for the UW PhD degree or the UW MA and PhD degrees must be completed within ten years.