dr. t

It will not matter either way.

Have questions. You need to figure out numerous things, from how engaged a possible advisor tends to be to where their students are now. Often, figuring out ways of getting answers without directly asking will result in better answers. Basically, figure out what you think you need to succeed in a program, and what you want from it. Then figure out how to get that information from a source which is likely to paint a rosier picture than reality (intentionally or not) if confronted directly.

St. Popovic, Mihailo, Veronika Polloczek, Bernhard Koschicek, and Stefan Eichert, eds. Power in Landscape: Geographic and Digital Approaches on Historical Research. Eudora Verlag, 2019. My review will be out in The Medieval Review sometime within the next month, or if you DM me I'll send it to you.

Which would make them not independent scholars

And then you go and make my point for me - that if it's something important, just do it in fields or publish on it ?

No one cares about them outside of your university. Often no one cares about them inside your university, either. Generally speaking, interdisciplinarity is something that administrators like to talk about a lot, but something for which your field (and particularly history) will punish you if you engage in it.

I wouldn't put much thought into certificates, to be honest.

Sure, if you have a PhD.

For premodernists, I'd look at Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. K-Z was a hard quant historian during the 60s and 70s who went over to microhistory. OTOH, I'm currently reviewing a book, and boy can I say that uncritical quantitative positivism is back in a big way in the German academy, if indeed it ever really left.

One curious thing about UoC is that the support and outcomes for their MAPSS students is substantially better than those for their MAPH ones. Not really sure why that is.

If only you were an Ass Dean

Data point: I have a BA/MA from Harvard, and a PhD from Brown. I also have a prestigious 2y fellowship from my sub-discipline's national association and four journal articles either published or forthcoming, many conference presentations, a papal license in a Hilfswissenschaft, and have been in charge of one of the larger DH projects in my field. I have applied to 30 positions this fall, from TT jobs to post docs to CC jobs, DH jobs, NTT teaching positions, and library positions. I have made it to one shortlist (still interviewing) for a postdoc which pays less than I make now as a grad student. As far as I know, my recommenders were never even contacted for any of the others.

Medieval Studies is going through some, uh, issues right now, so I have a lot of experience talking and thinking about this question. Every PoC medievalist I know has been asked, frequently and pointedly, "So why are you here?" The question as to whether someone "not from" a culture/region/ethnicity/race can study something of that culture/region/ethnicity/race is one of those questions that does not get asked of White scholars. I have, for example, never been asked why I might study southern France, despite having no ties of any kind to the region. Whiteness constructs itself as objective, and therefore the ability of Whites to study any topic is assumed rather than interrogated. The origins of the modern practice of history and modern nationalisms are deeply and inextricably intertwined. History, as we generally conceive of it now, is a means of constructing identity, and so to study the history of a place or people is, almost a priori, a claim to identify with that place or people. Pay attention to who is and is not allowed to make such a claim, and where. It will help you figure out who to trust.

I'm hesitant to put a number on it, but for the sake of argument let's say a program which takes more than ~10 per year is either painfully ignorant of the past 20 years of academic hiring trends or deeply reliant on graduate student labor. Or both. I haven't looked in a while, so IDK how many that is.

If your goal is to influence secondary education curricula, I have to admit I'm flummoxed why a professor would push you towards a history degree. Either there's some context I'm missing, or they're simply wrong. A PhD in history prepares you to be a historian, and little else. I can't speak for Ed.D programs, but a PhD application is about the ideas and vision of past you're bringing to the table. Your grades, language abilities, writing proficiencies, etc. are part of the evaluation process because they speak to your ability to make that vision and those ideas reality. And that's all that matters.

One, you're thinking about PhD applications as if they were undergraduate applications. They're not. Teaching at an inner-city school, being a tour guide, your volunteer or extracurricular activities, are not things doctoral admissions committee will really even look at. Your GPA is perfectly fine to get someone to actually spend some time with the rest of your materials. Whether or not you get into a program pretty much hinges entirely on your articulation of the questions you want to pursue in graduate school and your own perception of yourself as a scholar. Reading the above, it sounds to me like you'd greatly benefit from taking some time off from school. Secondary education and history of science are wildly divergent topics. Ask your potential recommenders to write letters and stick them in a drawer for later, finish your undergraduate, go work for a year or three, and then ask yourself if you really want to pursue a PhD, and in what area.

There's this story of a man who jumps of a sky scraper, and, as he falls past the 40th floor, is heard to shout "STILL DOING OK!"

I had forgotten about this meme...

Well, that's a lovely one sentence summary of academia.

This isn't terrible, and it's probably the right decision to accept, but I currently get paid $30k to live in Providence, RI.

You can always reach out to ask.

This is wisdom. It will probably be the departmental (i.e. smaller) funding package, just fyi.

Is Berkeley offering you the $17k funding package or the $28k funding package?

For all things related to applying to graduate school in history in the fall of 2021.

Having been around for both the original (2015 was my first year of my doctorate), and being currently on the job market (30 applications, 1 interview, 8 outstanding, in case you want to know how that is), some thoughts in no particular order: A PhD from a program with substantial resources (note: this is not equivalent to a top program, though there is substantial overlap) is still a worthwhile experience in and of itself. $30-35k yr plus good health insurance isn't nothing in this pre-postapocalyptic hellscape. Plus, I've had multi-month paid trips to Europe each year. My teaching load was light but engaging, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of researching and writing my dissertation. The experience wasn't stress free, but it wasn't a bad sort of stress. A PhD in the humanities takes more than 5 years. Make sure you're funded accordingly (part of the first point). Going to a program without those resources, one where you have to scrape and claw and hustle to get even your basic needs met, is not a worthwhile experience. It's just volunteering to be exploited based on a lie as to future possibilities. The actual line between the two situations is a bit fuzzy, but err on the side of caution. Do not apply to programs just to make sure you go to grad school. I have very little sympathy for those who have recently finished their PhD and are left jobless or in adjunct hell. This includes some of my own friends. Yes, that's more than a bit brutal to say. But at this point, if you didn't know what the academic job market looked like going into it, that's on you. There are abundant resources that not only provide ample warning as to what lies ahead, but that also explain how to set yourself up for a non-academic career outside the academy, or at least outside a traditional professorship track. If the state of the world on the other side of your degree blindsides you, that's because you ignored several hundred flashing neon warning signs accompanied by air-raid sirens, or thought that, for some reason, they were trying to warn everyone else besides you. Have a plan for your post-degree future before you apply. That plan should both identify several possible career paths, most of which should not be "be a professor", and have intermediate goals that set up those career paths roughly mapped out. Do not adjunct. Do anything other than adjunct. Hopefully that's useful.