intellectucat

I'm from the US. I did my BA at UChicago. I applied for a Fulbright for this year and was a finalist, but didn't get it. (Alas, I had no "concrete research project" but was doing a general taught/research masters with a research thesis component.) Apparently it's possible to get what's called a Flemish Community Grant (sponsored by the region Leuven is in), but I didn't. Everything is cheap enough here (a nice small city) that I've been able to get by on money I had saved for grad school from the previous year. I would say pretty definitively that *you get what you pay for*—meaning don't expect small seminars and top-rate facilities like at some American schools. Classes tend to be 30-50 students (even "seminars), and there's not much individual attention or a feeling of community in your program cohort. But there are SO many faculty here (at least 50 or 60 professors, and at least 100 if you include postdocs) all in continental thought that it's a strong program, in my opinion. And the culture of the broader university and city (small, but beautiful and has everything you need, including entertainment) make for a great experience!

Also, if you're looking for an MA where you can do history of philosophy, check out KU Leuven, in Belgium. I'm studying there this year and thus far have taken classes on WWI and philosophy, Hegel's historical writings, and there's so much here on the history of phenomenology (Husserl's archives are part of the department). Also, the MA is just one year, and tuition is €900!

I was in a very similar position a year ago! I just got into Princeton and Yale PhD for modern European history (intellectual history), and to UChicago Divinity PhD for Religion & Literature. I'm currently leaning toward the history programs, for several reasons, but mainly job prospects. My BA was in Great Books and Jewish studies (majors) and philosophy (minor), and I did a one-year MA in philosophy in Europe. I think of my primary field as Holocaust studies—though that spans history, literature, religion, philosophy, social theory... So I was reading across these disciplines for most of my BA, without having to decide on one in particular because of my interdisciplinary majors. It's possible that the best field for you is intellectual history. I work a lot on the Frankfurt School (critical theory), so I was always familiar with the work of Martin Jay at Berkeley, who is one of the fathers of the field in the US. When I contacted him to ask if he was accepting students, he told me he wasn't after last year, but he told me where most of his students are now professors, i.e. where his legacy continues. Yale is probably the most impressive place for European intellectual/cultural history right now: Carolyn Dean (also studied with LaCapra), David Sorkin, Jennifer Allen (recommended Ankersmit to me), and Sophia Rosenfeld all studied with Jay, and there's also Marci Shore and Tim Snyder. Other places I considered, and where there are people working in German and French historical theory are Berkeley (Stefan Hoffman, worked with Koselleck), NYU (Stephanos Geroulanos), Johns Hopkins Humanities Center (Hent de Vries; also the only PhD program I know of in Intellectual History), Harvard (Peter Gordon and Sam Moyn, both Jay students), Princeton (Anson Rabinbach), and Chicago (Moishe Postone). My PhD project is about notions of "catastrophe" in 20th-century thought, so I'll be reading a lot of figures like White, LaCapra, and Koselleck and working in theories of historical time/events in addition to philosophical work on my period from Arendt, Adorno, Foucault, et al. I'll do theoretical work wherever I go, but I also know that I'll have to do perhaps more exam preparation than most students, having come from another discipline. The thing to know about this field going in is that you just won't get in without an area strength, and an advisor/POI in that area; I studied Jewish languages and become proficient in German and French before I applied. Wouldn't have gotten in without this. Also I did a training program in archival work at a major US history museum just before I applied, as if to show that I'm serious about becoming a historian, even if most of my work is on theory and the history of philosophy. The upside of going with history is that you'll have MUCH better job prospects than going to a program like Hopkins Humanities Center, or Berkeley Rhetoric, or even Social Thought at UChicago; while these are all great programs and have great faculty, the reality is that universities have disciplines, and I've seen many students in these programs regret their choice when they get no job offers.