psstein

In general, our history placement is complex, especially in view of previous funding issues/times to degree/etc. The HoS placement is a bit less complex, though a good number of recent graduates have found TT positions or other respected, alt-ac positions (research librarian and archivist respectively). The most important thing about placement is that a large number of students aren't enslaved as adjuncts. Princeton and Yale both have resources that most PhD students can only dream about, as does Harvard. If I had to generalize and ignore important nuance about Wisconsin vs. Harvard, I'd say Harvard is a better program. However, saying "these are the top programs based solely on name" is foolish. Michigan State has a better African History program than many Ivies.

This is a battle that we have to fight almost every year. The government is only interested in the bottom line, which means that basic necessities like building maintenance are overlooked. Seriously, the Humanities building used to have floor heat, but it failed some years ago and nobody has bothered to try to fix it. Our DGS suspects the person responsible for its upkeep has died.

Bluntly, it's your phrasing and the fact that you seem to have a pathological need to beat up on one particular program. If you had said "I don't think Wisconsin is the same level as Harvard in several areas," nobody would disagree with you. Hopkins is superior to Wisconsin for history of medicine and Princeton superior for early modern Europe. As with everything else in this whole damn field, rankings are dependent on sub-speciality.

Unless you're a former felon or have a GPA lower than 3.0, you're in. It's very rare, though not totally unheard of, for a departmental offer to not be accepted by the graduate school.

Sure, I've PMed you the citations.

I'm of two minds on this: either he/she never got into the program and is bashing it as a result, or he/she has some bizarre issue with my posting. Either way, I've reported it.

There are historical reasons for that. If you'd like, I can provide a few journal articles. Thank you, I didn't see him. My focus is early modern Europe, so I'm ignorant of Ottoman World scholars.

I asked you if you have anything to contribute beyond "Wisconsin bad!" Clearly, you don't. And, as anyone with experience will tell you, you're wrong. As with every department, it varies what you're working on. I wouldn't tell someone working on medieval monasticism to come here (shout out to @telkanuru), nor would I suggest someone interested in Dutch Republic come here. Also, the placement is better than you seem to think. Keep in mind that we didn't have a fully funded program until the mid-2010s.

Realistically speaking, most HoS grads aren't hired to teach HoS alone. On the other hand, there aren't all that many independent HoS departments left. Most of the top ones are within larger history departments (Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, Wisconsin, Columbia, and so on). Even Hopkins HoS, which has been fiercely independent, has a pretty close relationship with the larger history department. If you're accepted to independent HoS departments, it's not a bad idea to ask about their relationship with the history department. All of that being said, you'd stand a better chance of being hired with a HoS PhD from Harvard than you would with a history PhD from Univ. of Florida.

Well, it depends by program and the interdepartmental politics. Certain HoS/HPS programs don't get along well with the broader history department, which can prevent students in HoS from taking courses in history and being exposed to different strains of thought. Dedicated HoS programs tend to be a bit more socially isolating than history departments proper. If not for the merger, I'd have been the one man in my cohort. The benefit of independent HoS departments is that retiring professors will actually be replaced by other HoS specialists. They tend to be smaller and slightly more collegial: everyone knows everyone else, so there's less of a "lost in the mix" feeling. I know everyone in my sub-department, but I don't know the vast majority of history grad students. As @Neist has pointed out, some HoS departments may be more narrowly focused. He'll know better than I do, but Oklahoma's program has historically been well-known for early modern history of science. On the other hand, Penn (to my knowledge) doesn't have anyone who works on early modern science.

Harvard HoS doesn't interview. The programs that do (Hopkins HoS and Penn HSS) are both tiny. Hopkins HoS is a 10 student program. Penn HSS is a bit larger, but I don't know very much about their program.

No, they don't. I received Yale's rejection letter in early Feb and didn't get Hopkins' rejection until March (admittedly, after I interviewed). Wisconsin and Indiana both sent acceptances (PhD and MA, respectively) in mid-February. I think Princeton wrote in late February...

That's awesome, congratulations! Nobody really cares about the quantitative portion in humanities. Some programs explicitly state "the quantitative portion is not considered."

You shouldn't worry about it too much. The action deadline isn't until April 15th for many universities.

Yes, definitely. Can you share which one? If you don't want to do so in public, you can always PM me. I think it depends by field. Broadly speaking, I'd agree with you that the LoR won't make your application by itself, but it can break it. The same is definitely true of GRE scores. Across humanities, the writing sample and the SoP hold the most weight, I'd think.

I don't know if that's the case. In my program, everyone is on fellowship the first year. The extra money may have involved some other concession. I don't know.

The only metric that actually matters is jobs. The US News and World Report rankings are junk.

Lucky bastard. I didn't get a choice! Depends on the program. Some programs won't budge, but others will try to give more in order to be competitive with other programs. Someone in my cohort received a $5,000 lump sum to attend Wisconsin as opposed to USC.

I'm doing history of astronomy, for which Wisconsin does have good faculty. I would not advise doing something like history of medieval medicine at Wisconsin; there's simply nobody who can help you. Your best bet is probably Hopkins HoM with Gianna Pomata. As you correctly point out, medieval HoS isn't a popular field, so the options are very slim and dependent on faculty fit. I've been very reasonable. I said "perhaps Harvard" because Hannah Marcus doesn't know if she's able to take graduate students and Katie Park has retired. Most of the other HoS/HPS programs around don't have medievalists, period. Maybe Indiana with Domenico Meli/Bill Newman, but the pickings are pretty slim. It's simply not a popular area right now. Those interested in medieval science may be better suited to a history department, rather than a HoS. I don't mean to be rude to you, but do you have something to contribute besides "Wisconsin bad?"

The only programs I know of who do interview are Penn HSS and Hopkins HoS, both of which are tiny departments. As for funding, Minnesota's HoS and Indiana's HPS seem to have problems with departmental funding, but I have no idea if that extends to Minnesota/Indiana more generally.

Minnesota's HoS, while one of the better programs, is not a great place to do medieval (Wisconsin and probably Harvard are the best). You're probably going to be way better off in the history department proper. Also, I don't know how much longer Jole Shackelford is going to teach. He's in his mid-60s and hasn't published significantly in over a decade. Feel free to PM me if you're interested in talking about history of science/medicine/tech programs. I'm in the newly merged HoS at Wisconsin.

As with everything in academia, it depends how you position it. Braudel's Annales school may be ripe for a comeback.

I think it's more of a growth field than is often thought, but more because of global implications. At the AHA, there was a session called "Writing Global History in Early Modern Europe."

The quantitative resurgence has been quashed in Wisconsin. Students can't use statistics in lieu of language requirements any longer. As for digital history, I agree with you. A historian of technology has said that there's renewed skepticism about the usefulness of digital humanities.

Gender and race in the history of medicine/science/technology have become very popular approaches, though there are some rumblings that the reductivist approach to gender is in trouble (just from talking to more senior scholars). Sociological approaches remain popular, though that's been the case since the mid-1980s. Questions about knowledge-making and circulation have, once again, become important. Pablo Gomez's The Experiential Caribbean, while not re-opening the debate, has made a very significant impact. It may be easier to speak about what's not popular: American political history is a vanishingly small field, as are traditional approaches to diplomatic history. Labor history is in real trouble, and intellectual history, which was very popular in the mid-20th century has fallen off.