psstein

This is a good place to start from. You've honestly outlined a lifetime of work, which is good (in the sense of having quite a lot to look at), but bad in the sense of needing to narrow down further. You might also want to look at James Colgrove's State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America, as well as Karen Walloch's The Antivaccine Heresy: Jacobson v. Massachusetts and the Troubled History of Compulsory Vaccination in the United States.

I'd encourage you to become a little bit more specific in the way you articulate your interests and research topics. What, specifically, about the anti-vax movement in the 19th/20th century interests you? What years are you going to examine most closely? As you know, anti-vax is a very diverse movement over time, ranging from religious (and some medical) objections in the 19th century to the crackpot fringe (Lyndon LaRouche and the like) in the 20th century. How do you see this interacting with other areas, such as the history of religion, or the history of social movements? Also, please check your PMs.

I'm happy to go into greater detail in PMs, but you should definitely read some of the major journals like Bulletin for the History of Medicine and the historical sections in Public Health Reports.

I think the most important thing for you to do would be to understand and articulate where your interests fall in the wider literature and what's already been done. I know, for example, that there's quite a lot of work about the development of mortality tables and John Graunt's demography in 17th century London. I don't know if that work exists in a US context, but it wouldn't shock me if it did. Something else worth considering is the connections between history of risk and how corporations have attempted to mitigate risk (via technology, labor practices, and so on). Beyond that advice, many US history programs don't require more than one non-English language, at least based on my memory of them, though it's been 5 years since I applied.

I can answer a few of your questions here. 1) No, there aren't. The market is so horrific that Harvard/Yale graduates are fortunate to get R2/R3/PUI jobs. In the past, regional universities had a very strong reputation for placing PhD students into places like Kent State, SUNY Albany, or a myriad of other state/regional institutions. That market, post-2008, and especially post-2014, is drying up. I don't think the figure of "50% of all colleges will close in 10 years" is correct, but there's undoubtedly a significant contraction occurring. Your intuition and information is 100% correct. There are a few places with one or two faculty members who pump out TT faculty left and right, but otherwise place rather poorly. 2) I'm not quite sure what you're asking in your second question. Yes, you do need to teach, especially as an independent instructor (TA-ing doesn't count for much). With that said, someone with a CV full of grants/fellowships is more likely to have an impressive publishing record, or a very interesting project. Many senior graduate students fall into what I call the "teaching experience trap," which is "I need to teach X more courses before I can be a competitive candidate," often neglecting the dissertation in the process. If you have 2 classes as instructor of record, 4 isn't going to help you. To put it a different way: you can out-publish a mediocre teaching record. You cannot out-teach a poor publishing record. 3) I am and I'm not. One of the things I do in my day job is forecasting intermediate/long-term supply and demand. I think the issues are twofold: first, the oversupply of PhDs shows no sign of abating. While I firmly believe that 90% of PhD candidates have no chance at an academic job, I also don't see the field adjusting for that fact. Second, COVID has been disastrous for universities. Multiple SLACs have had to make difficult cuts in the name of paying existing faculty/staff and keeping the lights on. Smaller institutions (under 3000) are in a very tough position right now. That's also where most of the jobs have historically been located.

I know faculty like that as well. I had one professor who didn't take students for 5+ years, because of how brutal the job market in his sub-specialty looked. It's flawed reasoning, but I also think it's very realistic. The market isn't likely to get much better. University education is fundamentally changing in the US, and not for the better.

@TMP's response is exceptional, so I'll use it as a springboard. 1) Very broadly speaking, the majority of programs enrolling 15+ students a year are state universities which depend heavily upon graduate student labor (between TA, RA, admin, and lecturer appointments). Wisconsin, Michigan, and several others fall within that category. Bluntly, I don't think it's a good model, especially in this atmosphere of belt tightening and financial insecurity after one of the most impactful pandemics in a century. The best examples I can think of with your "smaller" model are dedicated history of science programs like Hopkins (which never has more than 10 students), Harvard, or Penn's HSS. 2) The historical reasons fall much along the same lines as #1. Some universities have historically used their graduate cohorts as a replacement/substitute for other labor. Think also in terms of stated university missions. Hopkins was, like Chicago, founded as an American equivalent to the German research university model. The university almost explicitly exists to facilitate research. Compare that to somewhere like Wisconsin, where one of the major principles is helping bring knowledge to the people of the state of Wisconsin. 3) This area I'm more hesitant to speak on, as I don't have a ton of knowledge. I'll say that the biggest obstacle for some of the research-focused programs is getting out of that area when it comes to PhD applicants. I had a faculty member tell me during a conversation "we prepare students for an academic career," which, while understandable, showed a disconnect with the field as it currently exists. The vast majority of your PhD students will not have academic careers! Some programs have very entrenched cultures; Wisconsin's was also rather teaching-centered, and it was very common for students to take quite a long time to complete (7+ years for US history PhDs, longer for European).

Also worth noting that the vast majority of historians of science teach (e.g.) early modern France with history of science on the side. There aren't too many dedicated historians of science outside departments like Princeton/Harvard/Yale/Hopkins. To OP: you're asking basically two questions, one is about the history of public health/medicine and the other is about the development of a social/cultural movement. Asking questions about the development of a vaccine (how did they acquire the materials, how was it tested, why did it fail, how did public health officials react, and so on) are questions for historians of medicine. I would also submit to you that there's a vast, vast literary corpus on public health education as parts of public health campaigns. If this is the area you're most interested in, I'd recommend reading the major journals (e.g. Bulletin for the History of Medicine) and seeing the recent developments in that area.

I know this isn't the advice you want to hear, but PLEASE consider using your accounting degree to its fullest extent. Your chances of secure, long-term employment with that degree are drastically better than those chances (especially in academia) after earning a history PhD. As @AfricanusCrowther hinted, the academic job market is in disarray from COVID-19, but has gotten progressively worse since 2008. Also, bluntly, I think you're too far behind the eight ball here. The only thing you really have going for you is your knowledge of Spanish. Outside of that, without a clear research agenda or well-developed skills, you're not going to have an easy time getting into a program worth attending. With all that said, if you want to make your way towards a history PhD, I'd suggest reading the major journals of the field and looking into the possibility of a part-time MA. I know many programs offer them.

It may be worth it, but in an age of belt-tightening and an even more uncertain future for the humanities, you may give the wrong impression to people who can and will make life difficult for you. You're incredibly fortunate to have funded offers, considering the cycle's competitiveness and the large number of quality programs who refused to admit new cohorts.

A few statements here: 1) There are zero programs worth attending that do not offer funding. Given the nature of the academic job market, I'd consider an unfunded offer a soft rejection. 2) I don't have enough understanding of your particular field to give good answers regarding programs you should consider. What I would suggest is to look at the books you found compelling in your respective areas of interest. See where the authors work and where they received their PhDs. Then, look at the citations. Who's being cited most frequently? Where do these scholars work?

I came straight out of undergrad, so I didn't really know what to ask. You should try to get a sense of your advisor's advising style (e.g. very engaged, laissez-faire, or somewhere in the middle?).

If you don't hear back by the end of the week, it's probably not good news.

It could be, depending on where you're waitlisted. Based on the situation you described, it seems like the university is concerned about its future ability to financially support graduate students. A graduate student who comes in with some external funding may very well help to allay those fears.

Definitely. It is true that some programs have the resources/clout to help students get around mediocre or outright bad advising. One of the top programs in history of science is widely known to have indifferent supervision and average training for most students. This program happens to also do very well when it comes to placing its students in TT jobs. The resources, financial and otherwise, that it controls, happen to be beyond par.

Agreed, with some qualification. There are some faculty members outside of Ivy/comparable schools who are notorious for pumping out TT faculty members. Even at top-tier universities, you have advisors who produce a disproportionate number of PhD students who go on to TT jobs. I would counsel potential graduate students to look not only at the program's placement record, but their advisor's as well. Some faculty members are magnificent scholars and writers, but terrible advisors. I ran into several during my time in academia; I'm sure most of us have.

Please don't get me started on this...

HSMT is part of history at this point. The two departments merged in July 2017, just before I started my first semester at Wisconsin. 30-40 is a bit on the high end of acceptance. It's usually somewhere between 25-30, depending on needs for the upcoming year. Regardless, I'm happy to discuss Madison with anyone who gets in.

Yes, unfortunately. Having just gotten off an interview with a consulting firm, they're also getting hammered. Plus, I wouldn't overestimate the value of a PhD to them, at least based on people I've spoken to in them. FWIW, of course. @Sigaba makes an excellent point. The private sector is bad right now. The public sector is teetering on an apocalypse. Many states have had irresponsible or outright incompetent budget management for years. With COVID-19, the day of financial reckoning draws nigh.

To your last point, yes. Part of the withdrawal of history into ever-increasingly narrow and specialized niches has had the effect of making historical scholarship arcane, inaccessible, and generally not too useful to people outside of academia. That's not a criticism of any specialized field, for the record. I actually find some of that work fascinating (e.g. Andrew Warwick's work on mathematical physics education at Cambridge). But, speaking from my history of science/medicine perch, my subdiscipline has actively disengaged from its original mission and attempted to become more integrated with the historical community writ large. It is extremely common now to see monographs with practically no engagement of the serious scientific issues at hand, especially in history of medicine. I'm not against the social turn at all; it was a good thing and it needed to happen. With that said, the issue is now that the field doesn't actually engage scientists. Instead, it turns its attention towards historians (and other humanities disciplines) that want to know something about the science. Put more bluntly, a microhistory about the ontology of bodily fluids in 17th century Spain doesn't draw much interest outside of a very narrow crowd of academics.

Yes and no. A lot of US graduates have the same thoughts. Plus, the overwhelming likelihood of non-US employment is not a nice position somewhere in Europe. The countries investing most heavily in higher education at this point are repressive petrostates like Saudi Arabia (there was an opening not too long ago at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals) and equally as repressive countries like China.

Good post and one that really bears repeating. Leaving with the MA was one of the best decisions I've ever made. And for the record, I see the "alt-ac" thing as a crock. With a few exceptions, "alt-ac" jobs are jobs you can hold with a PhD, not jobs requiring a PhD. I'm sorry, but your dissertation on discourses on bodily fluids in the 18th century or the literary culture of immigrants in the early 20th century isn't a key element of becoming an insurance adjuster or a grants manager. These are jobs you can hold with the PhD. By the way, if I sound angry about this, it's because I am. American graduate education is rotten from the core. The "alt-ac" push is, in part, a way to justify the cost (financial and opportunity) of students who complete a PhD and cannot find permanent academic employment. If it's at all possible, mods, please, sticky this thread. Every prospective graduate student needs to read this post.

These are some very interesting questions. I don't think Wisconsin's faculty would be the worst match for those interests, but one of them is likely to retire shortly and the options outside of her may not be the best for your interests. I also believe the program there has some structural problems that I'd caution thinking carefully about before applying. There's an excellent essay in Francisco Scarano (ed.) Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State discussing the US South's role as a "tropical other." Natalie Ring's The Problem South and Todd Savitt and James Harvey Young (eds.) Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South. Finally, William Coleman's Yellow Fever in the North: The Methods of Early Epidemiology.

Agreed. Just from my own experience, there are a lot of microfilmed/online materials that need studying. Seminar papers can turn into dissertation ideas quite easily... had I stayed in my program, one of mine would have.

Bar-Ilan may not be a bad choice, if you're open to Israel. They're not as conservative as somewhere like Gordon-Conwell, to my knowledge, but there are some very good, conservative-leaning faculty.