Tigla

One of the biggest issues/things I needed to learn was how to read. During your undergraduate work, you learn a lot of useful skills that prepare you, in a very broad sense, for graduate school or the workforce. Learning to read is probably the hardest skill I had to learn while in graduate school. You will be given an enormous amount of material to read per week and expected to be actively contributing to the seminar. My reading load per week was roughly a book a week per seminar. On top of the reading, I highly suggest learning another language, polishing a current one, or actively engaging with a current language. Grasping a second or third language will not only help you with your research and reading skills but also you will be able to communicate with an even wider range of material and people. Besides the academic angle, graduate school tends to be a student's first experience away from home or in an unfamiliar environment/city. It is likely that you will get stressed out over the laundry, cooking meals, or forgetting to buy something at the supermarket. Luckily, these battles will occur once then you know how to handle them and what solutions work. Personally, I found this part of graduate school to be more stressful and nerve-wracking than the actual coursework. Buckle down and get through it, but also don't be afraid to say you are lost. Although graduate school is a pain, I loved it. I was able to polish my German and start Russian and French; mostly because I was around those native speakers on a daily basis. My writing has improved an unbelievable amount; after reading a handful of my undergraduate works, it is clear to me why I was rejected for a PhD two years ago. Most importantly, you are going to meet amazing people and make new friends that transcend the university setting. In short, graduate school is hell but it is what you make of it, so make the best of it.

I received an email from my POI at Oxford. She told me that the graduate school will be sending decisions in about a week or two (she said a couple days but this is academia after all) for the "first round." Also, she wanted to informally extend my offer of admission!

If you want to talk about it, send me a PM.

Decisions from the UK are starting to go out. I received an acceptance from the University of Birmingham a couple days ago. A couple minutes ago, I received a rejection from the LSE. Best of luck to anyone applying for British universities!

I had a similar fate in the 2016 cycle. My German and French were very rough and barely existent. I spoke with my advisor and he urged me to go abroad to Germany to do my MA. After 2 years, I would say it was a very good decision and suggestion. I have been working, reading, writing and living in German which forced me to learn German extremely fast, but also learn important things rather than the systematic style taught by American language courses. If you do not have too many connections, I would highly suggest looking into European MA programs, specifically Germany.

Received a conditional offer from University of Birmingham (UK) today. Now it is time to start the hunt for funding! A general note about the UK, decisions are starting to go out, but most will appear in March.

That is a problem within history as a field, though. An absolute majority of funding, publication sources, and "reputable universities" are centered around Western thinking or interpretation of history. As a field, however, we have progressed far since the 1980s, but nowhere near enough. If you are continuing into history, I think this is a general assumption and knowledge that you need to keep in mind. Academia is difficult, but for non-Western regions/specializations, it can be even harder.

Both. Her recommender is in the history department.

I have a colleague who applied to Harvard's East Asian Studies PhD. Her recommender, who also works at Harvard, said that the department is finishing the decision-making process this week. Some letters of acceptance have been sent, but not all. Good luck to those that have applied to Harvard! May the odds always be in your favor.

To expand on rising star's comment, I think the foreign service would be a viable option. In the current climate, Russian and Ukranian language skills are even more necessary and this demand will only increase. Also, you can sell your skills as a "historian" fairly easily during an interview for the foreign service. A lot of embassies and consulates, as well as Washington D.C. bureaucrats, are always looking for historians and other specialists in certain regions (Eastern Europe and Central Asia are in ATM) to help provide background information and ground policy reports. With your language skills, a field assignment is always a possibility, too. The real downside is the lack of certainty, in terms of spending time with your family. If you put your time in early enough, this will become a moot point, but your early career will be marked by waves of the unknown.

Academia in a nutshell!

I have published several book reviews on H-Net, a working paper from my undergrad, and an article in Cogent OA (Taylor & Francis' online journal for grad students and young academics). From my conversations with my advisors, book reviews by MA students are starting to become the norm, but published articles are still the exception rather than the rule.

I'm currently applying for a PhD programs in the UK and 'distinction' was not a "must-have." Most ADCOMs are going to focus on our application portfolio and make a decision from the entire picture. I would suggest the thesis pathway because it will demonstrate your ability to research, write longer academic texts, and present your material in a timely and professional matter. Pathway B will do similar things, but not to the same extent as a thesis.

@khigh I'm not sure if you have seen these documents about Jenny. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/jenny/index.htm If you do a little digging in the unexpected corners of the internet (mostly focusing on Marxist-feminists) then you might be surprised at what pops up. UPDATE: The archive took down the uploaded files. Sorry, but the link is useless now and can now be removed from my bookmark tab.

If you need help finding source material from either of them, send me a PM. I live in Berlin and have started my own research in the Bundesarchiv and Staatsbibliothek. Just a heads up, though, any material dealing with Goebbels (even his wife and family) is extremely hard to get your hands on. The German government and archivists have been limiting access to these types of documents because of the possibility for misrepresentation and misuse, especially with the current political environment in Europe.

http://www.fulbright.org.uk/going-to-the-uk/postgraduate-student-awards However, they closed their applications for this upcoming October. The application for 2019 will open in March or April. If you are looking for other funding suggestions, look at your institution then start researching your field. I have found a handful of awards that are through either the university or department, as well as a funding scheme for Americans based at the LSE. It takes a lot of legwork, but keep searching and you will eventually find a couple awards and scholarships that apply to you.

@ExponentialDecay, you do have my apologies. I re-read my posts then realized that I fell into the same traps that my professor had specifically warned me about in an earlier presentation. I do not mean to disparage any field. Economics influences a lot of the work I do and I have fairly heated discussions with economists about the "truisms" of development economics, and economics generally. As I stated earlier, my issue with economics, as a field, is the use of statistics and theory to explain complex social relations and interactions, which is precisely why I turned to economic history. This "turn" has also shown me that economic history is still heavily reliant on statistics, rather than explaining the history of these interactions. Thereby, leading me to be overly cautious and suspicious of statistics as an explanatory tool. As for Why Nations Fail, since this is what pushed us over the edge, it is perfectly fine that we have two differing opinions on the work. After reading the books listed above and many more, I came to the conclusion that his work is oversimplified and can be used as a starting point, but nothing more. Attempting to use Agecmolu's work beyond a starting point requires us to ignore a lot of local and international actors and events which pushed certain countries into poverty, not merely their institutions. Again, my apologies to you. I will take your resources and comments into mind and begin sifting through them because I do want to engage with economists. @emperor norton , I have not heard these talks, but they are added to the list of must-listen-tos. The one book that I find highly influential and important for understanding economics is Statistics and the German State, 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge by Adam Tooze; besides this book, I find the rest of Tooze's work on statistics in history very helpful. His work broadly demonstrates the ills and ways, economists, politicians, and other academics manipulated statistics (or they could) in order to push their political narrative. While I am not opposed to statistics and quantitative methods in academic work, I think it is important to remember what we are missing when using these methods.

I'm not sure how many more books from historians that I need to keep posting to this thread, but here we go: The move towards randomized trials - International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge by Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard The focus on human capital - Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s by Larry Grubbs The embrace of small-scale projects - Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development by Daniel Immerwahr Cooper and Packard's book does not directly deal with the concept of randomized trials, however, they focus on the political nature devised around statistics to "prove" certain things, while relegating other "factors" as a measuring error. In fact, all three books show that the three concepts named by Yellow Mellow were actively used in the 1960s. Since these are the "new" trends, my statement about the lack of ingenuity and creativity still holds.

How is it flawed to show historical examples of the failure of development economics? Also, the books I cited in both of my previous posts have been published after 2005 and the documentary is from 2001. Furthermore, the authors in the books demonstrate that development economic theory has not changed since the 1980s; instead, the wording of arguments changed, but the theories that are still used were created in the 1980s, or in some cases, in the 1960s with minimal changes in the 80s. In fact, I was asked to present material at the Festival for New Economic Thinking in Edinburgh this year on this exact topic. Thus, stop claiming that I have no idea what the present-day literature or economists are thinking on development programs and projects. For a more concrete (and respected) example, Joseph Stiglitz was forced out of the World Bank for siding with the work of Post-Keynesian and Marxist economists for denouncing their theories as effective and helpful for the development of 'Third World' countries. After "Life and Debt" was released to the public, Stiglitz came out, again, and used his time at the World Bank to support the documentary. He has argued (and continues to do so today) that 'Third World' countries enter an asymmetry of information when entering negotiations with the World Bank. The bank knows the current loan structures and planned projects for the upcoming years, while individual 'Third World' countries do not have that information until entering into a loan with the bank. Thereby, giving the bank the ability to determine projects that benefit its sources of money, not the 'Third World' countries. All of this stems from Stiglitz's work on the asymmetry of information in markets, which won him a Nobel Prize in 2001. Also, the work from Ha-Joon Chang and Erik Reinert is complementary to Stiglitz's statements. Therefore, respected and accepted economists, who have worked at the highest level in development economics, think there is a problem with the current state of development economics. Instead of continuing this circular argument, I think it is best to agree to disagree.

@ExponentialDecay The only part of your comment that actually contributed to a conversation was the initial quote. What I found interesting is the lack of political history involved with development economics. Development economists in the USA, USSR, and China have quotes, ranging both time and space, where they blatantly state the goal of development economics is not to "develop" countries, but rather to implement a political regime based on the developer's ideology, political system, and economic system. In the case of India, you have two competing systems that are both investing in infrastructure; one is focusing mainly on a heavy industry sector while the other is focusing on agriculture. As these policies were implemented, both sides thought their infrastructure projects were the solution, however, one was more incredibly efficient (the Soviet) than the other. Additionally, both countries began spending political capital in order to ensure a friendly government, which caused projects to become based on political power, rather than economic returns. This scenario has played out (and still continues to play out) with differing effects throughout the "developing world." Interestingly, the local experiences of these projects and the local outcomes of these areas witnessing development projects were omitted. Of course, a project may increase the national income of a country, but at what cost? I can recommend two books that are fairly interesting and explain this conundrum. Africa's Freedom Railway by Jamie Monson and Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development by Barbara Isaacman and Allen Isaacman delve into the local experience and reality of completing massive development projects. In short, the experiences of people range from an absolute decrease in real income, a temporary increase in social mobility, destruction of the environment, and erosion of familial traditions. The typical response to this issue revolves around the idea of "developing" a select few groups of society, who then can pull the rest of society up with it; since mass development came crashing down as an idea in the 1970s. Lastly, the idea that funding from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as being anything other than detrimental is laughable. International Organizations and Development, 1945-1990 by Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel, and Corinna Unger is an excellent book that pushes this idea out of the window. These two institutions were based on Keynesian ideas but were radically altered into centers of neoliberal thinking and financing in the 1980s; most clearly after the end of Robert McNamara's presidency at the World Bank. These policies were implemented throughout the 1980s and 90s, which led to countries being exploited by international corporations, rather than supported by the international community. One needs to only watch the documentary "Life and Debt" to understand this problem. To address your claim that I am denouncing economics, simply, no. The current state of economics was not the one envisioned by Keynes, Smith, Ricardo, Marx, and most pre-WWII economists. These thinkers wanted to place economic scientific rigor within a social context which helped to better enhance the field of economics to explain reality. The idea that science and rigor can solve all problems has become prevalent in the field. After the '08 Financial Crisis, however, the field has opened quite a bit but still relies on statistics and science to explain everything, while then ignoring the local experiences because of a theory. That is why I chose not to pursue a career in economics. The inability and lack of desire for economists to engage with humanities is my issue; obviously not you because you are actively engaging here.

@ExponentialDecay I am an economic-historian-in-training in Europe. The last year has been spent learning the malleability of statistics can be combined with "historical lenses" to create works that are not based on historical reality. I used Acemoglu's work, as an example, because it was posted before and more importantly, academics think it will be one of the most influential books for the economic history of development, state-building, and decolonization. By approaching several histories from a purely statistical angle, Agecmolu and Robinson fall into the same exact trap as development economists; development programs need to be based on 'Western' ideas, money, and institutions. However, the Soviet and Chinese (also the West German case but there is not too much on them yet) examples thoroughly disprove this reliance and ability of 'non-Western' programs and aid to cause 'positive' (according to Acemoglu and Robinson) economic, social, and political leaps. This trend of socialist aid helping and developing the 'Third World' is best demonstrated in India. Throughout the Cold War, Soviet aid built hundreds of projects ranging from bridges to steel factories while American aid was mostly focused on increasing farming outputs based on pesticides and mass-corporate farming structures. It should not surprise anyone that the American structure caused massive amounts of soil erosion and crop failures throughout the 1970s and 80s, while the Soviet programs helped India create an export pool. I don't mean to glorify the Soviet example, but we cannot simply ignore it, too, because of the country was communist. Indian development projects are fleshed out further in The Price of Aid by David Engerman. While I am not denouncing the field of economic history, especially since that is my own field, I am suggesting that the current state of economic history is closer to economics and statistical analysis than history. Once we go deeper into the historiography, we get book titles such as The Spread of Modern Industry to the Periphery since 1871, which attempts to problematize the idea that the spread of industrialization does not effectively spread from Europe before 1918. The problem with this book is that the periphery is defined as any place other than Western Europe, which dilutes the meaning of periphery from colonial debates and other historiographies. As for your comment about me not understanding the economics, I have a degree in Economics and another in History. I understand the economic theories and their lack of creativity for several decades, as well as the immoral and unethical usage of statistics by economists. Just look at the Reinhart-Rogoff piece (and the economists who think they were correct) on debt limits for the current issues plaguing economics.

I currently live in Berlin. If you need some information, send me a PM and I will see what I can scrounge up here.

I think you need to remember that economic history is split between the American approach and European approach. Most American universities start within a neoliberal economic framework then slowly adds historical events as you begin to master the statistical approaches. Meanwhile, the European approach integrates numbers and statistics after getting a significant grounding in the historical events. I have trained in both systems and I find the American approach to be very biased which produces some obscure results. For Instance, Why Nations Fail by Acemogulu and Robinson has serious flaws and assumptions that could only be produced by examining numbers and statistical records before the events. They manage to push the entire colonial experience into a category while breaking the post-colonial experience into several categories over time, but not space. Therefore, they come to the conclusion that inclusive institutions and economic growth are tied together, while extractive institutions can cause growth but not long-term growth. We can rebut this from different angles and make serious dents to their argument, however, I think, understanding that they come from an American approach helps us more than systematically denouncing their work. In short, I am beyond skeptical of using statistical methods to "weigh" history. There is a lot of work being down at the University of Missouri-Kansas City which is steadily eroding the science from statistics. For example, the tests of rigor commonly used within economic history (p-value) is heavily biased by the statistical program, data set, and the way the information is inputted into the program. This allows for the statistician to "manipulate" the data set and create series of high rigor tests that reinforce the thesis. Due to this research, I think economic history needs to be seriously questioned and ripped apart because it is unclear whether statistics are a reliable method for making "scientific conclusions."

Received an email from one of my universities with the title, "Application Decision for PhD Full Time." I proceed to open it with a mix of excitement and fear only to be slapped in the face with a massive lulz. The uni wanted a second writing sample.

I just read this on the "Funny Rejection Results" thread on the forum. It both made my day and hurt a bit since I'm an economic historian.