Riotbeard

I think simple twist hit the nail on the head for the most part. Outside of writing fellowships, which are difficult to get but not impossible, most places expect you to work in some capacity. There is also always the folks' basement...

I p.m.ed you.

It might be worth looking into Ann Fabian at rutgers, although she is in American studies. 2nd Penn (particularly sociology and science PhD). You might want to look at Stanford. Vanderbuilt also has a couple of history of med people.

Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction Susan Reverby, Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphillis Study and its Legacy I also have to teach William Barney's The Making of a Confederate:Walter Lenoir's Civil War soon, so I will be reading that too.

Hopkins, especially if you are interested in Atlantic perspectives. I am not sure if stanley Engerman is still at University of Rochester, but if so it might be worth looking there. Maybe Max Edilson at UVA? It might be more helpful if you were more specific geographically/time period. One way that you might be able to find some other people would be to check out every book of collected essay on the broader field you are interested and see where the contributors teach.

I don't know what the GRE scores mean anymore since the scoring system changed, but I would say pick a few programs and go ahead and apply. The learning experience of doing it once and getting everything together may be worth it in and of itself, if you didn't get in anywhere this time. I would not apply to say 10-15 schools this time. That is a much bigger time commitment, but I think 3-4 could be managable.

I would say if you do more than a sentence it depends on where you are applying and if they look for people involved in that secondary field. For example, if you were a U.S. historian, second field: Atlantic World applying to NYU or Johns Hopkins who have large Atlantic World contingents, it would make a lot of sence to go into at least a little depth (But the whole thing is short) on why Atlantic world, because it situates you within the culture of their department. The same could be said if you wanted a second field in say borderlands history at UT Austin; however, there might be second field that aren't that relevant to spend considerable time on in your SOP. That is my 2 cents. At the end of the day no matter you will be limited because the nature of the SOP is limited.

1. I would say, that the whole take a bunch of pictures and look at it later approach is not the best if you don't have a strong sense of your topic or what the sources are like. My dissertation project has really developed working with the sources and in the archive, and then adapting to changes on the spot. Photographs can be great if you know what is in the source, etc. and it is just an in and out type experience, but if you want the archive to "speak to you," i would say it can be very helpful to hunker down and work with sources while you are there. Also, above all else, get to know the archivists. You will know the library's collection (as a whole) as well as the archivists and they can point you to whole new sources and types of sources. The source backbone of my work was pointed out to me by an archivists who knew my interests and showed them to me. 3. Bring a jacket and dress comfortably. 4. I think TMP is right, have fun. The archive can be very boring, but it is made up for by that one big find.

University of Alabama offers funded M.A. (although funding is tough to get), although there is some expectation (but not quite obligation) that good M.A. students will stay on for a PhD. I would look into southern state schools and see how their PhD programs work, because if they are like UA you don't apply for the PhD without an MA, but there best applicants to there MA program have chances at a funded MA. I think this possible at Georgia also, but not sure.

If you have to pay for your MA, it would't hurt to spend a couple hundred dollars applying of PhD programs, because if you got funded directly into a PhD program it would save you a lot of cash.

Crock pot.

I agree with people that you probably have to get an MA first, but in general there is not reason for all the doom and gloom (just be glad you don't want to study Europe/U.S.) that so many people want to lay on anybody else applying for grad school. If you really wanna do this, you can definitely pull it off. I also think your experience outside of school will help you in the long run even if you don't do anything related to history of science. A lot of people who go straight through (I have found) lack appreciation of how awesome being a grad student is as a job, and seem to lack a concept of what real jobs/life is like. Also start saving as much money as you can now. Having a nest egg in grad school will be very helpful.

Might also be worth looking at MIT's history of science and tech department. Depending on what type of science you do, you may want to look at Stanford's history department also.

Congratulations Shep. I am also published and not from a thesis. It's not to say that a thesis has never been useful but that as a one size fits all system, it is suspect at best. You clearly used your thesis in a way that is highly advantagous, but not having a thesis doesn't mean that a program is not "rigorous" or intellectual. And having a thesis in a program does not mean the program is rigorous. There are plenty of programs with poor intellectual trackrecords that have theses, and places that have dropped them have not dropped off the face of the earth. I am going to stop here, but all I will say is the academic history system is clearly in crisis, and continuing with business as usual is probably not the solution. Maybe no thesis isn't the answer, and maybe it is, but clinging to tradition (as far professional aspects) is kind of what got the profession to this point. This is off-topic now...

Actually, this is happening in a good couple of PhD program MAs. We no longer have traditional comps or a traditional thesis (my "thesis" was 35 pages and supposed to be of journal article quality), and our new program was based on changes Duke made to their program, and I believe (although I could be wrong) UT Austin has done something similar. The 100 page thesis is fairly archaic and useless. Unless you use it for your dissertation or think you can break it up into 3-5 good articles (show me a PhD student with 3-5 good peer-reviewed articles..., they are pretty rare), its just a big projet done for the sake of it. Not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but in the context of average 8 year time to completion for humanities PhDs, it doesn't make a ton of sense to devote so much time to a paper that is not that useful in the long run. Also a lot of programs might make you pick up an MA at their institution anyways, so it probably won't affect you that much.

I agree with nerdspeak. People talk about the job market as if its like making it big in hollywood. Is it competitive? Sure. But 50/50 odds actually arent that bad for the way people talk about it as if like 1 in 10 people get jobs. I think there is also a way to do intellectual history that allows you to call it cultural history, which would at least help your position on the job market, but there is a huge calling for old school political theory history anymore, although some people do it like David Armitage (at least to an extant).

I would not limit your self to the top 25 programs, but certainly aim for those and attend the best program you can get into, but plenty of schools outside the top 25 have decent placement records (like where I attend for example). I would also not worry too much about a language unless you are doing work on immigrant communities. Start thinking about papers as possible writing samples, and while it will probably not be decisive, try and strengthen you GPA a bit. I also went to undergrad at a smaller liberal arts college, and certainly some people are able to transition from there to the ivies. The worst thing that could happen is the school says no, and plenty of them will (by this, I mean that everybody has gotten a rejection letter, and constantly applying for stuff that you might not get is just a part of the field, so you will have to get used to it.

TMP and Nat: there is definitely some truth to that but you can't know for sure until you apply or e-mail them. Just because someone is not writing a book on the era/topic of their first book does not mean that they are not still interested. In some case, they aren't but plenty of people do work pretty different from their advisors. My work is fairly different from my advisors, although roughly in the same era. Nat: My second reader was a Rosenberg student back when Care of Strangers came out. While I don't really work on disease per se, his stuff is amazing. His monographs plus Michael Sappol made me glad to embrace the history of medicine moniker, which I was honestly afraid of when you look at the history of science and medicine stuff that is more technical (for lack of a better word).

Sugrue is great. One of my best friends does sunbelt stuff, so I am inundated to a lot of twentieth cent. urban history in spite of the fact that I mostly due 19th century medicine. Good luck. Also Philly is awesome and UPenn is in a really nice spot. I do a lot of research there, and want to move there at some point...

Your language won't matter that much for 20th century U.S. urban... Have you thought about Penn? I don't know about their history program, but Adolph Reed (in the poli. sci dept.) has written some really good 20th century urban history stuff. Check out his Stirrings in the Jug. I am sure you could get him on your committee even if you were in the history department. Also, you should look into working with Lizbeth Cohen (Making a New Deal). I think she is at Harvard. Have you looked at Lisa McGirr's stuff?

I don't agree with people telling you that you need to consider a different life choice, but i do think you can kiss going directly into any PhD program goodbye. You might have to go to a second rate M.A. and then fight to get into a pretty good PhD program, but that is the road that is at least somewhat viable in front of you for history. I think option 2 is probably not possible given your undergrad situation. Getting into any PhD program is competitive, and I don't really think you have a shot going straight from undergrad. If you want to do it you can, but it would require some seriously hard work in the next couple of years.

I would also like to stick up for the South. I think New Orleans in many respects makes the rest of the country look like a bunch of prudes. Most universities in my experience are a bastion of liberalism (that is both a compliment and insult), and the rare conservatives is going to tend to have an intelligent reasoning for this stance, so unless you just don't like being around people with different views (which I would guess will be rare since my experiences in undergrad and grad school are that most faculty are liberal), that is not a good reason. I mean you might want to avoid applying to schools in the rural areas (although that tends to be true of all regions, not just the south or midwest), most major cities in the south are politically diverse. Emory, Vanderbilt, Duke, WashU, UT Austin, Rice, Tulane, and some other schools that are not coming to mind at the moment are in cities with tons of liberals and schools with many famous liberal historians. I am not offended, but your view of the South and Midwest is at least not the whole story and frankly inaccurate when applied to the contemporary urban south. Not to mention this whole country's political s**t stinks (I don't think it was only ohio and alabama [where I grew up], that is always pushing us to bomb people who look different than us), not just the places in between new york and L.A. Once again not offended, but I can't avoid a good anti-northeast rant. I guess it is just in my blood.

You can do it if you want to, and don't have heavy TA requirments.

I wouldn't worry that much, and I would tell the person who got up to walk out to sit down. Don't apologize. If class is a little dead is more likely lazy students than yourself. Not that any of us are perfect, but in my experience, it is really hard to tell which day students are going to be engaged or not. I have had weeks where I was super excited and the students were lackluster, and classes with great discussion when I didn't find the material that great.

I mean I would guess that is not that big of a deal. My adviser does religious history and I do sci/med stuff. I mean, you never know, but it does not seem like that big of a deal to me.