historygeek

Hey everyone! I wrote my SOP for Rutgers and would love some feedback. It's a bit longer than the 500 word limit, so any suggestions on ways to cut it down would be much appreciated. It's located here. Feel free to make comments on the doc and thank you in advance!

Statements of purpose have been asking why history. Unfortunately, my answer to "why a graduate degree in history" seems incredibly cliche. I loved history as a kid, and it was always what I excelled at. Since I was little, I felt drawn to learning about what it was like to exist in the past. I wanted to be able to place myself in a point in the past, so I've always had a thing for women's history (which I want to pursue in grad school). When I applied to college, it was as a political science major with a pre-law concentration, but after one law class I realized that my heart just wasn't in it. I switched to history because I knew I loved it and was good at it, and I liked that it was a way to do the story-telling that I have an affinity for. I want to get my PhD in history because I want to be a professor, but also because I genuinely enjoy the way that you have to think and I love telling stories, especially ones that might fall through the cracks otherwise. Basically, I want to do history because it's my passion and I've loved it since I was a kid, two SOP no-nos. Is there a way to spin this so it doesn't sound so cliche?

I wrote two introductions for my SOP for Harvard University, both taking a bit of a different approach. These are, of course, rough, and will probably not make it into my SOP without significant editing. My research interests center on the broad intersection of gender and ethnicity in American cities during the twentieth century. I am particularly interested in the way that second-generation immigrant- specifically, Italian, Greek, and Jewish -women were present in the public sphere. Using their involvement in sexuality, fashion, beauty, consumption, and political movements as a focal point, I intend to complicate the current historical narrative around immigrant women, which centers around their productivity. Further, I seek to highlight the attitudinal differences across generations and the place of non-Protestant religions in female life. I have an ancillary interest in the way that American culture and society reacted to these women, paying particular attention to media and cultural texts. Above all, I am interested in the immigrant identity in the second generation and its expression by women. or I am applying to the PhD program in history at Harvard University in order to explore the broad intersection of gender and ethnicity in urban America during the twentieth century. Using sexuality, fashion, beauty, consumption, and involvement in political movements as a focal point, I intend to research the lives of second-generation Italian-, Greek-, and Jewish-American women and the expression of an immigrant identity. I have an ancillary interest in the way that American society reacted to this expression, paying particular attention to media and cultural texts. Any feedback would be much appreciated!

FWIW, I had a family member end her PhD at the age of 40. I say go for it, if you want to be an academic!

This is great! Saving this for reference.

Could you send me the Google Sheet link, perchance? I've tried getting the email for a month now with no luck. ?

I am! For my senior thesis, I decided to write about how Italian immigrants in Saint Louis kept such a cohesive cultural and ethnic identity. Other ethnic colonies in Saint Louis dissipated, and there was a lot of sanitation of Italian-American identity in the twentieth century (which didn't happen in Saint Louis). I came up with this while doing research at my internship, which was at a small museum in Saint Louis' Italian neighborhood. In grad school, I want to focus on the history of Italian women in the US and Italy. I've always been interested in women's history, but I realized that a lot of historiography kind of ignores immigrant women outside of them as a labor force. I wanted to explore the history of immigrant women beyond just labor. As someone who grew up with immigrant women, I knew their history was more than that. Exploring this as a historian started in my freshman year, but intensified when I did preliminary thesis research.

I played with the idea of doing modern British history for a while, and from what I saw on British university sites, another language was a must. I think German and French were the recommended ones. In general, modern European history seems to recommend French and German, unless you're focusing on a different country. Just from experience, I would give yourself room to explore. I had about 100 different specialities before I realized where my passions were. It also took different classes, internships, and personal study. Don't limit yourself so soon, imo.

These are great recommendations! I hadn't really looked at Rutgers, but I'll definitely look into it. This article is great-- I've been a little frustrated with how bulky it's been explaining my research interests, so framing them in a different way is probably going to be in my best interests-- no pun intended.

I realized when I was putting my spreadsheet of application requirements that I need to write two diversity statements for applications. I don't particularly think I have anything diverse in my background: I'm a European mutt, middle class, Jewish, female, studying history. My research interests focus on the history of female immigrants, especially from the Mediterranean (I'm particularly interested in Italian, Greek, and Jewish immigrants). I think that I could write about two things: The immigration in my family are all relatively recent (I'm third generation Italian-American, third generation Russian American, third generation Czech-Jewish American, and third generation Greek American). Everyone came over in the past century, which is the century that I'm interested in. Growing up, I was always close with the female immigrants in my family and was always fascinated with the stories that they told about coming to the U.S. and their experiences here. Education is emphasized in my family because my parents were young when they had me (19 and 20). My parents didn't get their Masters degrees until I was in high school, and I was the first person to go to school out of state and only one of two to go straight after high school. My parents wanted to make sure that I had a better life than they did, and so they really pushed education and fostered a passion. Or I could combine the two. What do you think? ETA: I could also expand on something I planned to include in my SOP. I was close to my bisnonna and had Italian-American experience, and then spent a year studying abroad in italy, which challenges my thoughts about italianness.

I came here to say the same thing. If I was on an adcom and I read a diversity statement about overcoming the "adversity" of being a left-handed person, I would read it as you being dismissive and almost poking fun of struggles of marginalized people, not as you being "quirky."

Just fyi to everyone studying for the GRE-- ETS (the test provider) offers free practice tests that are exactly like the test!

Writing statements of purpose is kind of stressing me out. I'm particularly concerned with the introduction. How do you start a strong SOP?

Thanks for your advice, everyone! I just wrote the first draft of my introduction, which I'm fairly proud of despite it being a first draft.

These are great resources, for my future research especially. Thanks so much.

Reposting to add schools/advisors. I'm primarily interested in the transnational study of Italian women's agency in Italy and the US in the early 20th century, but I'm also interested in Italian-American women's history as well. I'm writing my honors thesis next year on how Italian immigrants in Saint Louis maintained a cohesive ethnic identity. I'm applying to: Columbia (De Grazia, Hallett, Chauncey, Kobrin, Ngai) Harvard (Cohen, Clutario, Cott, McGirr) NYU (Ben-Ghiat, Diner) UCLA (Avila, Finch, Reiff, Higbie) Michigan (Gaggio, Ballinger, Simmons) Boston (Oh, Lyerly) Georgetown (Benton-Cohen, Chatelain, McCartin) George Washington (Joselit, Chapman, Matthesin) UC Davis (Dickinson, Materson, Tsu, Oropeza) SLU (MA - continuing working with Ruff, Gavitt, Hester) Fordham (MA - working with Goldberg, Patriarca) Loyola (MA - working with Cardoza, Fraterrigo) Suggestions for this list would be much appreciated.

This is great advice! Thank you so much!

Thanks for the advice! I wrote a paragraph discussing assertions about Italian-American identity and used footnotes, which I think looks better and let me get a lot more in and I think it's a lot, lot better. It's still a little* rough but that's to be expected.

I needed this advice, honestly. It’s hard for me to stop putting so much weight on the GRE!

One more question. Should I explicitly say "this is what historiography exists," or use historiography as references? I had written: In the past thirty or so years, construction and preservation of Italian-American identity has begun to occupy more space in the broader historiographical conversation. Though historical scholarship on the topic is currently limited, the forthcoming trends of identities and mentalities within the context of American ethnic history have given the history of Italian-American identity a position of slow-growing prominence. The current framework centers primarily around the issues of contended identity during the Second World War and the issue of assimilation, particularly in the inter-war period. While valuable to the study of identity, existing scholarship is not necessarily holistic. Carnevale’s “No Italian Spoken for the Duration of the War” in the spring 2003 issue of the Journal of American Ethnic History, for example, focuses on the role that language played in the necessary assimilation during the World War II years.On the other hand, Simone Cinotto’s book, Una Famiglia Che Mangia Insieme, discusses the significance of Old World food traditions in the maintenance of an Italian-American identity in interwar New York. It seems too... explicit and in your face.

Thank you! I actually just wrote about an American journal article and an Italian-language book that offer contrasting views about Italian identity.

I don’t have a relevant class sample, especially one that displays language skills.

There's not a ton of historical scholarship that I can find that is relevant to my work. There was an uptick in scholarship from about 1989-2009, and it usually centers around how Italian-American identities existed with contention during the Second World War and assimilation during the inter-war period. These works are going to be valuable to me, but my thesis is ultimately going to be more holistic and focus on identity preservation. There is also one major piece of scholarship about the geographical location I'm writing about, but the existing work seems to focus more on politics and the quantitative aspect of history, while mine is more focused on social history.

Hi everyone! I decided to write a sample of my thesis (introduction, background, and a chapter). In the introduction, I'm thinking of writing a small section about current historiography. Is this a good idea? How long should this be?

My sophomore year, I studied abroad through Loyola University Chicago, but I attend another university (Saint Louis University). My grades for my study abroad are on my SLU transcripts; do I need to send in the Loyola transcripts?