historygeek

First of all, as some in the circles have said, including The Professor Is In (look her up), there is no failure, only success whether you stay or leave academia.
Second, congratulations on surviving your first semester of grad school!  I remember-- both in MA and PhD- finishing felt like pulling teeth. I was so exhausted and wondered if i would make through the next one or, even wonder if I wanted to finish the degree!  Questioning oneself and choices is extremely common among graduate students (and new professors!) after finishing a semester, particularly a challenging one. Deciding what you ultimately want to do takes time. You'll want to have the MA for any history position anyway.
If you aren't sure if the PhD is for you, take the thesis option and see how it goes. Do some research on what public historians and librarians have done to get their jobs though I suspect a good part is having both a graduate history degree and network connections. You have plenty of time-- consider taking time off after the MA . to see if you miss the intellectual energy of a research program.
Meantime, give yourself a real break from all of this if you haven't

Belt: https://theprofessorisin.com/its-ok-to-quit/
Suspenders: https://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/gradschool.html

Hi - Current ABD student here. I've seen a lot of posts about women/gender history. Just want to shamelessly plug that there are programs that offer joint-degrees or minor certificates in WGSS. I'm currently in the dual-PhD program in WGSS and History.  I came for the history program, which hovers around #25 in rank, but found that the WGSS program is much higher-ranked and regarded, leading to more open doors. From personal experience, working in multiple departments offers more funding/teaching opportunities (I'm at instructor of record in the WGSS dep) and works to your advantage on the job market. 
Plus, theory and methods classes are often weak in history departments and interdisciplinary work at any level of formality can help to strengthen your work. 
alright, soapbox done! PM me if you have any questions, your work sounds like it would relate to people in my department!

Hello all, just dropping in to send you good vibes as deadlines approach! If anyone has questions about UC Davis, feel free to PM me  

Hi everyone! I just have a very positive update that I wanted to share.
We're getting to the point in the semester where we've been submitting abstracts and proposals for final papers. I recently submitted mine for my Medieval Europe class, and realized that I want to expand on the research that I'm doing. The question I've had in the back of my mind is How were the experiences of women in childbirth and infancy informed by their social positions, and how did these experiences inform the ways in which women interacted with the world around them and with each other?
 I'll be writing something along these lines for my final paper (which is focusing more on race/ethnicity in the medieval viewpoint), but I'll be doing an independent study this summer that will allow me to really get into this question more. I've done some primary and secondary source reading and have fallen in love; I've been able to call on the visual and material sources that I've been wanting to work with, and I'll be able to explore ritual and popular religion (which I've been obsessed with since readings for my Theory & Methods and  since reading Robert Bartlett's Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?). It's definitely something that I think I will want to bring with me through to PhD programs. 

I tend to agree that it may be daunting to try to find people that were influenced by Foucault (as surely he is to the history profession what Camus/Sartre are to philosophy or perhaps Chomsky to linguistics. Not all scholars may agree with their ideas, but most recognize their influence.)

I suggest looking around for some general Historiographical, Intro to History, Intro to the Study of History syllabi online. Most of these syllabi will have an array of intellectuals who have critically assessed the historical discipline through their works on power (as Foucault), but also other important "themes" that historians should know:

Just a non-exhaustive list in no particular order:
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (class consciousness)
E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (really every article in this edited book is worth reading)
Eric Hobsbawm, the four-party long-19th century series
Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins, eds., Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology
Dennis Dworkin, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origin of Cultural Studies
Historians of gender: Lyndal Roper, Isabel Hull, Natalie Zemon Davis, Elizabeth Heineman, Bonnie G. Smith
Historians of postcolonialism: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Gyan Prakash, Partha Chatterjee

Foucalt has had a pretty large impact on both the humanities and social sciences. Every professor trained after ca. 1980 fits this description.

It sounds like it would make the most sense for you to only apply to programs that you are serious about attending. Why apply to programs that you have no desire to attend and move to, and feel like are not a good fit. That would end up being money spent without any return for you.
I think it depends on whether you really want to attend THIS program or if you feel it is more important to attend any program and begin sooner (sort of weighing the short term and long term outcomes for you.)
The counselor in me would also say it is not crazy and seems both logical and high-risk but with some expected positive outcome attached to the risk. I am doing the same whenever I apply again. It is more important for me to have a good fit and meet my research goals rather than start sooner with a program that does not match. I think of PhD programs like marriage in that way. Why marry a program if I know it won't be a good fit for me?

McCormick is an old adviser and Conant is on my diss committee, and of course the latter was the former's student. McC is fairly absolutist when it comes to languages (as befits a trained and ardent philologist), but Jonathan just took a student with German and little Latin, so there's possibly a bit of hope for you there? You should also consider learning Arabic.
The list of professors is solid! Others, like Kyle Harper, are not at institutions I can recommend attending in this job market - even PSU is a bit touch and go there. 
Just looking at recent acceptances, I don't see you having a good shot at any of these programs without a good MA or a Fullbright year, for what that's worth.

I feel a little silly now- this is such a great description and I'm not sure how I didn't get their on my own. Thanks!

@Sigaba Can't help but point out this wonderful homophone typo that's so apt from the perspective of the patriarchy.

@historygeek, agreed.  Put all of that away and just focus on your final papers.  They will take up more time than you think.

@historygeek, keep working to refine this summary. What can be added or taken out that will define your interests more succinctly? Can you parse the statement so that historians in other areas can quickly understand how your interests fit into larger contexts? Does your interest include the whole of Europe? The entire interval (which was when)? Are historical sources multi-disciplinary or is your approach to historical sources informed by other disciplines (or somewhere in between)? If you had to prioritize social history and cultural history, which is more important? (Are you a social historian who is looking at culture, or a cultural historian who is looking at society? How do you define "culture"?)
Were women's bodies the contested terrain among science, religion, and culture? What was at steak in this contest? How much authority did women exercise in this debate? Which group or groups started this "project"? What did participants seek to gain or stand to lose?
A caveat. It is highly likely that  if your research interests remain steady, every summary is going to look different. The benefit of keeping a physical journal is that you'll be able to look back and see how your interests change over time. 
A recommendation. Be as patient with yourself as you've ever been in this process. Nothing is written in stone nor will be for years.

I wrote it out this way, too!
My research interests lie in the intersections of gender, belief, and science in Europe during the Early to High Middle Ages. I have a particular interest in how the body functioned within these discourses in a broader geographical context. This is grounded in my more overarching interest in how cultural and scientific ideas migrated from place to place. Following along a similar methodological framework as Bartlett, I will use the cult of saints as a lens through which to view social and cultural history. At the same time, I will also following along avenues of scholarship of Katharine Park, approaching the body from a scientific perspective. In drawing from multi-disciplinary sources, including miracle accounts, literature, and art, I aim to marry science, religion, and culture in the context of the body. In exploring these themes through a transnational lens, I will exhibit the globality and multicultural nature of medieval Europe. 

 

Schools like Villanova, Boston College and Fordham would certainly be welcoming to this kind of background. Most of the Catholic Continental schools usually have space for students with your background and professors who would definitely be interested in math + religion (especially if your okay with it being stuff in the history of mathematics).

Among the great challenges you're going to face if you travel this road is accepting that "the past is another country" and that history moves in one direction.
Avoid the urge to draw straight lines from the ways gender and women's bodies are viewed today backwards to the times, places, and people that you encounter. The better you present the past in its own terms, the more credible you will be as an academic historian. 
If you're pre quals, always be studying for quals with the understanding that you'll never be ready for quals until years after taking quals. If even then. 

This is quite easy.  You're interested in the question of the body and how it functioned in the discourses of gender, beliefs, and public health in different geographical contexts. This is grounded in your interest in how cultural and scientific ideas of the body migrated from one place to another.  Physicians, magicians, and related people did travel, after all. 

there is no "average."  Some people can financially afford a lot of applications.  Some people have uncommon interests that they just can't apply widely as they'd like. Some people are constrained by their families' needs. Do what's best for YOU.

Do what you can to find points of connectivity among your interests. Consider the value of using 3" by 5" index cards. Use different colors for different themes. Write on the card one or two topic words. Try sorting the cards geographically and temporally. (Rows for geography, columns for time.) At first glance, the arranged cards may look like a smile with missing teeth. 

As you think of ways to bridge the teeth, you may spot unifying patterns and themes.
If you use a journal to record your steps, attempt not to lose sight of the task at hand -- defining the part of the forest that is at the periphery of your historian's vision and imagination. Getting too wrapped up on the writing may slow down the process by which things come into focus. (If things do come into focus, then you may profit from jotting down everything in that "aha!" moment.)

What ever you do, avoid the eighth dimension...

Hi all! Very happy to have stumbled upon this thread. I just graduated college in May, and am applying to PhD programs for Fall 2020. I'm very glad I took the year to prepare - I never thought just sending emails could be so stressful! I wrote my honors thesis on the voices of midwives in seventeenth-century London, focusing on the ways they held authority outside of the birthing room through an analysis of their presences in popular print and criminal trials. I'm hoping to focus in my grad work on women, gender, and sexuality as they relate to medicine and science in early modern Europe (and I'm open to Atlantic World as well).
I'm proficient in Spanish and have taken a year of Latin, and will have completed a year of Italian as well by the time I (hopefully!) enter grad school. For all those of you on the thread planning to learn Latin on your own, www.magistrula.com is a great resource for practicing all those nasty declensions
In terms of research, I'm very inspired by the work of people like Katharine Park, Paula Findlen, Mary Fissell, Carlo Ginzburg, and Londa Schiebinger in particular. I'm applying to 8 programs as of now, I would say about 4 of which feel like a really great fit. Currently, I'm trying to figure out how to email potential advisors whose work I find very interesting but divergent enough from my experience/immediate interests that I have to explain why I'm emailing them, lol.
Very happy to have some virtual people along for the ride with me! Best of luck everyone  
-Han

I almost spit out my wine just reading that the thesis is considered "dead" in your program.
Do investigate the outcomes of students who did the thesis and those who did not, and whether those who went onto the PhD did do a thesis.
Do know that teaching does take up a LOT of time. If you're thinking of teaching instead of the PhD, find out the licensing requirements of your prospective state.
Do know that not everyone is passionate about research as you are. Those who take the teaching internship are in the MA just to teach in 6-12, not much interest in the PhD.
If the PhD is what you want, then who cares what other students do?  Just find a supportive thesis adviser who will help you see this project through. One of the toughest things one has to learn in a PhD program is to move away from the pack of group-thinkers and fly solo.

I think that in the specific case of the OP, a thesis could send a signal of intentions and capabilities as the other option centers around teaching -- an activity that many (arguably too many) established academics consider inferior to researching and writing.
 

FWIW, I produced a master's report that ended up being, I'm told, longer than many thesis. (I've not had coffee this morning, I can't remember why I picked the report option over the thesis option.)
The report served as a writing sample that helped me get into another program when I 'transferred' and (to @AfricanusCrowther's point) the job I currently have, which is bean counting and writing reports about beans.
If you pick a good topic and frame it well, your thesis can help you get your head around what you want to do for a dissertation. On the other hand, you may end up with an advisor who may want you to pick a different topic for your dissertation for reasons that are vague, if not self serving. (But I'm not bitter.)
(I am rambling. Coffee needed.)
TLDR. The thesis can help you be a more competitive applicant for doctoral programs, provide invaluable experience performing research and crafting historiographically significant arguments, and help you in the job market if you leave the Ivory Tower. But I recommend that you pick a topic informed by the understanding that you may face obstacles if you want to use the thesis as a basis for a doctoral dissertation.

If you want to continue to the PhD, it is in your best interest to do a MA thesis. The fact that the thesis is "dead" at Villanova is, in my view, very strange.

You're only a month in already.  It's normal to be so surprised by how many topics can be explored.  That's the point of the coursework.  But by the end of this semester or the beginning of next, you should identify several potential topics for your thesis.  Read relevant literature for each and see what's most feasible for conducting original archival research.

My suggestions are to 1. Keep a journal of every historical question you find really  interesting so you have back-ups in case a project  isn’t working 2. let the availability of sources guide you to a feasible topic  3. Make time for reading primary sources unfiltered through secondary literature, so that you have the chance to find something really surprising and overlooked (although this last suggestion might not work for medieval/ancient European history).