maeisenb

Only time would be if you are going to publish in a field that the major journals and or publications would be in that language. Or it would help to broaden your talents for sure though, but not particularly necessary.

It completely depends on what you want to work with for your language requirements. If you want to do American history, then you usually won't have to know as many languages (1 or maybe 2 depending on your area of interest) as compared to say Ancient History (which would be Latin, Greek, French, and German just to start). Spanish won't really be that helpful unless you are working on something about Spain itself, Latin America or something more 20th century American. All of that being said, don't choose something based on language requirements. As Crater21 said above, you have to love what you are doing first and foremost and then go from there. You could use the language idea to tweak what you want to do within a given field, but definitely don't choose something just based on languages. So for example, if you are really into, say, Jewish immigration to the US at the turn of the 20th century and you would need Yiddish, but don't have that and know Italian really well you could instead focus on Italian immigration in the same period, while building the language skills you need for Yiddish and maybe that will get you interested in comparative accounts. If however you know Italian, but really love Soviet history without any knowledge of Russian, don't just pick something Italian for the sake of it. I hope those examples helped a bit even if they were completely made up...

While, I won't get into the fight above, I would like to point out that identity is not solely self selecting, since you are bounded by specific inherent backgrounds and a group also has to accept your identity. Just a thought on identity is all Also, I'm always in favor of explaining why you came to the decision you came to in the area that you want to study. Personalizing it always tends to help and makes you up front and honest about your goals.

I would think that this depends on what period of American history...

I definitely agree with this point for sure, although I go back to my original point which is if you want to do more religious or cultural history than you will be looking for different people. Michael McCormick would not be an ideal fit for those interests, since he does more grand sweeping economic histories. Do you have an idea of your particular interests within Late Antiquity?

Well if you have people who are going to write good recs for you in history and you can show that you have a good SOP then you have the grades and GRE at least. Just comes down to a crap shoot at that point really.

It completely depends on how who you ask as to what the chronological definitions of Late Antiquity are, but as for PhD programs it's much more about the person you want to work with and how they see the divide. If you don't want to do ancient history, then certainly don't apply to classics programs although some people there are Late Antique historians (e.g. Noel Lenski at Colorado). That being said, you need to slot yourself with the person who's geographic and thematic issue makes the most sense I would think. It sounds like you are more into religious history foremost and then geographical more Mediterranean based history than say France, England or somewhere like that. Thus, you don't want to necessarily work with someone at Princeton, since Peter Brown has just retired and the only person left doing that period is John Haldon who is an economic/political historian. I would suggest looking at Notre Dame with Tom Noble as a possibility (although he tends to run a little later and western). Yale has a guy who does Late Antique Egyptian stuff as well, but I can't remember his name offhand. Also, have you looked into Jewish history programs? There tend to be a lot more of those and I'm sure some of them have early historians with whom you might find a good fit.

Paleography is a really useful tool, so I would say go for it if you're going to look at a lot of documents. Especially Norman/Angevin England or Carolingian. You will really need it, if you're into that

I would say that if you're worried about languages, stay away from Classics, since then you will have to know Latin and Greek for sure. My question is this actually. Does anyone know of any programs that specialize in the early medieval field, but aren't top tier (Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, etc.)? So that they would create a better spread in applications? Thanks.