schlesinger1

I don't think the problem is your lack of social emphasis, so much as the whole lack of a good proposal. That you listed race, ethnicity, gender and culture as negatives really says it all. Bill O'Reilly probably needs an assistant, I'm sure he will pay you more than you'd ever make in academia. Besides, it's pretty apparent you don't even LIKE academia or all it entails, which means you're wasting your time here.

I think you better look again at the University of Toronto's list of faculty and ongoing dissertations. They are replete with words like race, ethnicity, gender, culture and all the other usual suspects.

I was not suggesting that methodology is not important to the study of history. Obviously it is...its also a part of the way I played basketball, fix my car, brush my teeth etc.. My point is that methodologies should not define history and should not influence a graduate school application. Yes, applicants should demonstrate a knowledge of different approaches, especially at the PhD level, but it is wrong and limiting to require certain approaches. If I have the grades to qualify, a good proposal, and a willing professor I should be eligible. And I don't care what anyone here says, I have been warned time and again that my projects are not social enough.
 

Yeah, as others have already stated, I am also uncomfortable with (1) Creating a clear definition for what the term historical entails and (2) Thinking that non-traditional history can have a diluting effect on the profession. We can all agree that history deals with events, people, movements, ideas, and processes that that occurred in the past. How we go about that is up for debate and negotiation across the historical profession. If we only considered the traditional forms of history, some of the greatest works of history that illuminated the stories of non-elite, non-white peoples would not have been created. We must all make sure that our stories are rooted in the past but otherwise theories from other disciplines provide excellent frameworks through which to create new stories. We have gone a long way from the traditional histories advocated for by the empiricists and the results of the historiographical debates of the last several decades have done a lot to help that. Lastly, there is a major difference between using political theories and being a political scientist, using sociological theories and being a sociologist, and using cultural theories and being an anthropologist. We are rooted in the past and that is what makes us unique compared to other disciplines. We need to top thinking about different versions of history as a binary of legitimate and illegitimate. Rather we must think of the various historical approaches as puzzle pieces, each depicting a different aspect of humankind's story.

This is not only the result of the rise of social or cultural histories, the linguistic turn, post-modernism-structuralism-colonialism. I have the same problem with International Relations...its studied in history departments, International Relations departments, and Political Sciences. Yet it is difficult to find a history department that will allow you to study late-antique history....that has to be studied in Classics (which isn't interested in it) or Divinity.
 
I think we need to develop a more specific notion of history and to have history departments enforce that definition. Until then history departments will be open to anyone studying any topic that has any relation to history.

For what it's worth I do find that ignoring the nature of one of the most powerful forces of change in history to be more than a little silly.

I don't think military history is out of fashion, I think the traditional way of studying it is. If we study war as battle to battle, tactic to tactic that is no longer fashionable, but I also feel it doesnt do the history justice. If we work under the assumption that historical actors experienced life in complex ways like we do--that their conception of everything revolves around a network of competing, intersecting, contested and negotiated ideologies, experiences and beliefs--how can we not study more than traditional history? What seems silly to me as that we need to break history into so many categories, when history in my mind should encompass them all. Makes me think we historians like the easier task of compartmentalization, as most humans do.

I study war and conflict, and I can tell you that when i look at the Vietnam War, for example, there's no way I can do cut and dry military history to get the richness I want in my research. How can we look at Vietnam without looking at the war as a crucible for the creation of gender identities, as well as a place where these ideas begin to crumble? When the female veterans, like nurses, experienced gender discrimination and hostility, yet their story is removed from the larger narrative? When Vietnamese women played such a huge role in the conflict, and we're some of its greatest victims? How can we not look at the environment as part of the soldiers' experience? How can we strip it of politics, which affected military tactics and battles? How can we not look at class when the majority of the grunts were working-class or poor, or age when the average soldier in the field was 19? How can we not look at race, when the civil rights movement began galvanizing african Americans against the war and many black soldiers felt commonality with the Vietnamese more than their white military commanders? How can we not look at the sensory aspect, the womp-womp of helicopters and buzzing of bullets and booming of artillery? Or the medical aspect--the medical apparatus was extremely well articulated during the war, and this colored the experience of soldiers and personnel.

I categorize myself as a social, political and global historian because our discipline still asks for that kind of categorization. But I don't believe that history is easy to categorize, nor do I think it should be. That's my long answer.

It's quite thoughtful and considerate of candidates to withdraw applications from programs that they are confident they won't attend, but be careful not to be too hasty. Remember that your primary responsibility is to yourself, and you owe yourself the opportunity to explore all possibilities. 

Congrats ! Good things happen when you least expect

Hi all - I got news today that I was accepted off the waitlist at UNC-Greensboro and I'm going to accept. A month ago I thought that the waitlist was a polite way to say no but I'm just super excited today. I posted this on the results board but I wanted to share this on the history board in case any other history hopefuls wondered the same thing about being waitlisted. I don't think I was a stellar undergrad or M.A. student (9 other programs agreed with that statement). I'm pretty sure it is my "fit" that got me on the waitlist and eventually accepted.
Anyway - now that I got the great news I want to tell everyone else that might be on a waitlist not to give up hope (I did) because you just don't know, I definitely wasn't expecting this today. Good luck to everyone else out there. I gotta go buy a UNCG t-shirt now

I'd say contact them at the beginning of April if you have still not heard anything. That should still give you plenty of time to decide where to go.

Hi, I would love to help you with your thesis. I think you are headed in the right direction, but you may want to look into the British Columbian peanut butter and jelly shortage. There are a few documents that discuss this particular issue on JSTOR. Let me know what you find and I will provide more in-depth feedback.

Hi there, this board is not meant to help undergraduate students do their homework. This sounds like a question that should be directed to your professor or your TA. 

Entirely false.

Sorry if I'm about to ask a stupid question, but what does your undergraduate program's prestige have to do with anything?

This is much better! That is because it is worlds different. It shows you know some of the ways things are, that you've bothered to do your own research, and that you have specific questions that need to be addressed. This should have been your original post!

That seems a little unfair.  Certainly I wasn't intending to use this as my only means of research on schools (that would be silly).  I have already identified a number of programs/people I would be interested in working with in my area (Peter Gordon at Harvard, Warren Breckman at Penn, Martin Jay at UCB, Alan Megill at UVA, Samuel Moyn at Columbia, etc.)  But it's a little scary that many of these places have only one person in my area of interest, since you never know what can happen with faculty movement, especially since some of them are nearing retirement age.  Also, since I'm coming from a BA in philosophy, I know less about how things stand in history, so I was looking to see if I could maybe learn a thing or two from people who may be more informed about the topic than I am.  This was not meant to be in replacement of actually doing my own research, but in addition to it, since there may very well be programs that I haven't heard of that do have strengths in this area, especially since most of the programs I have identified are very, very competitive.  Additionally, intellectual history is kind of an odd field even within history and is not discussed much in these boards, so I thought it couldn't hurt to bring it up.  Sorry if that was a mistake.

Ok, this is going to sound very harsh but: If you can't figure this out on your own, grad school isn't for you.

There is some outdated and some overgeneralized information in the post above. 
 
 
This may be the "most important question," but where you go definitely matters. It matters a great deal on the job market -- more than anyone is really led to suspect. More on that below.
 
There are troubling trends like MOOCs that, many people think, will  restructure much of education in a way that will reduce the number of tenure track hires.
 
There are troubling trends like adjunctification, but MOOCs have been proven to be a flash in the pan. The attrition rates are atrocious, meaning they're not likely to substantially replace credit programs at non-elite universities, and they lack the ability to facilitate connections that more elite universities provide. In short, getting worked up over them is very 2012.
 
 
People freak out when they see numbers so terrible from places like Chicago and Harvard, but you ought to keep a few things in mind: these are huge programs with a vast diversity of people. Quite a few won't be looking for academic jobs, will leave academia for personal reasons, or will place constraints on their academic job search like location that will make it impossible for them to find a quality job in their field.*
 
Of course, you may now wonder why I said where you go matters if this is the case. It's because the most elite programs don't necessarily have the best placement record, either. It's a shame no one's done this for history (the data may be too large), but someone put together a placement ranking for German Studies recently, and it's amazing how terribly Harvard and Chicago come out despite their reputations:
 
http://pankisseskafka.com/2014/02/24/adjunct-nate-silver-the-real-placement-rates-of-german-phd-programs/
 
I've seen data on Cornell PhDs in history going back to 1989, and most have pretty solid jobs. Are they all tenured at Stanford? No, but most are not struggling in precarious adjunct positions, either.
 
tl;dr the most elite institutions may not place the best on the academic job market, and aren't great indicators of that market (but will place well in nonacademic jobs* so you don't have to fear for your life). That said, a lot the dreary data is unquestionably true when it comes to institutions much lower down the chain than maybe the top 25-50 or so.
 
 
I see many people who graduate from elite programs doing postdocs for a year or more before landing a job. Yes, it sucks moving every year to a new postdoc if necessary, but it's nowhere near adjunct hell. Again, most graduates from elite programs who wind up in the least desirable work situations are constrained by family ties to a certain area or something. You won't do well if you can't deal with the notion of conducting a national or international job search. This has more to do with your personal situation and preferences than the PhD. 
 
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Am I saying I think going and getting a PhD is an unquestionably fantastic idea? No, I'm just questioning some of the logic above based on the data I've seen and on my experience. In general I'd say it's important to go to the best program possible -- but to make sure that program isn't overselling its elitism. Bad numbers coming out of Chicago are not necessarily indictative of the field as a whole.
 
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*One thing worth noting is that there's higher attrition from academia among people who got their PhDs from the most highly ranked (top 5 or so) institutions. Maybe their life expectations (paycheck, location) were higher. Quite a few have jobs that are better compensating than academic history (in finance, consulting, etc.) Yes, there are people from Harvard who have been on the adjunct track too long, too. But a Harvard PhD will take you places other than adjuncting at a community college if you wind up stuck doing that when it's not what you want to do.

Are you saying I haven't heard of Mackinder, Mahan, Haushofer, Clausewitz, Rumsfeld and Sun-Tzu? How dare you!

Wow, do people forget that there are other human beings at the other end or what? Sometimes mistakes happen, but that is human nature. You do your best to fix them but sometimes you're just out of luck. Nobody's out to screw anyone. Honest mistakes happen. Sucks when it happens, but that doesn't make those people arrogant.

I'm confused by people who knowingly spend lots of money on schools they consider bad fits then complain about the cost. No one is forcing applicants to apply to many schools. IMO in any app seasons you should front load the process and do the work of scoping our faculty and contacting pois or current grads to figure out fit BEFORE you punk down all that money. It makes no sense to spend a bunch of money, then figure out fit after you get acceptances. You should already have some idea going in.

I'll never get people who apply to a top ranked school just to find out if they're "good enough" rather than because of fit. These are inevitably the people who get all butt hurt and indignant after they get rejected - "I applied here not because I'm interested, but because I wanted a little self esteem boost! How dare you not give me my self-esteem boost!" Yikes.

Some really don't even seem to understand that in any app process the most likely result is rejection. You should know that going in! You don't get to demand your money back just because the result is not to your liking! What do you bet the OP would've been fine spending that $100 if they'd gotten in? A lot of rationalizing going on here...

Supply and demand is not an inherently capitalist dynamic. And "I'm no MBA" is an excellent qualification.

I'm no MBA but it seems that, even as an extreme anti-capitalist, you embrace the notion of supply and demand.

Just a heads up, we're expecting 6-10 inches of snow, but perhaps a lot more on Wes night and Thursday this week.  I'd still lay money on Princeton informing this week but Snowmagddon is really disruptive.  And it could really stop now.  Please.

Thinking about going to bed so Monday will get here sooner.