Applications 2019

[Sigaba]

IMO, there should not be a "hook" of any kind in anything an aspiring graduate student writes. A "hook" for its own sake can come across as inauthentic. 

Instead, your SOP should be a well-written genuine expression of who you are, where you want to go, and how you want to get there.

15 hours ago, Balleu said:

How does one convincingly answer the SOP question about "your reasons for pursuing graduate study?" The obvious answer is that you pursue graduate study in history because you want an academic career in history. But doesn't that obvious answer feel exceptionally... obvious? 

IME, if a question phrased for historians has an "obvious answer," there's a good chance the question is being misread and/or the answer is ill considered and/or needs development and elaboration.

If you want to be a professional academic historian, the next question is what kind? Do you want to be a rock star public intellectual? Do you want to be the rock of a department? Do you want to a grey man or woman whose influence won't be appreciated until well after you've left the scene? Do you want to mentor and to teach? 

Someone  is going to interpret the question as the most important one and will be motivated to nail the answer by providing a vision of her personal professional growth, career objectives, and impact on the profession. Why not spend a couple of minutes/hours/days figuring out how to phrase a response that will be as noteworthy?

[L13]

There's really no template for SOPs. Mine didn't have anything resembling a hook because I thought all the opening source quotes and attempts to personalize one's research that I'd seen in sample SOPs were contrived and too reminiscent of college application essays.

So I submitted a pretty direct and dry description of my interests and ideas. It was well received and got me where I needed to go.

Again, this is a matter of personal preference, not an objective criterion. For what it's worth, @historygeek, I've only skimmed one of your drafts, but it didn't strike me as boring or stylistically deficient in any way.

Edited July 9, 2018 by L13

[hellocharlie]

50 minutes ago, psstein said:

I don't know much about them outside their placements, and in a few cases, departmental culture. I would suspect that French historians do very well at Minnesota (Shank is outstanding). Scandanavian historians likely do okay, as well. I would not go there for history of science. Their faculty are good, but the program is a total wreck, scattered across 3-4 departments with little funding.

In many of these places, I know more about the problems vs. the good things. It's just the nature of the field. People are more likely to complain (esp. over drinks) than they are to bring the good up.

Your comment "I can't draw conclusions on some other areas" is one of the large flaws of the major extant study. It only focuses on American history. Honestly, the best way to find out about programs is to try to hunt down recent graduates' dissertations. It's a bit time-consuming, but it can be worth it.

Thanks for sharing. 

I am considering the school for a non-Western focus. It has a surprisingly high number of reputable faculty in my area, but I'm a bit unsure about how my academic career would turn out afterwards. Their graduates seem to end up in some high-up places (Derek Peterson, I'm looking at you), but then it seems like the opposite outcome could very easily happen.

Edited July 9, 2018 by hellocharlie

[OHSP]

By "hook" all I mean is: an interesting academic question. Not a quote, an inspirational moment, or anything like that (I'm not American so I'm not familiar with college essays). This "hook" thing is literally just something to demonstrate that you can formulate interesting (and specific!) academic questions that go a few steps beyond "I want to explore the intersections of x and y", so that you're somewhere more like "[field] historians have been so focused on x that they haven't paid enough attention to y, I want to focus in on y because it opens up these 2 new questions" etc. You'll stand out if you can ask questions that stick with your reader. 

[historygeek]

I've taken a couple of hours to try to come up with something more interesting, but I'm honestly not sure that they're effective or well-written. Obviously, I don't want to get my applications tossed, but I don't want to sound contrived or like I'm applying to an undergrad institution. 

1) Once proverbially confined to tenement buildings and shirtwaist factories, second-generation immigrant women yearned for increased independence as the twentieth century progressed. The desire for autonomy conflicted with tradition and obligation, as dictated by American culture and ethnic constraints. In brief, my research interests concern the daily lives of Italian-, Greek-, and Jewish-American women and the expression of immigrant identity, explored vis-a-vis sexuality, fashion, beauty, food desire, and involvement in social movements.

2) “Because of these traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do,” posits the protagonist of Stein’s Fiddler on the Roof. The musical’s themes of maintaining tradition and cultural obligations in a time of restless change, shown through a focus on young women seeking independence, were written as a way to exhibit life in an imperial Russian shtetl, but found themselves in urban America during the twentieth century. Second-generation immigrant women yearning for independence found themselves in a conundrum, lusting for autonomy while feeling tethered to tradition and obligation. As a doctoral student, I want to explore the daily lives of Italian-, Greek-, and Jewish-American women, exploring the expression of their identities vis-a-vis sexuality, fashion, beauty, food desire, and involvement of social movements. (This is more of a risky one that I probably won't go with, but was a different approach that I experimented with. If I were to go with this style, it would be a primary source quote.)

3) To what extent did acculturation and ethnic obligation play a role in the daily lives of second-generation immigrant women in urban America? How did the broader American society and culture react to female presence in public space? At the doctoral level, I want to explore these questions with Italian-, Greek-, and Jewish-American women as a focal point.

Edited July 9, 2018 by historygeek

[Balleu]

6 hours ago, Sigaba said:

IME, if a question phrased for historians has an "obvious answer," there's a good chance the question is being misread and/or the answer is ill considered and/or needs development and elaboration.

If you want to be a professional academic historian, the next question is what kind? Do you want to be a rock star public intellectual? Do you want to be the rock of a department? Do you want to a grey man or woman whose influence won't be appreciated until well after you've left the scene? Do you want to mentor and to teach? 

Someone  is going to interpret the question as the most important one and will be motivated to nail the answer by providing a vision of her personal professional growth, career objectives, and impact on the profession. Why not spend a couple of minutes/hours/days figuring out how to phrase a response that will be as noteworthy?

Thank you. I have some sense of who I want to be as a historian (The Storyteller, as described in Bill Cronon's 2013 AHA Presidential Address), but it can certainly be refined. Thinking about what kind of historian I want to become is also a useful exercise in examining fit with a particular institution. Do they like to produce the sorts of historians I want to become?

So far, I've written one SOP (for Wisconsin, unsurprisingly), and I think I'll stop there for the moment. I need to let the experience of writing that one settle in my mind before I start another. If anyone is interested, I'm happy to share a link. @historygeek and @TsarandProphet, I'll PM you.

Edited July 10, 2018 by Balleu
Adding my progress.

[psstein]

47 minutes ago, Balleu said:

Thank you. I have some sense of who I want to be as a historian (The Storyteller, as described in Bill Cronon's 2013 AHA Presidential Address), but it can certainly be refined. Thinking about what kind of historian I want to become is also a useful exercise in examining fit with a particular institution. Do they like to produce the sorts of historians I want to become?

So far, I've written one SOP (for Wisconsin, unsurprisingly), and I think I'll stop there for the moment. I need to let the experience of writing that one settle in my mind before I start another. If anyone is interested, I'm happy to share a link. @historygeek and @TsarandProphet, I'll PM you.

Please PM me a link.

[Sigaba]

4 hours ago, Balleu said:

Thank you. I have some sense of who I want to be as a historian (The Storyteller, as described in Bill Cronon's 2013 AHA Presidential Address), but it can certainly be refined. Thinking about what kind of historian I want to become is also a useful exercise in examining fit with a particular institution. Do they like to produce the sorts of historians I want to become?

So far, I've written one SOP (for Wisconsin, unsurprisingly), and I think I'll stop there for the moment. I need to let the experience of writing that one settle in my mind before I start another. If anyone is interested, I'm happy to share a link. @historygeek and @TsarandProphet, I'll PM you.

For better and for worse, there's a saying that history professors like to replicate themselves.

I recommend extreme caution before labeling oneself as a "storyteller." You may put that in a SoP thinking that the reader will envision a BTDT like Cronon when she could also remember that Ambrose told stories, too.

3 hours ago, historygeek said:

How does this sound? 

ALCON-- please exercise great care in how you support each other when it comes to writing SOPs. In some quarters, incorporating detailed guidance into one's own work can cross the line. A safer way to approach the task is to give general recommendations. That is, recommend revisions so that a SOP is more X or less Y without saying how to achieve those objectives.

[Tigla]

2 hours ago, Sigaba said:

ALCON-- please exercise great care in how you support each other when it comes to writing SOPs. In some quarters, incorporating detailed guidance into one's own work can cross the line. A safer way to approach the task is to give general recommendations. That is, recommend revisions so that a SOP is more X or less Y without saying how to achieve those objectives.

1

I may have crossed this line, which started this problematic exercise.

@historygeek As you have seen from my earlier post to this one, there are many differing opinions on how to write an SOP and what is necessary content for one. You have put a lot of effort into writing SOPs this early in the process, which is very helpful and will limit the stress later in the process. I, however, highly recommend taking a step back at this moment. Deadlines are not for another 5 months (roughly). Take a couple weeks and get away from the application material before you start making major changes and adjustments. When I edit and proofread, I try to give myself at least 3 days away from my work before I  begin to edit. A small amount of time away refreshes your eyes, but also gives you a moment to critically think about your work.

[historygeek]

8 hours ago, Sigaba said:

For better and for worse, there's a saying that history professors like to replicate themselves.

I recommend extreme caution before labeling oneself as a "storyteller." You may put that in a SoP thinking that the reader will envision a BTDT like Cronon when she could also remember that Ambrose told stories, too.

ALCON-- please exercise great care in how you support each other when it comes to writing SOPs. In some quarters, incorporating detailed guidance into one's own work can cross the line. A safer way to approach the task is to give general recommendations. That is, recommend revisions so that a SOP is more X or less Y without saying how to achieve those objectives.

Yes, this is a good point. I’ll keep this more in mind as I go.

[TMP]

21 hours ago, hellocharlie said:

Thanks for sharing. 

I am considering the school for a non-Western focus. It has a surprisingly high number of reputable faculty in my area, but I'm a bit unsure about how my academic career would turn out afterwards. Their graduates seem to end up in some high-up places (Derek Peterson, I'm looking at you), but then it seems like the opposite outcome could very easily happen.

Note that Derek Peterson graduated in 2000 and taught at College of NJ first before moving to Michigan.  It takes time and interesting projects to move up in the ranks. Do your due diligence.

[psstein]

8 hours ago, TMP said:

Note that Derek Peterson graduated in 2000 and taught at College of NJ first before moving to Michigan.  It takes time and interesting projects to move up in the ranks. Do your due diligence.

Just to tack onto this, look where most of the "big names" in your respective field have taught. With a few notable exceptions, most of them have worked at more than one institution.

[enby_qrs]

Hello! Long-time lurker here. I thought this may be a good place to make some connections with people in the same boat as myself and get some advice from the more seasoned veterans. 

I just graduated a year early with a Bachelor degree in Art History, and I am looking to apply to Masters and PhD programs in the same field; the art history forum is much less active than this one, so I thought I would go ahead and post here instead. My research interests include how digital technologies expand upon art's understood capabilities of shifting one's perception/subjective reality (i.e. James Turrell); the philosophy of perception, with regard to thinkers such as Foucault and Merleau-Ponty; and the significance of psychoanalytic concepts in art history and literary criticism.

I will be applying to the following schools, but this list is by no means final. I am more than open to feedback.

-University of Chicago: Ina Blom
-CUNY: Claire Bishop; David Joselit 
-Columbia MODA: Janet Kraynak
-Princeton: Brigid Doherty
-Yale: Pamela Lee

 

[Sigaba]

2 hours ago, WRS said:

Hello! Long-time lurker here. I thought this may be a good place to make some connections with people in the same boat as myself and get some advice from the more seasoned veterans. 

I just graduated a year early with a Bachelor degree in Art History, and I am looking to apply to Masters and PhD programs in the same field; the art history forum is much less active than this one, so I thought I would go ahead and post here instead. My research interests include how digital technologies expand upon art's understood capabilities of shifting one's perception/subjective reality (i.e. James Turrell); the philosophy of perception, with regard to thinkers such as Foucault and Merleau-Ponty; and the significance of psychoanalytic concepts in art history and literary criticism.

I will be applying to the following schools, but this list is by no means final. I am more than open to feedback.

-University of Chicago: Ina Blom
-CUNY: Claire Bishop; David Joselit 
-Columbia MODA: Janet Kraynak
-Princeton: Brigid Doherty
-Yale: Pamela Lee

 

Have you checked with Chicago to make sure that Blom can supervise masters and doctoral candidates?

Also, given where the United States is today with people across the political spectrum picking their own facts, how do you see your scholarship influencing the ongoing debate over "truth"?

IRT your use of psychoanalysis, please keep in mind that there may be opportunities to learn (if not not apply) theories informed by clinical work and developments within the profession.

Finally, will your focus on digital technologies include study of AIs and ASIs as artists? 

[OHSP]

6 hours ago, WRS said:

Hello! Long-time lurker here. I thought this may be a good place to make some connections with people in the same boat as myself and get some advice from the more seasoned veterans. 

I just graduated a year early with a Bachelor degree in Art History, and I am looking to apply to Masters and PhD programs in the same field; the art history forum is much less active than this one, so I thought I would go ahead and post here instead. My research interests include how digital technologies expand upon art's understood capabilities of shifting one's perception/subjective reality (i.e. James Turrell); the philosophy of perception, with regard to thinkers such as Foucault and Merleau-Ponty; and the significance of psychoanalytic concepts in art history and literary criticism.

I will be applying to the following schools, but this list is by no means final. I am more than open to feedback.

-University of Chicago: Ina Blom
-CUNY: Claire Bishop; David Joselit 
-Columbia MODA: Janet Kraynak
-Princeton: Brigid Doherty
-Yale: Pamela Lee

 

I understand wanting to run things by people, but (speaking as someone whose partner is a practicing artist and a senior lecturer in art history, and as someone who has worked with a lot of art historians outside of my own PhD) art history and history have very little in common as disciplinary fields and I don't know how useful anyone here can really be. Your work sounds interesting and it sounds like you have a sense of who you might like to work with, so I would start emailing those people and getting a sense of whether you might be a good fit for their programs. 

[enby_qrs]

9 hours ago, OHSP said:

I understand wanting to run things by people, but (speaking as someone whose partner is a practicing artist and a senior lecturer in art history, and as someone who has worked with a lot of art historians outside of my own PhD) art history and history have very little in common as disciplinary fields and I don't know how useful anyone here can really be. Your work sounds interesting and it sounds like you have a sense of who you might like to work with, so I would start emailing those people and getting a sense of whether you might be a good fit for their programs. 

Ok, thank you, I'll do that. I was unsure if I should post in here due to the difference in discipline, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Hopefully the art history forum becomes more active.

[psstein]

14 hours ago, OHSP said:

I understand wanting to run things by people, but (speaking as someone whose partner is a practicing artist and a senior lecturer in art history, and as someone who has worked with a lot of art historians outside of my own PhD) art history and history have very little in common as disciplinary fields and I don't know how useful anyone here can really be.

This is a very good point. In March, my (now-former) advisor recommended that I attend a Newberry symposium that art historians organized in collaboration with a well-known historian of science and a lesser-known intellectual historian.

It was a poor choice. Art historians are interested in very different sorts of questions from historians of science, historians of the book, etc. I sat there for the better part of three days wondering "why the hell am I here?"

[Balleu]

I've had several POIs generously offer to chat via phone/Skype in the fall as I prepare my application. I've seen some older threads with  great advice on preparing for interviews. However, a phone call in the fall seems to me more designed for me to ask questions of them, rather than vice versa. Has anyone gone through similar pre-application phone calls? Do you have any advice for those calls in addition to the advice I've found on interviews?

[historygeek]

Happy summer halfway point everyone! 

I'm gearing up to take the GRE on Saturday-- my scores on practice tests have been stagnant 166-170V, 154-156Q, and 5-5.5AW. I've also gotten drafts of all of my SOPs done-- I still have to write my personal statements for UC Davis and Michigan. I'm going back to start my senior year one month from tomorrow. 

I hope everyone else's summers are similarly productive!

[TMP]

20 hours ago, Balleu said:

I've had several POIs generously offer to chat via phone/Skype in the fall as I prepare my application. I've seen some older threads with  great advice on preparing for interviews. However, a phone call in the fall seems to me more designed for me to ask questions of them, rather than vice versa. Has anyone gone through similar pre-application phone calls? Do you have any advice for those calls in addition to the advice I've found on interviews?

Treat them as informational interviews.  Also be open with your interests.  Make sure you do all of your homework. Have questions ready.

 

And... send a thank you note afterward. V. important.

[urbanhistorynerd]

Hey guys! Can you tell me what you think about my research statement? This is an excerpt from my Statement of Purpose. In this I am trying to explain my research project:

 

            In my doctoral work I want to examine class inequality and the political economy of urban and suburban spaces on a metropolitan scale since the 1970s. Suburbia rapidly underwent social, economic, political, and spatial changes in the period between 1970 and 2000s. They became much more socially, racially, ethnically diverse, incubated conservative, centrist, and leftist political and social movements, and massive real-estate investment and development dwarfed the Levittown’s of the postwar period, creating sprawling metropolitan areas that are now the juggernaut of the American economy. My project seeks to examine suburban poverty and metropolitan inequality, focusing on black suburbanization and poor Americans shifting identities and interactions with government in metropolitan areas. The rise of the carceral state and mass incarceration coupled with African Americans increasingly living in suburbs is best observed in what happened in Ferguson, MO, in 2014, where after police killed an 18-year-old black man, two weeks of unrest ensued. Examined in a historical perspective, the situation in Ferguson had roots decades earlier during what the Los Angeles Times calls the “suburbanization of poverty.” I contend that the shift in suburban places since the 1970s have largely shaped race relations in America. By examining the history of these places since 1970s using city and county archives and records, local histories, and the National Archives, my work hopes to delineate suburban poverty and metropolitan inequality, while also analyzing gender, ethnicity, and transnational capitalism. I situate my work in the burgeoning new literature amongst scholars such as Jackie Wang, Lily Geismer, and Emily Straus, while also following earlier urban historians such as Thomas Sugrue and Kevin Kruse. My work seeks to answer fundamental questions about how American metropolitan areas have developed since the 1970s.

 

 

[Sigaba]

32 minutes ago, urbanhistorynerd said:

Hey guys! Can you tell me what you think about my research statement? This is an excerpt from my Statement of Purpose. In this I am trying to explain my research project:

 

            In my doctoral work I want to examine class inequality and the political economy of urban and suburban spaces on a metropolitan scale since the 1970s. Suburbia rapidly underwent social, economic, political, and spatial changes in the period between 1970 and 2000s. They became much more socially, racially, ethnically diverse, incubated conservative, centrist, and leftist political and social movements, and massive real-estate investment and development dwarfed the Levittown’s of the postwar period, creating sprawling metropolitan areas that are now the juggernaut of the American economy. My project seeks to examine suburban poverty and metropolitan inequality, focusing on black suburbanization and poor Americans shifting identities and interactions with government in metropolitan areas. The rise of the carceral state and mass incarceration coupled with African Americans increasingly living in suburbs is best observed in what happened in Ferguson, MO, in 2014, where after police killed an 18-year-old black man, two weeks of unrest ensued. Examined in a historical perspective, the situation in Ferguson had roots decades earlier during what the Los Angeles Times calls the “suburbanization of poverty.” I contend that the shift in suburban places since the 1970s have largely shaped race relations in America. By examining the history of these places since 1970s using city and county archives and records, local histories, and the National Archives, my work hopes to delineate suburban poverty and metropolitan inequality, while also analyzing gender, ethnicity, and transnational capitalism. I situate my work in the burgeoning new literature amongst scholars such as Jackie Wang, Lily Geismer, and Emily Straus, while also following earlier urban historians such as Thomas Sugrue and Kevin Kruse. My work seeks to answer fundamental questions about how American metropolitan areas have developed since the 1970s.

 

 

• Do your sentences need to be structured as they are?
• Are you defining your terms?
• Are you editorializing?
• Does a contemporaneous event such as  meet the standard for historical study? (Is contemporary history possible?
  • Was Michael Brown "a black man" or a young adult?
  • Was the cause-effect pattern what you imply? (Did the civil unrest follow Brown's killing or did it follow the grand jury's decision not to issue an indictment?)
  • What does it mean that you're using a journalistic analysis of an event from a paper based in Los Angeles?
• How does your work follow Sugrue's since he compellingly argues that the shifts you describe took place between the 1940s and the 1960s?
• Does your proposed topic reflect a realistic understanding of research at the graduate level?
• Exactly what are the fundamental questions that your work will address? (This is a question about historiography.)

 

[urbanhistorynerd]

20 minutes ago, Sigaba said:

• Do your sentences need to be structured as they are?
• Are you defining your terms?
• Are you editorializing?
• Does a contemporaneous event such as  meet the standard for historical study? (Is contemporary history possible?
  • Was Michael Brown "a black man" or a young adult?
  • Was the cause-effect pattern what you imply? (Did the civil unrest follow Brown's killing or did it follow the grand jury's decision not to issue an indictment?)
  • What does it mean that you're using a journalistic analysis of an event from a paper based in Los Angeles?
• How does your work follow Sugrue's since he compellingly argues that the shifts you describe took place between the 1940s and the 1960s?
• Does your proposed topic reflect a realistic understanding of research at the graduate level?
• Exactly what are the fundamental questions that your work will address? (This is a question about historiography.)

 

Thanks for the look through.

1 and 2: I need to heavily workshop my sentence structure and word choices for more brevity and conciseness. How would you recommend going over them?

3: If I am, I'm not trying to as much as I am attempting to interpret based on the very little research I've conducted. I'm providing my reasoning with the hope to find evidence to delineate my argument. Do you think mentioning a recent event confuses the statement? Should I substitute it with a broader, non-specific theme or change?

 4: The buildup to Ferguson started decades earlier, with more African Americans moving into suburban areas and out of cities. White flight occurred in older suburbs, and industrial restructuring heavily impacted the economy of older industrial based suburbs (such as Ferguson). With wealth and jobs leaving (occurring the 1970s and persisting through the late 20th century) suburbs became centers of poverty but also conduits of racial tensions. Although being a black suburb, Ferguson's city administration, and especially its public safety departments were mostly white. Property, means of productions, storefronts, etc, were largely in the hands of white and Asian owners, who largely lived outside of the suburb. Any black political power was also challenged by a white, conservative dominated state legislature, and divisive metropolitan politics stopped the flowing of crucial resources and capital to the city. As a result, Ferguson became a largely black space policed and administrated by whites. Coupled with declining tax revenue, lack of quality institutions like schools, libraries, colleges, etc, the city came to represent the culmination of decades of social, economic, and political change in American suburbs since 1970. I think what I was trying to do with that case is show how important the historical buildup of all this is - that the polarization of metropolitan areas begun in the 1970s and exacerbated racial tensions in different ways than in the 1950s and 1960s.

5: It follows it by providing an analysis of industrial restructuring in the 1970s as opposed to what Sugrue looked at in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. I'm arguing that American industrial suburbs experienced the shifts that urban centers felt decades after, especially during the recessions and economic transformations of the 1970s. Capital flight and industrial restructuring sent factories to the Sun-Belt, American-Mexican borderland, and suburban areas, but in the 1970s these factories began to shutter, causing widespread economic decline in suburban areas. We see these especially in the Metro Detroit area (where most of my undergraduate research took place), where previously industrialized suburbs such as Roseville, Warren, Oakpark, and River Rouge prospered from capital flight, suffered in the 1970s and 1980s when the economic recessions happened. Large swaths of those suburbs have majority black populations, and most of the people hold lower paying service sector positions. They also under white controlled administrations and police forces. I agree with Sugrue, but what I'm doing is emphasizing another major shift urban/suburban history, one beginning in the 1970s.

6: Can you explain a little more what you mean by this?

7: Always a good question to keep asking myself. Some of the questions I ask:

• What processes shaped black suburbanization starting in the 1970s, and how did the existing suburban communities respond to black migration from the city to the suburb?
• How did the rise of mass incarceration and punitive policing shape African American experiences in suburban areas?
• What forces create racial inequality in American metropolitan areas?
• What federal, state, and local policies exacerbated race relations in American suburbs?
• How does neoliberalism benefit from the suburbanization of poverty? What role does racial capitalism play in this? How do corporations and individuals profit from suburban poverty?
• In what ways were the spatial landscape of suburban spaces change as racial and class demographics shifted since the 1970s?

 

[Sigaba]

3 minutes ago, urbanhistorynerd said:

Thanks for the look through.

1 and 2: I need to heavily workshop my sentence structure and word choices for more brevity and conciseness. How would you recommend going over them?

Compare your writing to the prose of writers you find effective. Develop an understanding of ways you can close the distance. At present, your writing is a challenge to read, IMO.

3: If I am, I'm not trying to as much as I am attempting to interpret based on the very little research I've conducted. I'm providing my reasoning with the hope to find evidence to delineate my argument. Do you think mentioning a recent event confuses the statement? Should I substitute it with a broader, non-specific theme or change?

I recommend that you go through your statement and identify editorial comments and then rephrase or remove them.

 4: The buildup to Ferguson started decades earlier, with more African Americans moving into suburban areas and out of cities. 

An alternative explanation is that Darren Wilson was a poorly trained police officer. The point here is that you're offering a historical interpretation of a recent event without demonstrating a command of the available information. Consequently, your argument comes across as teleological, an approach to history that may not work well for you in graduate school.

5: It follows it by providing an analysis of industrial restructuring in the 1970s as opposed to what Sugrue looked at in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. I'm arguing that American industrial suburbs experienced the shifts that urban centers felt decades after, especially during the recessions and economic transformations of the 1970s. Capital flight and industrial restructuring sent factories to the Sun-Belt, American-Mexican borderland, and suburban areas, but in the 1970s these factories began to shutter, causing widespread economic decline in suburban areas. We see these especially in the Metro Detroit area (where most of my undergraduate research took place), where previously industrialized suburbs such as Roseville, Warren, Oakpark, and River Rouge prospered from capital flight, suffered in the 1970s and 1980s when the economic recessions happened. Large swaths of those suburbs have majority black populations, and most of the people hold lower paying service sector positions. They also under white controlled administrations and police forces. I agree with Sugrue, but what I'm doing is emphasizing another major shift urban/suburban history, one beginning in the 1970s.

IMO, you may be over reaching here. I recommend that for your own benefit, you spend more time with the historiography of the topic and the time period.

6: Can you explain a little more what you mean by this?

You are describing a scope of work that an accomplished historian might tackle after decades of work.

7: Always a good question to keep asking myself. Some of the questions I ask:

I am attempting to urge you to go back to the stacks of your nearest periodical library and immerse yourself in the historiography. A question you might benefit from asking yourself is "Do I understand the debates in my field?"

 

 

[historygeek]

Just took my GRE. 160V. Should I retake it? Or just worry about the other parts of my application?