Considering graduate study in Ancient History...with no language preparation

[sgrxdy]

Hello!

I'm currently an undergraduate student in my junior year, and I'm very interested in graduate school. I am double-majoring in English (Creative Writing) and History, so I have an array of options; however, I am leaning very heavily towards History MA programs. 

I am enjoying the search process, but I'm running into some issues that are causing it to be a bit overwhelming. First and foremost, my advisor -- while an awesome lady and a great professor -- has not been terribly helpful. Every conversation about graduate school with her has almost immediately led to her pushing me towards a museum studies or library sciences program, and she hasn't even been very helpful in how to go about pursuing that if I decided to. Being a first-generation college student, all of this is very, very new to me, so the lack of support from the one person I know with knowledge of this sort of thing has been difficult. 

Secondly, I am pretty adamant about studying ancient history in particular. Not only is there where most of my interest lies, but with my Ancient and Medieval Studies minor, this is what I'm more prepared to do advanced study in, in my opinion. The problem with that is my severe lack of language preparation. I know language prep is not as important to MA programs as it is to PhD programs, but most Ancient History programs I've looked at still seem to have some expectations. Unfortunately, my current university, despite having an Ancient and Medieval Studies program, has literally zero ancient language courses (they used to, apparently -- go figure). I have tried to study a bit of Latin on my own, but it hasn't gone particularly well. Greek, as you can imagine, has gone even worse.  

I did come across a program at Indiana University that seemed compelling -- their MA in Ancient History and Language Acquisition, which focuses on acquiring lacking language skills. Something like that seems interesting, but I have to wonder if that's even a good choice. For instance, if I decided to pursue a PhD later on, would I be lacking in other areas because so much of my MA was focused on language study? If it's plausible to both study languages intensively and get the adequate preparation in history study, why don't more schools offer something like this? It just seems a bit...too good to be true, I suppose, and I'm a little worried. 

I guess what I'm wondering is: what are my chances of successfully pursuing this specific area of study at this point? Should I be giving up on this and trying to broaden my horizons? Like I said, graduate study is a whole new world to me, so any advice in general would be much appreciated.

 

[psstein]

A post-bac might be more up your alley, if it's affordable and accessible. Unless that MA program has exceptional placement into PhD programs, I can't see it being a particularly good use of time.

Also, I'd heed your advisor's advice. The job market in everything humanities is awful. Before you'd commit to this path, apprise yourself of the job opportunities, both academic and otherwise. Go onto H-Net and look at how many full-time ancient history positions come open in a year. Universities are in the process of consolidating departments, not opening new ones.

[sgrxdy]

24 minutes ago, psstein said:

A post-bac might be more up your alley, if it's affordable and accessible. Unless that MA program has exceptional placement into PhD programs, I can't see it being a particularly good use of time.

Also, I'd heed your advisor's advice. The job market in everything humanities is awful. Before you'd commit to this path, apprise yourself of the job opportunities, both academic and otherwise. Go onto H-Net and look at how many full-time ancient history positions come open in a year. Universities are in the process of consolidating departments, not opening new ones.

I've looked into those a bit, but they do seem generally pricey. I will continue looking, however. I'm glad to see someone confirming my wariness of that program.

And, yeah, I definitely understand where she's coming from. She's trying to help, but I do find the lack of willingness to even discuss it very frustrating. I'm not unaware of the issues with a history degree, I'm just interested in doing research more than I am in working in a library or museum. I have, however, looked into a few joint History/Museum Studies programs and things of that nature just to cover my bases. I just haven't gone too far down that rabbit hole yet, mostly because I have similar concerns about it that I do with the IU program. 

[psstein]

Just something that jumped into mind, there are Summer Latin courses available through several universities (e.g. Toronto and Catholic Univ. of America have well-known programs). You might want to look into them. They're not incredibly cheap, but they're definitely cheaper than the cost of a MA or a post-bac.

[dr. t]

 

19 hours ago, sgrady said:

Every conversation about graduate school with her has almost immediately led to her pushing me towards a museum studies or library sciences program, and she hasn't even been very helpful in how to go about pursuing that if I decided to.

She's actually giving you a direct answer, if you know how to listen (and most professors don't actually know how to go down the museum/library branch). 

If you have *no* languages other than English as a college junior, I am very sorry to say that the ship has sailed when it comes to pursuing graduate level work in ancient history. Any program willing to take you would be doing so solely to exploit you. Even the most mediocre programs would want 2 ancient and 1 modern language when you apply. Heck, without some language skills, you haven't really been doing ancient history, regardless of what it says on the diploma. And even if you do take some post-bacc coursework as suggested above, you're still going to be massively behind any of your competition for a spot at a decent program. When there's only 2-4 jobs posted each year in the field, you can't afford not to go to a decent program. 

This is not a course you can successfully follow.

 

[AP]

21 hours ago, sgrady said:

but I do find the lack of willingness to even discuss it very frustrating.

In addition to @telkanuru's point, let me tell you that professors are increasingly requesting incoming PhDs to think of non-professorship positions not as a back up plan but as the plan. In our program, I know applicants who have been rejected because they think library/museums is an emergency plan. 

22 hours ago, sgrady said:

I'm just interested in doing research more than I am in working in a library or museum. 

The fact that you think that working in a museum or library (or archive or college administration, in some cases) does not leave room for research tells me that you urgently need to listen to your advisor. Further, I'd argue that many University librarians have more time for research than most TT positions in regional colleges. Do you have any idea how many faculty across the country do "just research"? 

 

[Valorship98]

I would recommend Library Sci over Museum Studies if you end up interested in this route. Being a librarian comes with decent pay, allows time for research particularly with students and faculty, and often you are a guest lecturer in the department you work most closely with. Museum Studies, coming from an art historical perspective, is a degree that is entirely useless. History museums want history PhD's and art museums want art history PhD's. Museum studies folks simply get shuffled over to educational or other administration duties within the museum. 

[gsc]

1 hour ago, Valorship98 said:

Museum studies folks simply get shuffled over to educational or other administration duties within the museum. 

Yeah, the folks I know who did museum studies (either as undergrad or grad) have mostly ended up as family programs managers, educational programs officers, special event coordinators, and various other forms of admin within the museum. Museum studies doesn't really give you much content knowledge, which is required as you go up the ranks.

A subject matter MA + MLIS prepares you for subject-specialist librarian positions. Many big research libraries have European history subject librarians, ancient history librarians, etc. I know that you can get a joint history MA/MLIS at Indiana (don't know if the ancient history MA you've identified qualifies, but you could certainly do a standard history MA and try to make it more ancient/medieval focused, though again, limited without languages). 

[bakeseal]

I think if you are very committed to pursuing graduate study in history instead of an adjacent field, your best option would be to look into summer language intensive courses, and to see whether your department would be able to fund them while you're still an undergrad. My classics profs always made it clear to all of us that we'd have to know Greek, Latin, and ideally French, German, or Italian to be competitive for graduate study in classics or ancient history. If you had aspirations to go onto a PhD, I think language program+post-bacc program or language-geared MA would help you round out those skills. If this is the thing you are really driven to do, it's technically possible, it just takes more time and a good bit more money than the traditional route. I think it really depends how important this is to you, and how willing you are to make it work, especially since it might not make sense to take out a ton of loans to study ancient history. I'm sorry you're in this situation, it sucks to find something you're passionate about and not have access to the resources to get you to the starting gate. 

[hadrianic]

To do ancient history at the grad level at this point, a post-bacc in the ancient languages is a must. I studied Greek and Latin throughout college but because my BA isn't in classics I was questioned by some schools about my ancient language ability. If you do a post-bacc, it's definitely doable, but it's going to be intense. It's also important to keep in mind that ancient history programs are generally incredibly language intensive, and so PhDs generally take longer or have more required course units. I'm a firm believer in that those who come to ancient studies late can pursue them at an advanced level, as in some people's eyes I also came to this late. Ancient history in particular can be a difficult subfield to navigate, and I'd be happy to help to you or point you towards field specific resources, or even talk with you more candidly about the environment overall.