Economic history programs with strong Marxian bent?

[anthropologeist]

Hi all, just wondering if anyone had any suggestions for looking into programs that have strong economic history tracks and a strong emphasis on Marxian interpretation/theory. Thanks in advance!

[Sparky]

Generally, history departments are organized into subfields by geographic area, and then sometimes further divided by era. We can be of much more use if you let us know where and when you (or the person on whose behalf you're asking) are fascinated enough by to drag yourself through a PhD.

The best method of looking for schools remains to identify professors who do the kind of work you want to do in the time and place that interests you. In other words, who wrote the articles and books you wish you'd written? What departments are they in?

[turnings]

um... Oxford in the 1960s? You might want to work with Christopher Hill he's really doing some pathbreaking work.

[washmeback]

I was going to ask a similar question. So I did not want to start a new topic. I've been wondering if there are any History PhD program in the US known with its emphasis on Social and Economic History? By the way, I know those in the UK like Oxford, LSE and Cambridge which have even seperated Economic History PhDs.

Anthropologeist, don't you want to study at an Economics department instead? As you might probabl know, UMass Amherst and Utah Economic Departments are home to Marxist Economic historians.

[remenis]

@washmeback

The ones that come to my mind are Harvard, Yale and Columbia (take this with a grain of sale because it's going to vary a lot by field) - but I unfortunately don't know enough about the many good but non-"top-tier" programs to say which of those would also be really strong in these areas. The one program I would say you might want to avoid is the University of Chicago - because that department prides itself on cultural and intellectual history - not on social and economic history.

But, also i would recommend that instead of trying to compile a list of programs strong in social and economic history (which is a surprisingly hard task) you compile a list of programs strong in your field or which have professors whose work is closely related to your interests and then thoroughly check out their department pages to see if they would be strong enough in social and economic.

Read the titles and descriptions of the books all the professors (not just in your field) have written lately - do they look like they do a lot of social history? See if they offer seminars on economic history (and make sure they really offer them regularly, and don't just list them in the catalog). What kinds of dissertations are their current students writing? What type of history do they talk about and pride themselves on in their department introduction.

If you're really interested in social and economic history (as I am) you want to see a lot of professors in the department who apply these frameworks to their work - regardless of what they study. I think it will be easier to find social historians as, at least as far as I can tell, social history is very popular and almost every major department has a few people who work on social history - economic history will be harder to find as this field is less common and (in my opinion) requires more specific training than social history - ie, you would be better off taking courses on economics and economic history before trying to attempt it on your own so you want to make sure there would be a framework in place that you could work with and learn from.

hope this helps

[TMP]

The one thing I am wondering, OP, are you planning to do quantitative and qualitative analyses in your work?