What's your specialization?

[BC1010]

What sub-field do you specialize in (or hope to specialize in)?  What led you to your particular specialization? Advantages or disadvantages?

[PhD or Bust]

U.S. and European Business Interest in Latin America...I chose it because I get to conduct research all over the world and because my fiance is Mexican, which requires me to spend a good deal of time in Latin America. 

 

In terms of disadvantages, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of investment in Latin American studies anymore and the field is becoming more and more isolated. 

[Wicked_Problem]

Intellectual History of the Americas; Institutional History; History of Crime and Punishment; Corrections/Detention

I have designed jails and prisons for 15 years and want to understand the larger context of incarceration so that I can impact the public discourse with the goal of reducing societal and human costs of mass incarceration.

Advantages: Few.

Disadvantages: Those working in this area of inquiry are spread throughout academia: law professors, political scientists, criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and others that I am sure I haven't identified yet. I therefore have applied to a range of programs in different disciplines in order to attempt to find where someone with psychology, architecture and criminal justice degrees will best fit into a research area that is ill defined, diffuse, and generally disliked or considered distasteful.

I'm on a mission, though, so I will find a way to have an impact based on the truth and not just advocacy.

Edited February 25, 2013 by Wicked_Problem

[czesc]

^ WickedProblem, you sound like a good AmCiv/American Studies candidate, did you apply to any programs in that area?

[Wicked_Problem]

I didn't. Are you familiar with faculty doing research on this topic in these departments? I was warned against earning a Ph.D. in an "interdisciplinary" or "boutique" program as that might severely constrain one's ability to be hired in the much more numerous conventional "disciplinary" departments.

[History Time]

20th-century U.S. Political and Intellectual History; Radicalism; Age

 

I sort of stumbled into this sub-field I guess. I initially wanted to research the 1960s "hippie" culture, but after doing a literature review of a number of monographs about the 1960s student movement, I discovered the New Left. What started as a relatively easy undergrad thesis topic turned into a behemoth project. Ended up spending my spring break in Madison researching in their archives going over box after box of materials. I ended up linking the failure of the movement to ageism. 

 

Now, I don't necessarily want to pigeon-hole myself by using age as a mode of analysis for every project, but it certainly paints a much different picture than an analysis that relies on gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. 

[czesc]

I didn't. Are you familiar with faculty doing research on this topic in these departments? I was warned against earning a Ph.D. in an "interdisciplinary" or "boutique" program as that might severely constrain one's ability to be hired in the much more numerous conventional "disciplinary" departments.

 

This is what I've heard, too, but if you're intent on doing a radically interdisciplinary project anyway, the history market might be difficult no matter what your formal affiliation (unless you train a lot to teach more conventional fields and sell yourself that way while pursuing an interdisciplinary dissertation).

 

Unfortunately it's not my area and I don't know any profs who work in it...

[getitlow]

social and cultural history of Modern China. Right I'm most interested in the politics of gender and how the discourses played out in revolutionary moments when sex was a taboo to be discussed. In addition, I'm also curious about the undercurrents of everyday life politics- how people organized themselves and lived in under the system and the government's responses to that specifically in Republican China and the Cultural Revolution. Generally, I'm still open to whatever ideas that tug at me given that interests will possibly change as I experience grad school.  

 

My undergrad thesis focused on the women of the Cultural Revolution mostly from a labor and sex perspective. I'm not entirely sure about continuing to pursue this track as I enter PhD but I will see. A major disadvantage of this subfield is that most of the primary sources that were used for the most prominent research in the field came from personal memoirs and oral history. As time goes by, people keeps passing away and if ones try to gear the research onto a new direction, there will be fewer and fewer historical witnesses to conduct oral interview. There are certain things that can and cannot be studied within this field for this reason.

[Wicked_Problem]

This is what I've heard, too, but if you're intent on doing a radically interdisciplinary project anyway, the history market might be difficult no matter what your formal affiliation (unless you train a lot to teach more conventional fields and sell yourself that way while pursuing an interdisciplinary dissertation).   Unfortunately it's not my area and I don't know any profs who work in it...

Czesc, Your point is well taken, and I agree with your assessment. When people argue that one should not only know one's era, but the era previous to that one in order to understand the complexities of how ones era emerged, my response is that if one intends to pursue a transtemporal (ala Armitage) topic then one must master all the relevant eras; in my case all of American History (writ large) at a minimum. Demonstrating such mastery should be attractive to the history marketplace, even if my research is very specialized and interdisciplinary. Further, one should, in my opinion, be very careful not to look at everything through the lens of ones topic for a multitude of reasons, most of which are scholarly but some of which are rhetorically based, given my ultimate goal of contributing to the public discourse in my area as a "public intellectual." Thanks for all your input. I appreciate it.

[CrazyCatLady80]

My fields are 20th century U.S urban, political, racial, and gender history. My research right now focuses in on suburban political and racial diversity in conservative neighborhoods. 

 

I became interested in urban and racial history back in my archivist days while working on a project documenting African Americans in the Bronx. My boss was an urban historian and I always found race issues interesting. Once I entered grad school, I realized political history was also a good fit. I have done a lot of work on political campaigns and just seem to have six sense when it comes to politics. With women and gender, I only started that in the past six months. I got sick of seeing these beautiful, bright, funny, and all around amazing young college women feel they have to play stupid in a classroom in order to be liked. Studying women and gender history makes me feel like I am helping to solve this problem. 

[aec09g]

Focus: social and cultural history of modern Japan, focusing on issues of race and gender in the twentieth century.

 

Advantage: Asian history as a whole is a small part of a departments, but it's a bit of budding interest for colleges and universities to hire an "Asian historian." My own undergraduate history program is currently on the hunt for two more to add to the faculty. Hopefully that speaks well to me getting a job, eventually.

 

Disadvantage: 1) My advantage is also my disadvantage as most programs are small. That means there are less spots for those applying and thus competitive. One program I talked to said that because two years ago they accepted three students, for the next two years they would accept one student but only if that person really knocked their socks off.They really didn't intend on accepting anyone unless it was that way. 

2) Languages, not only are they difficult, some programs can be annoyingly strict about language training. One program told me to not bother applying because I wasn't fluent in the language, though this was admittedly the program who said it was maybe going to accept one, so you can take that information with a grain of salt. 

 

Why?: Step-grandmother was Japanese and had lived through World War II. Nothing beats hearing about how she watched dogfights from her roof in Yokohama and worked in a student factory for the war effort. So I naturally became very interested in her life and childhood. Expanded from there. 

[getitlow]

2) Languages, not only are they difficult, some programs can be annoyingly strict about language training. One program told me to not bother applying because I wasn't fluent in the language, though this was admittedly the program who said it was maybe going to accept one, so you can take that information with a grain of salt. 

 

Why?: Step-grandmother was Japanese and had lived through World War II. Nothing beats hearing about how she watched dogfights from her roof in Yokohama and worked in a student factory for the war effort. So I naturally became very interested in her life and childhood. Expanded from there. 

 

Hey I do Chinese history so I totally feel you on the language part. Some professors even stressed that if you cannot read Chinese as comfortably as you read English, don't bother applying this year. Some I think is more flexible as they care more about my writing sample, understanding that language proficiency can be built up quickly if you have a good linguistic foundation. Japanese is even harder in terms of writing because they are all traditional characters. Congrats on the UCLA acceptance by the way !   

Edited February 27, 2013 by getitlow

[aec09g]

Hey I do Chinese history so I totally feel you on the language part. Some professors even stressed that if you cannot read Chinese as comfortably as you read English, don't bother applying this year. Some I think is more flexible as they care more about my writing sample, understanding that language proficiency can be built up quickly if you have a good linguistic foundation. Japanese is even harder in terms of writing because they are all traditional characters. Congrats on the UCLA acceptance by the way !   

 

 

Yeah I talked to a lot of professors about language training. Most were agreeing that though fluency would be a A+ on the application. They really are looking at your experience and writing sample. If you have done a lot of work in Japanese primary sources and it is good, interesting research for the program based on those aforementioned sources, I feel like you are just as competitive as a fluent student. 

[fishsauce]

Focus: the political and cultural history of the early modern principalities of northern Southeast Asia and southern China, particularly those traditionally dominated by the Tai ethno-linguistic group

 

The Pros: Southeast Asia is very much the crossroads of the world. It is an incredibly diverse region with cultural links just about everywhere, so you can combine it with whatever else you're interested in quite well. It's also a region with rising importance, so, although there aren't a lot of jobs for Southeast Asianists now, there could very well be in the near future (especially Burma specialists!). Because it's a small field, the language requirements, though high, aren't quite as demanding as the previously discussed East Asian language requirements - none of this "don't bother applying unless you're fluent" nonsense. Instead, intermediate to advanced reading skill is sufficient. 

 

The Cons: Southeast Asia is to the discipline of history what rural Alaska is to the United States of America. It is basically THE most obscure, out of the way, and willfully ignored region there is. One program I was looking at had a map of the world, colored by regions, which placed Southeast Asia in white, as if it were a "foreign country" to the rest of the world. The only other region represented in this manner being Antarctica. There are only a handful of history departments in the world which even allow for a Southeast Asia specialization, and considering the size of the Southeast Asian region, only a few of these schools will have the specialists necessary to assist with any given student's plan of study. As someone studying Siam, Burma, and the northern mainland, this especially sucks for me, because most Southeast Asianists specialize in Indonesia and Vietnam, neither of which have much direct relevance to my studies.

 

I'm glad this thread was made, because I have been wondering for a very long time - are there any other Southeast Asianists here? Or am I the only one?

[vtstevie]

Revolutionary/Early Republic US (pretty much up to Jacksonian era, but I'm confident teaching anything up to and during the Civil War), focusing on regional and national identities with a dash of economic history thrown in

[Josh J.]

U.S. History, specifically American Religious History and History of the American South.

Advantages: if I end up in a history department, I should be able to eventually teach history and religion. If I end up in a religion department, I can study these topics from a very multidisciplinary perspective more easily.

Disadvantages: There is a lot of hand wringing lately about religious historians being way behind the curve on historiography and method. I don't want that to be me.

[spinach]

I'm glad this thread was made, because I have been wondering for a very long time - are there any other Southeast Asianists here? Or am I the only one?

 

Here's another one! Focusing on Indonesia, particularly anti-colonial movements and their relation to the colonial penal system. I may end up branchig out to some other countries as well since the topic of prisons lends itself to comparative study.

I would argue that Central Asia is more obscure than Southeast Asia, though.

Interesting, isn't it, how us Southeast Asianists choose foods for our user names?

[playingivory]

And another! I'm early modern England: the English Reformation, queenship and the reign of the Tudors.

Advantages: no shortage of college kids willing to to take a class on the subect. Thank you, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, for getting every 20 year old interested in good old Henry VIII! Very rich in sources.

Disadvantages: not as many opportunities in the US, most universities are cutting back in this field as folks retire. Difficult to interpret as there were so many things evolving, yet it was treason to even think against them.

 

Interesting to read what excites you all! And as I read the perhaps ONE advantage we all list versus the laundry list of disadvantages, I think to myself- we're all out of our minds!

[CrazyCatLady80]

I love the Tutors, but I study it for "fun" rather than professionally.

[dr. t]

High to Late Medieval gender and sanctity, 12-13th c. intellectual and monastic history. Influenced by the school I'm currently attending, I've begun incorporating economic, archaeological, and climatalogical approaches.

Edited March 14, 2013 by telkanuru

[theregalrenegade]

I study Victorian Britain and space. I'm particularly interested in outdoor spaces and how they inform and reflect meaning. I focus on leisure, heritage, preservation, and empire. 

[Emdave]

American Intellectual History at the turn of the twentieth century, or really Civil War to WWI. I focus on the changing shape, status, and function of the university as an institution as a lens.

Within that, I'm really interested in the history of classics and classicism within universities and how it changed so drastically in this period.

 

Or, as I've sometimes described my undergrad thesis: "Explaining to people who don't care why they stopped caring about what they don't care about anymore."

[Wicked_Problem]

American Intellectual History at the turn of the twentieth century, or really Civil War to WWI. I focus on the changing shape, status, and function of the university as an institution as a lens. Within that, I'm really interested in the history of classics and classicism within universities and how it changed so drastically in this period.   Or, as I've sometimes described my undergrad thesis: "Explaining to people who don't care why they stopped caring about what they don't care about anymore."

Nice!

[Emdave]

Nice!

 

Thanks! What history do you do?

[Wicked_Problem]

Thanks! What history do you do?

And I'll PM you.