The Doctoral Program in History
The doctoral program is organized around themes and fields, which are intentionally designed to be flexible, interconnected, and mutually reinforcing. Students develop expertise across both thematic areas and geographical fields while working closely with award-winning faculty. Through interdisciplinary and transnational scholarship, the program fosters a dynamic and collegial intellectual environment grounded in sustained mentorship and close faculty engagement.
Our graduates have a strong record of securing positions at four-year colleges and universities, as well as in the public sector. Throughout their time at Stony Brook, students receive sustained advising and participate in professional development workshops designed to prepare them for a range of career paths. These opportunities include conference presentations, scholarly publishing, grant writing, preparation of job-market materials, and interview training. The program also emphasizes the development of effective teaching skills, offering extensive instructional experience that begins with teaching assistantships and advances to independent course instruction during summer and winter terms.
For more information on our areas of expertise, please consult our faculty directory, which includes affiliated faculty from other departments. Students benefit from a range of interdisciplinary and community-building programs on campus, including the Humanities Institute, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center, the Initiative in the Historical Social Sciences, and the Graduate Student Organization. Students also collaborate with cross-disciplinary fields such as Sociology and Hispanic Languages & Literature via the Latin American & Caribbean Studies Center (LACS), which is housed in the History Department, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and its excellent Department of Ecology and Evolution. Stony Brook's Geospatial Center likewise has openings for graduate student collaboration and European Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Stony Brook is also a member of the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium, which allows all PhD students to take courses for credit at participating institutions, including Columbia University, the CUNY Graduate Center, New York University, and The New School.
Themes
The modern world-system and previous varieties of global connections comprise an increasingly integrated area of historical analysis that can be studied from different vantage points. The related study of modern capitalism has recently been revived as a way to analyze historical inequalities and class cultures. By following transnational processes, social histories, and historical power formations, this thematic triad helps to frame and also connect various big historical processes: western imperial expansion; pre-existing Asian, American, and African trade and state systems; colonial encounters and cultural representations; the global flow of goods, peoples, and ideas; and the articulation of metropolitan and colonial social formations. Specific research topics may include: Comparative empires; commodity histories; material and capitalist cultures; slavery and labor; hybrid and diasporic identities; subaltern struggles; North-South relations; and environmental facets of globalization.
Nature is within us and all around us. Human habitats—starting with our multi-species bodies—are only partly under human control. Inversely, the environment "out there" is deeply influenced by humans and their technologies. We can find evidence for these trans-human relationships in personal blood samples in addition to global measures of carbon emissions, air temperatures, and sea levels. The history of this multi-level interplay—from the molecular level to the planetary—is a rich area for interdisciplinary scholarship. The nexus of bodies, scientific knowledge, and non-human things is even more interesting because health and habitat are cultural ideas as well as biological realities. Possible research topics include: Cultures of science; technology and technocracy; the political ecology of urbanization; industrial pollution and environmental justice; plants, animals, and pathogens as historical actants; disease in cross-cultural perspective; public health in global perspective; and environmentalism(s) in comparative perspective.
Race, citizenship, and migration intersect at moments of political, economic, and social transformation. In such moments, various identities and forms of belonging—cultural, racial, sexual, ethnic, linguistic, religious, national—become fluid and susceptible to reformulation. Under this framework, such categories can be studied as historical constructions that traverse borders, nations, and legal structures, thereby connecting otherwise disconnected populations. This cluster emphasizes the ways that the state bestows or denies people the privileges of citizenship based on their national or ethnic background or their racialized or gendered status. Possible research topics: Borders and borderlands; diaspora and transnational consciousness; migratory labor and class mobility; regimes of citizenship exclusion (policing, detention, deportation, incarceration, colonialism); social justice movements and civil rights; and politicized ethnic movements.
Cultural identity as expressed by religion, gender, sexuality, and race are powerful shapers of action but are also historical artifacts that change over time. Religion—embodied in texts, rituals, modes of dress and comportment, and architecture—operates to form solidarities across borders and connect people across vast expanses of space, as well as to create divisions and exclusions. Gender, as both an object of inquiry and a category of analysis, identifies the personal in the political and examines the relationship between bodies, society, and the cultural contexts that mediate between them. These fields intersect with the history of ideas, politics, sexuality, and subjectivity. Possible research topics include: Textual, material, visual, and sonic cultures; identity politics and discourses of rights; affect and emotion; daily life and the family; and cultural conflicts and reconciliations.
The nation-state may be today's dominant form of political organization and imagined community, but historians see it as a relatively recent phenomenon. Taking state-building and nationality as contested historical and cultural processes, this thematic triad draws attention to earlier forms of political structures and affiliations—local communities, dynastic states, empires, and so on—in addition to the emergence of modern states and their distinctive forms of power and public culture. This theme brings into focus the politics of contention within nation-making, as well as alternatives to the modern nation, by seeing the state through the lenses of pre-modern and post-modern social solidarities and/or non-modern communities and their political lives. Specific research topics may include: War and society; law and sovereignty; democratic and social revolutions; public and counter-public spheres; popular politics and civil society; post-colonialism and nation-building; and non-state and stateless spaces.
Fields
History and Africana Studies work closely together to support doctoral students interested in pursuing primary fields or subfields in African history. We also offer opportunities for comparative and interdisciplinary study of themes (see below). In addition to close faculty mentorship, students can gain skills as teaching assistants in the yearly lecture courses we offer on African history, including Environmental History of Africa, History of the African Diaspora, Health and Disease in African History, and Human Rights in Africa.
Stony Brook offers an innovative, interdisciplinary PhD program in Atlantic History. This relatively new field focuses on the myriad transformations experienced by regions surrounding the Atlantic Ocean—especially Africa, Europe, and the Americas—as they came into prolonged contact during the early modern period. Atlantic historians study the social, cultural, economic, geopolitical, and environmental impacts of these interactions during periods of encounter, conquest, colonization, revolution, and early nation-building. Additional classes and seminars (including NYU's Atlantic History Seminar and Columbia’s Seminar in Early American History) are available at area universities through a consortium program.
East Asian History provides valuable training for individuals interested in pursuing careers in academia, international business, journalism, government, and NGOs. Stony Brook offers a PhD and Master's specialization in East Asian History. We adopt innovative and transnational approaches to the study of Chinese and Japanese history to understand East Asia’s role in the global order.
Besides department course offerings, students are encouraged to participate in East Asian courses and seminars in the metropolitan New York area and network with other graduate students and scholars through the China and Japan Columbia seminars and other SUNY schools. PhD applicants are expected to have basic proficiency in the Chinese or Japanese language and pursue further language training at Stony Brook.
Few history departments contain such a number and variety of scholars—specialists of different regions, time periods, and methodologies—who study and teach environmental history, broadly defined. Our core faculty comprises Jennifer Anderson (historical ecology, commodities studies, environmental humanities, Atlantic World); Alix Cooper (early modern European histories of science and medicine); Paul Kelton (indigenous studies, disease and medicine, early America); Donna Rilling (urbanization, comparative industrialization, household production, Early Republic); Tamara Fernando (Indian Ocean world, Persian/Arabian Gulf, Sri Lanka, histories of science, environment, and labour); Valeria Mantilla Morales (Latin America and the Caribbean; Colombia; cultural history; colonialism; race; Food; Environment; cartography); and Chris Sellers (occupational health and hazard, trans-border industry and pollution, comparative suburbs, U.S. environmentalism). Ph.D. students in our program also benefit from the expertise of resident scholars with allied interests: Shobana Shankar (health and disease in Africa, international/global health) and Nancy Tomes (U.S. histories of health and medicine).
Stony Brook faculty cover a range of periods and topics in European history, with particular strengths in medieval and early modern religion and culture, the Atlantic World, the eighteenth century, empire and decolonization, and modern state formation. Our department includes senior scholars, mid-career scholars, and younger colleagues. We practice a range of different methodologies & such subjects as Eurasian relations and comparative fascism, as well as with faculty in other departments and programs.
Latin American history is a thriving regional concentration at Stony Brook, long recognized as one of the top PhD training centers in the field. Since 2000, twenty-five students have defended dissertations on Latin American topics, and many of these doctorates have gone on to hold important teaching and research posts across the Americas. Our students win a notable share of international fellowships like SSRC-IDRF and Fulbright grants. Stony Brook doctoral students engage with peers from Columbia, NYU, and other New York universities through a class consortium program, monthly seminars of the New York City Workshop on Latin American History, and an annual conference.
Our growing program in South Asian history is designed to develop well-rounded scholars of the modern and early modern subcontinent. Students develop expertise in South Asian history, but move beyond the narrow regional field to cultivate fluency in global and thematic areas of inquiry to situate their research in broader disciplinary discussions (environment and capitalism, religious networks, transnational urbanism, borderlands). Students are also encouraged to work with scholars of other fields and disciplines with expertise on key topics in South Asian history such as colonial and postcolonial dynamics, Persianate societies, and Indian Ocean connections. Collaborations with Stony Brook’s Mattoo Center for India Studies offer graduate students unique opportunities.
Transnational history is a vibrant field of study at Stony Brook, encompassing most of our faculty. This field emphasizes connections across geopolitical, ecological, social, and economic borders. For the modern period, transnationalism allows historians to explore the rise of the modern nation-state system, a range of post-colonial legacies, and the subsequent effects of non-state movements. Transnational frameworks are also useful for illuminating the early modern period, when webs of circulation and interdependence brought together the worlds of the Pacific and Indian oceans as well as the Atlantic.
Our Americanists cover a spectrum of periods (sixteenth to late twentieth centuries) and approaches (including social, cultural, and political history). We have collective strengths in Atlantic world, environment and health, gender and sexuality, and race and citizenship.
Requirements
- Core Seminar (History 524, History 525: 3 credits each semester)
- This course provides an intensive, year-long introduction to historical theory and
research. It also familiarizes students with the thematic organization of the graduate
program. All full-time students in the doctoral program as well as the Academic Track
of the master's program are required to take this course, which is offered only as
a fall/spring sequence, during their first year.
- Two to Three Field Seminars (3 credits each)
- The department offers a number of Field Seminars designed to familiarize students
with the history and historiography of specific regions and periods. These courses
include: Medieval and Early Modern Europe (501) and Modern Europe (502); Early American
History (521) and Modern American History (522); Colonial Latin America (541) and
Modern Latin America (542), all of which are offered on a one- or two-year cycle.
In addition, the following Field Seminars are offered in African and Asian history:
Introduction to African and/or Asian History (562), South Asian History (563), Chinese
History (564), and Japanese History (565); note that some of these Field Seminars
may be offered slightly less frequently. Some Field Seminars are populated with students
in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, as well as with Master's and PhD students.
Students may choose to take either two or three Field Seminars, in accordance with
their intellectual interests and needs. Students choosing to concentrate in the history
of Europe, the United States, or Latin America are encouraged to complete both parts
of the Field Seminar sequence in their area of concentration. If more survey or focused
reading is required in a specific area, students have the option of taking a third
Field Seminar or a relevant Theme Seminar. With the approval of the Graduate Director
and Advisor, students may also satisfy their Field Seminar requirements by taking
an appropriate course in an outside department or institution.
- Three or Four Theme Seminars (3 credits each)
- The Theme Seminars are the heart of the department's commitment to the theoretically
informed, interdisciplinary study of history. Topics, approaches, and instructors
vary, but these seminars generally fall within the rubric of our program's theme clusters:
Gender, Race, Sexuality; Nation-State, Civil Society, Popular Politics; Empire, Colonialism,
Globalization; and Environment, Health, Science, Technology. On occasion, students
may apply to take seminars in outside departments or institutions (that is, other
universities in the NY Consortium) that may serve as a Theme Seminar. There is also
some flexibility for those students wishing to take either three or four Theme Seminars.
On occasion, students may also wish to "convert" a Theme Seminar into a Research Seminar
(by completing the readings and writing a research paper, with the prior arrangement
of the seminar professor and the student's advisor).
- Two Research Seminars (3 credits each)
- One Research Seminar is offered each semester. It gives students the opportunity to
carry out individual research projects using primary sources in areas related to their
developing scholarly interests. Research seminars are generally taken during the second
and third years. Third-year students often use the Research Seminar to begin preliminary
work on their dissertations.
- Supervised Teaching (History 581, 3 credits)
- All students who hold teaching assistantships and are not enrolled in Teaching Practicum
(History 582, see below) are expected to register for this course, if possible; if
this is not possible, the student should notify the Graduate Director.
- Teaching Practicum (History 582, 3 credits)
- Required of all Teaching Assistants, as well as those expecting to Teaching Assistant
for undergraduate courses in the future. It is generally taken during Fall semester
of Year 1. This course gives students the opportunity to discuss the pleasures and
pitfalls of undergraduate classroom teaching in a large, diverse public university.
Stony Brook offers a laboratory for future college teachers to develop and try out
"lesson plans," as well as to broach such universal concerns as classroom authority,
student participation, student-teacher relations, the problem of plagiarism, sexual
harassment, etc. Students may be required to attend teaching workshops offered by
the Graduate School in addition. These workshops, as well as the Teaching Practicum,
are also open to students who do not hold teaching assistantships.
- Dissertation Prospectus Workshop (History 695, 3 credits)
- This course must be taken by all PhD students and should be completed in the Spring
semester of Year 3. Students are expected to work closely with their Advisors during
the semester as they prepare their dissertation plan. If possible, they should also
meet with their whole committee—or, at minimum, solicit feedback from each committee
member. The instructor of the workshop, the student's PhD advisor, and the rest of
his/her committee must approve the prospectus prior to the formal end-of-semester Prospectus Presentations.
- Dissertation (History 699, 700, or 701)
- Following advancement to candidacy, students are required to enroll for one credit
of dissertation research each semester (whether through History 699, 700, or 701,
depending on each student's location) until the dissertation defense. Teaching assistants
must register for 9 credits of Dissertation Research on Campus (History 699).
- Directed Readings (History 682, 3 credits each)
- Students who enter the program without a master's degree may choose to take three
credits of Directed Readings in the Fall and/or Spring of the initial year, to enable
the student to meet regularly with his or her Advisor and address any deficiencies
in preparation for the PhD program. In addition, on the rare occasion that a student's
needs are not met by the department's Field and Theme seminars, he/she may wish to
arrange a Directed Readings with an individual faculty member so as to undertake a
specific set of readings on a topic of mutual interest.
- Orals Workshop (History 684, 3 or 6 credits)
- This workshop provides a space for students to work semi-independently in the scholarly
literature of their developing fields of specialization. Normally, students enroll
in Orals Workshop (for either 3 or 6 credits, depending on their remaining course
requirement needs) in the Fall semester of Year 3. To prepare for the Orals, students
have to define three areas of specialization (two in their major geo-political field,
and one in a comparative field). Ideally, students should develop their Orals book
lists and topics on the basis of the most relevant Field and Theme seminars they have
taken and in consultation with their Orals committee. Students may use the Orals Workshop
to read independently or in small groups, as well as to meet periodically with Orals
committee members. All students should make sure they have dress rehearsals before
the exam actually takes place. (See below for details on the Oral Examination.)
- Courses in other Departments or Institutions
- Students are encouraged to take courses in other departments in order to acquire the
theoretical tools offered by other disciplines and gain an interdisciplinary perspective
on their fields of interest. Many of our students take courses in such departments
as Sociology, English, Art History, and Cultural Analysis and Theory, as well as such
interdisciplinary programs as Women's and Gender Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean
Studies. Such courses should be selected in consultation with the student's Advisor.
In addition, Stony Brook belongs to a New York metropolitan-area Consortium of universities.
Students are welcome to take graduate seminars for credit at Columbia, New York University,
or other institutions. To take a class through the Consortium, students need to submit
a request form to the Graduate School and obtain prior permission from their Advisor and the Graduate Director. Whether
it can be used to fulfill a requirement as a Field, Theme, or Research course is decided
on a case-by-case basis by the Graduate Director, in consultation with the student's
Advisor.
By the end of Year 2, each student should name a PhD Advisor (a History Department
faculty member who has agreed to serve as the student's dissertation advisor) and,
in consultation with that advisor, name two additional faculty members or affiliates
who agree to serve on his/her Oral Exam Committee. This team will help the student
define his or her examination fields, language requirements, and course work, as well
as monitor the student’s progress towards the dissertation.
Oral Exams are intended to evaluate students' mastery of their fields, emphasizing
readings done as part of their course work and/or in preparation for a potential
dissertation subject. To prepare for Orals, students shall, in consultation with each
of their committee members, compile a reading list for each of their fields; most
students have 3 fields (including at least one with a geographical focus; others can
be thematic). Each list should include 25-35 books or equivalent in articles (3 articles=book),
for a grand total of 75-105 books. Committee members must approve their respective
lists no later than the middle of the semester that precedes the PhD oral examination.
Full-time students are expected to take their Oral Exam during Semester 5, prior to
embarking on Prospectus during Semester 6 (i.e., Orals in Fall of Year 3; Prospectus
in Spring of Year 3). If special circumstances warrant, the Oral Exam may (with Grad
Director's approval) be delayed one semester only.
The Oral Exam can be scheduled only after all University and History Department requirements
have been met, including the Foreign Language Requirement and all necessary coursework
(except Prospectus). Students should check with Roxanne Fernandez, our Graduate Coordinator,
well in advance to make sure their records are up-to-date and to process the paperwork. A
list of the student's Oral Exam Committee must be submitted to and approved by the
Graduate Director at least 3 weeks prior to the exam.
The student, in consultation with the examination committee, will arrange the day,
time, and place of the Oral Exam. The Oral Exam usually lasts about 2 hours and is
graded as "pass with distinction," "pass," "weak pass," or "fail." Students who fail
the Oral Exam may petition to take the exam a second time at a future date.
All students, including Americanists, must demonstrate proficiency in at least one
relevant foreign language before being advanced to PhD candidacy. This is a requirement
that may not be waived, with the exception of students who are native speakers in
the language of their field of specialization. Minimal proficiency in a language
means the ability to translate a given passage clearly and accurately with the aid
of a dictionary. Relevant language(s) are determined by the student's area of specialization. Proficiency
may be demonstrated either through a written exam administered by the department or
a satisfactory grade in a graduate language course (e.g., French 500). The in-department
exam consists of translating a passage from a scholarly work in History, with the
aid of a dictionary. It is administered and evaluated by an appropriate faculty member.
The results of the Language Exam must be reported to the department's Graduate Program
Coordinator and entered into the student's file.
*At the discretion of the Advisor, a student may be required to study additional languages
as part of his or her degree program. It is the student's responsibility to establish
with her or his Advisor which foreign languages are necessary for the completion of
the PhD and to make sure they have completed the language requirement in a timely
fashion so that they may advance to candidacy. Ideally, students take their written
language exams by the Fall semester of Year 3.
Required for PhD students at or near the end of their course work, this workshop focuses
on helping each participant prepare an outstanding dissertation proposal. It is usually
taken the Spring of Year 3. The workshop meets weekly and revolves around group exercises,
writing assignments, and development of key areas of the prospectus (research agenda,
historiography survey, approach and methodology, preliminary arguments, source base,
and scholarly interventions). The course concludes with student presentations to the
entire department. Prior to presentations, each student must receive written approval
of their Prospectus from their Advisor and other committee members. Passing Orals
and a satisfactory course grade in the Prospectus Workshop are required for advancement
to candidacy.
Upon nearing completion of the dissertation, the doctoral student constitutes a four-person
Dissertation Defense Committee including their Advisor, two other faculty members
or affiliates, and one “outside reader” (i.e. faculty from another department or university). The PhD student should meet or correspond with their Advisor—at least once a semester—to discuss progress on their dissertation. In the rare case that
a change of Advisor is necessary, the student may request another faculty member in
the History Department to serve as their new Advisor; the student may not advance
to candidacy, however, until the new Advisor has officially agreed to serve.
The dissertation is the basic requirement for the conferral of the PhD.
Prior to scheduling the defense, the student must recieve advance approval for their
Dissertation Committee from the Graduate School. All necessary paperwork should be
submitted to the Graduate Program Coordinator well in advance. The form for the defense
(same as that used for Oral Exams) is available from the Graduate Program Coordinator
and must be submitted to the Graduate School by the 15th day of class during the semester
when the defense is to be scheduled.
At least 2 months before the scheduled dissertation defense, the student must deliver the entire dissertation
to all Committee members to allow sufficient time for them to read and critique it.
Committee members should promptly provide written feedback indicating any required
revisions so the student has at least one month to address them. If they do not provide
a written critique, the student can assume the dissertation is approved in the form
submitted. The student must make all requested revisions and resolve any written objections
to each committee member’s satisfaction prior to submitting the dissertation to the
Graduate School. The defense is open to interested students and faculty. See Graduate
School website for further information on deadlines and regulations concerning dissertation
submission and scheduling of the dissertation defense.
- Core Seminar (History 524, History 525: 3 credits each semester)
- This course provides an intensive, year-long introduction to historical theory and research. It also familiarizes students with the thematic organization of the graduate program. All full-time students in the doctoral program as well as the Academic Track of the master's program are required to take this course, which is offered only as a fall/spring sequence, during their first year.
- Two to Three Field Seminars (3 credits each)
- The department offers a number of Field Seminars designed to familiarize students with the history and historiography of specific regions and periods. These courses include: Medieval and Early Modern Europe (501) and Modern Europe (502); Early American History (521) and Modern American History (522); Colonial Latin America (541) and Modern Latin America (542), all of which are offered on a one- or two-year cycle. In addition, the following Field Seminars are offered in African and Asian history: Introduction to African and/or Asian History (562), South Asian History (563), Chinese History (564), and Japanese History (565); note that some of these Field Seminars may be offered slightly less frequently. Some Field Seminars are populated with students in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, as well as with Master's and PhD students. Students may choose to take either two or three Field Seminars, in accordance with their intellectual interests and needs. Students choosing to concentrate in the history of Europe, the United States, or Latin America are encouraged to complete both parts of the Field Seminar sequence in their area of concentration. If more survey or focused reading is required in a specific area, students have the option of taking a third Field Seminar or a relevant Theme Seminar. With the approval of the Graduate Director and Advisor, students may also satisfy their Field Seminar requirements by taking an appropriate course in an outside department or institution.
- Three or Four Theme Seminars (3 credits each)
- The Theme Seminars are the heart of the department's commitment to the theoretically informed, interdisciplinary study of history. Topics, approaches, and instructors vary, but these seminars generally fall within the rubric of our program's theme clusters: Gender, Race, Sexuality; Nation-State, Civil Society, Popular Politics; Empire, Colonialism, Globalization; and Environment, Health, Science, Technology. On occasion, students may apply to take seminars in outside departments or institutions (that is, other universities in the NY Consortium) that may serve as a Theme Seminar. There is also some flexibility for those students wishing to take either three or four Theme Seminars. On occasion, students may also wish to "convert" a Theme Seminar into a Research Seminar (by completing the readings and writing a research paper, with the prior arrangement of the seminar professor and the student's advisor).
- Two Research Seminars (3 credits each)
- One Research Seminar is offered each semester. It gives students the opportunity to carry out individual research projects using primary sources in areas related to their developing scholarly interests. Research seminars are generally taken during the second and third years. Third-year students often use the Research Seminar to begin preliminary work on their dissertations.
- Supervised Teaching (History 581, 3 credits)
- All students who hold teaching assistantships and are not enrolled in Teaching Practicum (History 582, see below) are expected to register for this course, if possible; if this is not possible, the student should notify the Graduate Director.
- Teaching Practicum (History 582, 3 credits)
- Required of all Teaching Assistants, as well as those expecting to Teaching Assistant for undergraduate courses in the future. It is generally taken during Fall semester of Year 1. This course gives students the opportunity to discuss the pleasures and pitfalls of undergraduate classroom teaching in a large, diverse public university. Stony Brook offers a laboratory for future college teachers to develop and try out "lesson plans," as well as to broach such universal concerns as classroom authority, student participation, student-teacher relations, the problem of plagiarism, sexual harassment, etc. Students may be required to attend teaching workshops offered by the Graduate School in addition. These workshops, as well as the Teaching Practicum, are also open to students who do not hold teaching assistantships.
- Dissertation Prospectus Workshop (History 695, 3 credits)
- This course must be taken by all PhD students and should be completed in the Spring semester of Year 3. Students are expected to work closely with their Advisors during the semester as they prepare their dissertation plan. If possible, they should also meet with their whole committee—or, at minimum, solicit feedback from each committee member. The instructor of the workshop, the student's PhD advisor, and the rest of his/her committee must approve the prospectus prior to the formal end-of-semester Prospectus Presentations.
- Dissertation (History 699, 700, or 701)
- Following advancement to candidacy, students are required to enroll for one credit of dissertation research each semester (whether through History 699, 700, or 701, depending on each student's location) until the dissertation defense. Teaching assistants must register for 9 credits of Dissertation Research on Campus (History 699).
- Directed Readings (History 682, 3 credits each)
- Students who enter the program without a master's degree may choose to take three credits of Directed Readings in the Fall and/or Spring of the initial year, to enable the student to meet regularly with his or her Advisor and address any deficiencies in preparation for the PhD program. In addition, on the rare occasion that a student's needs are not met by the department's Field and Theme seminars, he/she may wish to arrange a Directed Readings with an individual faculty member so as to undertake a specific set of readings on a topic of mutual interest.
- Orals Workshop (History 684, 3 or 6 credits)
- This workshop provides a space for students to work semi-independently in the scholarly literature of their developing fields of specialization. Normally, students enroll in Orals Workshop (for either 3 or 6 credits, depending on their remaining course requirement needs) in the Fall semester of Year 3. To prepare for the Orals, students have to define three areas of specialization (two in their major geo-political field, and one in a comparative field). Ideally, students should develop their Orals book lists and topics on the basis of the most relevant Field and Theme seminars they have taken and in consultation with their Orals committee. Students may use the Orals Workshop to read independently or in small groups, as well as to meet periodically with Orals committee members. All students should make sure they have dress rehearsals before the exam actually takes place. (See below for details on the Oral Examination.)
- Courses in other Departments or Institutions
- Students are encouraged to take courses in other departments in order to acquire the theoretical tools offered by other disciplines and gain an interdisciplinary perspective on their fields of interest. Many of our students take courses in such departments as Sociology, English, Art History, and Cultural Analysis and Theory, as well as such interdisciplinary programs as Women's and Gender Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Such courses should be selected in consultation with the student's Advisor. In addition, Stony Brook belongs to a New York metropolitan-area Consortium of universities. Students are welcome to take graduate seminars for credit at Columbia, New York University, or other institutions. To take a class through the Consortium, students need to submit a request form to the Graduate School and obtain prior permission from their Advisor and the Graduate Director. Whether it can be used to fulfill a requirement as a Field, Theme, or Research course is decided on a case-by-case basis by the Graduate Director, in consultation with the student's Advisor.
By the end of Year 2, each student should name a PhD Advisor (a History Department faculty member who has agreed to serve as the student's dissertation advisor) and, in consultation with that advisor, name two additional faculty members or affiliates who agree to serve on his/her Oral Exam Committee. This team will help the student define his or her examination fields, language requirements, and course work, as well as monitor the student’s progress towards the dissertation.
Oral Exams are intended to evaluate students' mastery of their fields, emphasizing readings done as part of their course work and/or in preparation for a potential dissertation subject. To prepare for Orals, students shall, in consultation with each of their committee members, compile a reading list for each of their fields; most students have 3 fields (including at least one with a geographical focus; others can be thematic). Each list should include 25-35 books or equivalent in articles (3 articles=book), for a grand total of 75-105 books. Committee members must approve their respective lists no later than the middle of the semester that precedes the PhD oral examination.
The Oral Exam can be scheduled only after all University and History Department requirements have been met, including the Foreign Language Requirement and all necessary coursework (except Prospectus). Students should check with Roxanne Fernandez, our Graduate Coordinator, well in advance to make sure their records are up-to-date and to process the paperwork. A list of the student's Oral Exam Committee must be submitted to and approved by the Graduate Director at least 3 weeks prior to the exam.
The student, in consultation with the examination committee, will arrange the day, time, and place of the Oral Exam. The Oral Exam usually lasts about 2 hours and is graded as "pass with distinction," "pass," "weak pass," or "fail." Students who fail the Oral Exam may petition to take the exam a second time at a future date.
*At the discretion of the Advisor, a student may be required to study additional languages as part of his or her degree program. It is the student's responsibility to establish with her or his Advisor which foreign languages are necessary for the completion of the PhD and to make sure they have completed the language requirement in a timely fashion so that they may advance to candidacy. Ideally, students take their written language exams by the Fall semester of Year 3.
The dissertation is the basic requirement for the conferral of the PhD.
Prior to scheduling the defense, the student must recieve advance approval for their
Dissertation Committee from the Graduate School. All necessary paperwork should be
submitted to the Graduate Program Coordinator well in advance. The form for the defense
(same as that used for Oral Exams) is available from the Graduate Program Coordinator
and must be submitted to the Graduate School by the 15th day of class during the semester
when the defense is to be scheduled.
At least 2 months before the scheduled dissertation defense, the student must deliver the entire dissertation to all Committee members to allow sufficient time for them to read and critique it. Committee members should promptly provide written feedback indicating any required revisions so the student has at least one month to address them. If they do not provide a written critique, the student can assume the dissertation is approved in the form submitted. The student must make all requested revisions and resolve any written objections to each committee member’s satisfaction prior to submitting the dissertation to the Graduate School. The defense is open to interested students and faculty. See Graduate School website for further information on deadlines and regulations concerning dissertation submission and scheduling of the dissertation defense.
Advising
When students are accepted into the graduate program, they are assigned a first-year Advisor based on the areas of interest indicated by the student in the application. Students may change Advisors with permission of the Graduate Director, the new Advisor, and the previous Advisor at the end of the first year or thereafter. Students are encouraged to meet with their Advisors regularly to discuss program requirements and course of study.
Students receive additional advising from their dissertation committees.
Evaluation
Evaluation of student performance takes place throughout the academic year (for example,
through grading of student work in graduate seminars), including at the end of each
semester, but most importantly through the end-of-year review. In this review, faculty
members meet to evaluate the progress of all students in the graduate program. Evaluations
of student performance will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the student and
include suggestions for improvement. The Graduate Director will be responsible for
sending a written summary of the evaluation to each student, with a request that the
student contact his or her Advisor for further details. All students will be ranked
in one of the following three categories:
- Good Standing indicates satisfactory grades and timely completion of degree requirements;
- Some Concerns may reflect low grades in one or more courses, slow or intermittent progress towards the degree (even if grades are acceptable), or areas or skills needing special attention;
- Probation means unsatisfactory academic performance and/or progress towards the degree.
Sample Course of Study
Graduate School regulations stipulate that a new student who enters the program without a Master's of Arts degree must take 12 credits per semester during Year 1; a student with a Master's of Arts degree (or at least 24 credits at the graduate level) may register for only 9 credits per semester.
Fall Semester
- Core Seminar I (History 524): 3 credits
- Teaching Practicum (History 582): 3 credits
- Field Seminar: 3 credits
- Theme Seminar: 3 credits
Spring Semester
- Core Seminar II (History 525): 3 credits
- Supervised Teaching (History 581): 3 credits
- Theme or Field Seminar: 3 credits
- Theme or Field Seminar or Directed Readings: 3 credits