Graduate

M.A. Degree

M.A./M.S.L.S. Joint Degree Program

M.A./J.D. Joint Degree Program

M.A. Religion and Society in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World

 

Early Christian Studies

 

Ph.D. Degree

The Department offers a graduate program focusing upon our particular faculty strengths, and it prides itself upon its professional but friendly atmosphere of close interaction between students and faculty. We have rich faculty and scholarly resources in the areas of colonial and modern Latin America, medieval Europe and Byzantine history, early modern and modern Europe, colonial America and U.S. history. On the basis of national evaluations by outside bodies, the Department of History has regularly ranked as one of the three most distinguished departments in the School of Arts and Sciences at CUA. During recent years, faculty in the Department have won numerous awards and other recognitions, including two Guggenheim Foundation awards, a Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship, a Mellon Fellowship, a Davis Prize from Princeton University, a Visiting Research Fellowship to All Souls College, Oxford, major National Endowment for the Humanities grants, and several teaching prizes.

 

Graduate education in this Department combines the development of research and teaching skills. Not all of our graduate students go on to the Ph.D., or make use of their degrees in teaching at the university level. But the basic skills involved in graduate study -- in acquiring substantive historical knowledge, in the critical analysis of material, and in the presentation of that analysis -- are the same whatever the end use desired. Research is only one aspect of the professional development of a historian; the ability to communicate research and arguments, whether in writing, in debate, or through teaching, is an equally important component. This Department offers multiple opportunities to develop all these abilities. There are also opportunities for more formal teaching, through partnership with faculty members in teaching undergraduate courses; a limited number of our graduate students have the opportunity to serve as paid Teaching Assistants, and more are able to assist in teaching in other capacities.

 

In 1995 the Department initiated an exchange program with the Department of Modern History at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, in Ireland. This enables us to send one or two students each semester to Maynooth to study Irish history, with credit transferred back to CUA to count toward degrees in this Department. Applicants interested in learning more about this exchange should contact the Chair.