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University of Hawai`i at Manoa

Dept. of History
2530 Dole St., SAK A-203
Honolulu, HI 96822-2383

Phone 808.956.8358
Fax 808.956.9600
E-mail: susanlca@hawaii.edu

Department Web Site

Areas of Specialization:

East/South/Southeast Asia, Pacific, U.S., Europe, and World

Program Description

Few departments and universities in the nation offer the range of instruction available at the University of Hawai`i. The Department's programs in Asian, Pacific Islands, and World History are particularly strong. This Department has long offered a spectrum of courses on the histories of Asia and the Pacific Islands, as well as a complex variety of courses on Europe and the United States. The Department of History has thus anticipated the current nationwide interest at colleges and universities in a globally-informed and diverse education. Also of special note are the teaching and research interests of the Department's faculty in film, ethnography, cultural studies, and other interdisciplinary approaches to history.

Special Programs or Resources

Of particular importance is the Department's pioneering program in a truly global and comparative world history. Since 1986, the Department of History has offered a field of graduate study in World History, and the Department has supported the Journal of World History from 1990 to the present. Beginning in 2002, the Department became the home of the Center for World History as well as the World History Association.

The University Library, housed in the Hamilton and Sinclair Libraries, is a major resource for the study of Asian and Pacific history. The Library holds more than 2.8 million volumes, and currently receives nearly 27,000 serial and periodical titles. The Library's general collections, which include substantial ranges of research materials on Asian, Pacific Islands, and American history, are supplemented by a U.S. Government Documents Collection that has been an official depository since 1909; an Asia Collection of several hundred thousand volumes, over half of which are in the Chinese, Japanese, or Korean languages; an unrivaled Hawaiian and Pacific Collection; and the Charlot Collection. The Asia Collection includes 27,000 reels of microfilm. It has been a depository for Public Law 480 materials for South Asia since 1961 and for Indonesia since 1964. In addition, the Library has developed extensive holdings on specialized topics of interest to students of Pacific and Asian history, such as Russian-language publications on Asia and the Pacific.

The richest archival holdings in the world on the history of Hawai`i and the Pacific Islands are located in Honolulu. These holdings are in the manuscript, document, and book collections of the Hawaiian and Pacific Collection in the Hamilton Library, the Hawai'i War Records Depository, the Archives of the State of Hawai'i, the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, and the collections of the Mission Children's Society and the Hawaiian Historical Society.

Financial Aid

No information provided

Degree Requirements

The candidate must prove competence by the acquisition of a broad background in general History, passing four comprehensive examinations in two broad geographic areas of history and completing an original dissertation and a final oral examination. While there is no set minimum for credit hours in the Ph.D. program, candidates must take a graduate-level seminar in historiography and must complete at least one graduate-level reading course in each field of their comprehensive exams. The candidate must also demonstrate a knowledge of at least two foreign languages related to the dissertation topic; for students of American or Hawaiian History an alternative requirement may, at the discretion of the doctoral committee, be substituted for one of the languages.



University Information:

Information from Department of Education
(Includes information on the size, location, and general characteristics of faculty and student body)

Information from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
(Includes rating of the institution's rating of the graduate instructional program and size and setting)

 

Faculty Information (Fall 2011):

Full-time Faculty: 33

Relative Size based on Number of Full-time Faculty: Medium [Explain]

 

Student Demographics (Fall 2011):

Number of Doctoral Students in Program: 36

New Doctoral Students Entering Program: 9

Proportion of Doctoral Students Receiving Financial Aid: -1%

Number of Graduate Students Enrolled: 60

Relative Size Based on Graduate Student Enrollment: Medium [Explain]

 

Degree Information:

First PhD conferred: 1964

History PhDs conferred to Date: 180

Number of PhDs Conferred (2011–12): 5

Relative Size Based on PhDs Conferred: Medium [Explain]

Current Dissertations in Progress

PhDs Conferred by Department

 

 

Last Updated: October 19, 2012