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Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York

PhD Program in History
365 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10016-4309

Phone 212.817.8430
Fax 212.817.1523
E-mail: history@gc.cuny.edu

Department Web Site

Areas of Specialization:

Ancient, East Asia, Europe, Jewish, History of Science, Latin America, Middle East, U.S., and Women and Gendeer

Program Description

The Ph.D. Program in history at The Graduate Center, CUNY is a major doctoral program, with a world-renowned faculty and a diverse group of students from around the country and abroad. Drawing on faculty members from throughout the City University of New York (CUNY), the program provides students with the opportunity to take classes from and work closely with an unusually broad group of scholars with an extraordinary range of expertise. Our courses are exclusively for graduate students, and small in size. Typically between twenty and thirty new students enter the program each year. Some have M.A. degrees, but most do not. While most students enter our program after having recently completed an undergraduate degree, others come after professional experience, including as teachers, lawyers, journalists, museum curators, and librarians.

Special Programs or Resources

New York City has unrivalled resources for historical research, including the Research Division of the New York Public Library (a five minute walk from our campus) and many specialized libraries and archives. Through a consortium of research universities, Graduate Center students can take courses at the other major doctoral institutions in the New York area (and use their libraries). The Graduate Center itself has many interdisciplinary research and instructional centers, including in Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Latin American Studies, Middle East and Middle Eastern American Studies, Jewish Studies, and Women’s Studies. It also houses the Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project, which works closely with the History Program.

Financial Aid

We provide a variety of financial aid and teaching opportunities. Nearly half of our incoming students are awarded multi-year fellowship packages. Typically these provide tuition and stipends for five years; in years two, three, and four students teach at one of the CUNY colleges. We also give, on a competitive basis, one-year renewable fellowships to both incoming and returning students, and offer MAGNET and other grants specifically for minority students.

Through the Graduate Center's affiliation with the CUNY undergraduate colleges, doctoral students have the opportunity for extensive teaching experience while completing their degrees. Some students teach as part of their fellowships, others as adjunct instructors. Unlike at most universities, our graduate students usually teach their own courses, rather than run discussion and grading sections of large lecture courses.

Degree Requirements

Students must complete sixty credits, and fulfill course requirements of a major and minor field. Up to thirty credits may be transferred (with the approval of the program) from a MA program. Students must pass a written examination in their major field before completing forty-five credits and an oral examination in their major and minor fields after completing all their courses. They also must complete a language requirement, which varies by major field of study.



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: 75

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

 

Student Demographics (Fall 2011):

Number of Doctoral Students in Program: 147

New Doctoral Students Entering Program: 22

Proportion of Doctoral Students Receiving Financial Aid: -1%

Number of Graduate Students Enrolled: 133

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

 

Degree Information:

First PhD conferred: 1967

History PhDs conferred to Date: 304

Number of PhDs Conferred (2011–12): 10

Relative Size Based on PhDs Conferred: Large [Explain]

Current Dissertations in Progress

PhDs Conferred by Department

 

 

Last Updated: October 19, 2012