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Hawai`i at Mânoa, Univ. of

Department Web Site

Areas of Specialization:

East/South/Southeast Asia, Pacific, U.S., Europe, 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 Departments 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

Graduate teaching assistantships constitute the largest source of financial assistance available to students through the Department of History. The primary duty of graduate teaching assistants is to assist faculty in the World History Program by grading papers, counseling students, and conducting weekly discussion sessions with students taking History 151 or 152. The Department of History calculates the work load of graduate teaching assistants at 20 hours per week, so assistants carry course loads of no more than nine hours per semester.
Other forms of financial assistance include tuition waivers awards and Pacific-Asian Scholarships. The latter are tuition waivers reserved for students majoring in a field of Pacific Islands or Asian history and having a grade-point average of 3.5 or better on a 4.0 scale. Students majoring in Chinese intellectual history are eligible for the Hung Family Fellowship, which the Department of History awards. The Department also awards a few fellowships and grant to advanced students. These include Kennedy Fellowships, usually no more than $1,500, for dissertation research travel; Sakai Awards, usually no more than $750, for travel to professional meetings and job interviews; and Kwok Grants for dissertation-related expenses.
Students focusing on Asian or Pacific Islands history, as well as students from Asia or the Pacific Islands, should also note the availability of several forms of financial assistance beyond those offered by the Department of History. The East-West Center, a federal agency that works closely with the University of Hawai'i, awards scholarships to American, Asian, and Pacific Islands students. The scholarships are granted for 12-month periods and are renewable up to 48 months for Ph.D. students.
The School of Pacific and Asian Studies (SPAS) administers the awarding of Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for students of Asian languages and area studies. These fellowships are particularly valuable for students whose graduate programs require intensive language study. The fellowships are for the academic year and are contingent upon funding from the U.S. Department of Education. Each fellowship includes a tuition waiver and a stipend of $15,000 for the academic year. Summer fellowships are also available, with stipends of $2,500. Recipients must pursue a full-time graduate program in Asian language and area studies during the tenure of the fellowship. Some of the area studies centers in SPASthe Center for Chinese Studies, the Center for Japanese Studies and the Center for Korean Studies, for examplealso offer fellowships for which graduate students in history may apply. These fellowships currently have stipends of $12,000 plus waiver of tuition. The Center for Japanese Studies also awards a small number of mini-fellowships which have stipends of $3,000 and usually with a waiver of tuition.

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.