Graduate
The Graduate Program
A History of Distinction
The Graduate Program in History at the University of Pennsylvania has a long tradition of distinction. Beginning as one of the first programs in the United States to offer doctoral study in history, (the first Ph.D. in History was conferred in 1891); the Department continues to pioneer new areas of scholarship. In the last twenty years, faculty members of the departments in American, European, and World History have assumed a leading role in their fields. Today, few departments in the country match Penn's Department of History in coverage and depth across the entire range of history from medieval times to the present.
Our distinguished faculty includes winners of the profession's most distinguished honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize; Guggenheim, MacArthur, Social Science Research Council, and Spencer Foundation Fellowships; and Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and American Council for Learned Societies grants; among many others. In addition, current faculty members have served as presidents of the Organization of American Historians, the Association for Asian Studies, the American Academy of Jewish Research, the Sixteenth-Century Studies Association, and the Urban History Association.
A Small, Selective Graduate Program
Penn admits a small number of graduate students every year, with generous fellowship support to support them through their studies and dissertation research. A hallmark of our program is our close mentorship of graduate students. Each graduate student meets regularly with his or her advisor and a committee of two or three other faculty members to discuss research, course work, and career goals.
We encourage graduate students to think deeply and broadly about history, methodology, and theory. In addition to the comprehensive training in history, we encourage our graduate students to take courses related to their intellectual interests in other departments, as far ranging as sociology, comparative literature, philosophy, folklore, political science, social welfare, education, and law. In addition, our graduate group draws from the talents of non-departmental historians and other scholars with strong historical interests across the entire university.
An Excellent Placement Record
Our program is small, but our placement record is excellent. The vast majority of our Ph.D. students have gone onto tenure-track position at major research universities and liberal arts colleges, throughout the United States and the world including:
Arizona State University | Ohio State University | University of Houston |
Barnard College | Oxford University | Univ. of Illinois, Chicago |
Bryn Mawr College | Princeton University | University of Maine |
Carnegie-Mellon University | State Univ. of NY, Stony Brook | University of Maryland |
Case-Western Reserve Univ. | Rice University | Univ. of Mass-Amherst |
City University of New York | Rowan University | University of Miami |
Columbia University | Rutgers University | University of Michigan |
Cornell University | San Francisco State Univ. | University of Minnesota |
Dartmouth College | Sarah Lawrence College | University of Penn |
Franklin and Marshall College | Temple University | University of Pittsburgh |
George Mason University | Tulane University | University of Tennessee |
George Washington Univ. | Union College | Univ. of Texas, Austin |
Georgetown University | University College, Galway | University of Toronto |
Georgia Tech | University of Arizona | University of Utah |
Haverford College | Univ. of California, Davis | University of Washington |
Indiana University | Univ. of Calif., Los Angeles | U. of Wisconsin, Madison |
Kenyon College | Univ. of Calif., Santa Cruz | U. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee |
Manhattan College | University of Chile | Vassar College |
Mount Holyoke College | University of Delaware | Wheaton College |
New York University | University of Denver | Yale University |
Northwestern University | University of Georgia | York University (Canada) |
Some of our graduates have gone onto distinguished careers at research institutions, public history programs, and museums, including the South Street Seaport Museum, the Smithsonian, and the National Museum of American Jewish History.
Penn History graduates have made important contributions to our historical understanding of the history of gender, labor, class, and ethnicity; the history of economic and demographic transitions; intellectual life and cultural studies; the social bases of political action; community formation and structure; cultural conflict and accommodation; urbanization; industrialization; and immigration.
Further Information
For further information about Penn's Graduate Program in History, you are invited to explore the program links or contact the current graduate chairperson.