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