Honors Program, 2008-2009
Instructors: Sarah Igo and Warren Breckman
The honors program offers an opportunity to experience first-hand the joys and the frustrations of researching and writing history. You will have the freedom to come at your own questions in your own way, in an honors thesis of your own devising. You will get to see how far your own curiosity, ingenuity, and imagination can carry you. And you will test your capacity for intellectual independence - and for overcoming obstacles and seeing something through - as you have probably never tested it before.
During the first semester, there will be a seminar that will meet weekly. It may emphasize research methods, or historiography and the clash of competing interpretations, or broader philosophical considerations, depending on the interests of the instructor. It will, in any case, be designed to prepare you to undertake your own investigations as you work on your own thesis. In the course of the first semester, you will also begin to frame your thesis project and to identify the sources appropriate to it, with the goal of drafting a thesis proposal.
During your senior year (and during the summer before it), you will do the research on and writing of your thesis. You will work with your seminar instructor and at least one other faculty advisor, and you will meet periodically with the seminar to report on your progress and to exchange responses to your various formulations, hypotheses, discoveries, and excitements. But for most of the year you will be working on your own. This interplay between exchange of ideas with peers and the lonely pursuit of your own thoughts is at the heart of the seminar in senior year, as it is at the heart of all scholarly endeavors.
The honors program is challenging. It offers an excellent opportunity to develop your skills as a researcher and writer and to explore in depth a historical issue of your own design. It requires the ability to do independent work and to complete a substantial writing project, relying on your own ability to set personal schedules and to stick to them. In that sense, it crystallizes the preparation for life and for leadership that your history major affords more generally. It demands that you show initiative and responsibility, that you take a long view, see things in context, and put them in perspective, that you formulate and test a guiding idea, and that you communicate it all with clarity and force.
This year there are two sections of the honors program, one directed by Sarah Igo and the other by Warren Breckman. Each section will be composed of students with similar or complementary interests; there will be no strict segregation by geographical region or chronological period. All students will share the same basic schedules, deadlines, and expectations. The instructors will determine section assignments for all students.
Applications are due by October 25, 2007. Dr. Igo and Dr. Breckman will jointly review applications, make acceptance decisions, and place accepted students in appropriate sections. You will be notified about acceptance decisions in early November, before the close of advanced registration. You do not need to request HIST 398 (the first semester of honors); Dr Susan Miller, the Undergraduate Advisor, will enroll you in the course. However, you do need to be certain that you request a spring schedule that accomodates the meeting time of HIST 398. You should, therefore, wait until you hear from the honors directors before making your course selections for the spring. (Remember that advanced registration is not first come, first served. All requests are held until the final day, Nov 11, so there is absolutely no advantage to registering early.)
If you have questions about the program or about the application, you can contact one of the instructors (sarahigo@sas.upenn.edu or breckman@sas.upenn.edu).
