Honors Program, 2009-2010
Instructors: Antonio Feros and Thomas J. Sugrue
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 develop a thesis proposal, which should include a list of the primary sources you plan to consult and analyze.
If you plan to study abroad, it should be during the fall semester of your junior year. Students studying abroad in the Spring semester of their junior year will not be admitted to the Honors Program.
During the summer between your junior and senior years you will have to do the bulk of your thesis research. There are many opportunities to find summer research funding at Penn and we encourage you to apply to as many as you and your adviser judge necessary. During the Fall semester of your senior year you will do the writing of your thesis. In this final stage you will work with your seminar instructor and the director of your thesis, and you will meet periodically with the seminar to report on your progress and to exchange responses to your various formulations, hypotheses, and discoveries.
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 by the end of the Fall semester of your senior year, relying on your own ability to set personal schedules and to stick to them. 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 Antonio Feros and the other by Thomas Sugrue. 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, 2009. Dr. Feros and Dr. Sugrue will jointly review applications, make acceptance decisions, and place accepted students in appropriate sections. ALL APPLICANTS NEED TO HAVE THE APPROVAL OF A FACULTY MEMBER FROM THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT, WHO WILL SERVE AS DIRECTOR OF YOUR THESIS. You will be notified about acceptance decisions in early November, before the close of advanced registration, by Professors Sugrue and Feros. Once you are accepted we will register you for HIST 398. However, you do need to be certain that you request a spring schedule that accommodates 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.
If you have questions about the program or about the application, you can contact one of the instructors (aferos@sas.upenn.edu or tsugrue@sas.upenn.edu).
