Graduate Programs
history department
Boston College’s History Department attracts talented graduate students from around the nation and around the world. We offer MA and Ph.D. degrees with training in a number of regional and thematic specialties. The success of our Preparing Future Faculty program has positioned us among the leaders in restructuring graduate education in history.
The department has long had particular strength in British and Irish history, medieval history, U.S. history, and modern European history. Emerging areas of faculty expertise and graduate student interest include South Asian history, East Asian history, and Latin American history. In addition, the department trains in a range of comparative and transnational areas, with particular interest in the history of religion, empires and legacies, and the Atlantic world.
The History Department matriculates a small class of new graduate students each September; our program’s size ensures individualized attention and considerable flexibility in designing one’s plan of study. All Ph.D. students are guaranteed funding through their fifth year in the program, assuming successful completion of requirements. Graduate students gain experience teaching in the university’s two-semester core history sequence, first as teaching assistants, later as teaching fellows in charge of their own classes. Faculty and graduate students come together regularly for conversations about the craft of teaching history.
Historians at Boston College benefit from our location in one of the world’s great centers of academic life. A range of neighboring universities, libraries, and cultural institutions enrich all of our work. In particular, ongoing collaboration with graduate programs at Boston University, Brandeis University, and Tufts University allows our graduate students to tap into a remarkable network of world-class scholars. Several students and faculty also take part in the the Center for European Studies, the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and the South Asia Initiative at Harvard, as well as the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies at MIT.
Ongoing seminars and lecture series at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Public Library, and the Museum of Fine Arts bring together lively communities of scholars interested in a range of subfields and other disciplines. Historians at Boston College have access to the collections of the Boston Library Consortium, a network of 19 academic and research libraries around New England. In all, Boston offers an unparalleled site for pursuing advanced study in history.
Please click here to view the student handbook for the Graduate Program in History, and here to view recent announcements regarding the graduate program.
If you have other questions, please contact:
Director of Graduate StudiesPrasannan Parthasarathi |
Graduate Programs AssistantRebecca Rearebecca.rea.1@bc.edu Stokes Hall, S301-B Phone: 617-552-3781
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