Examinations

The foreign language examination is offered in September and January of each academic year. It is an exercise in which a student is given a 300-word passage in his or her preferred language to translate within 90 minutes. Students may use a dictionary (either paper or an approved online type) to assist them.

The examinations are graded by members of the history faculty. Students may take the examination as many times as necessary to earn a passing grade

The Comprehensive Examination should be taken at the end of the third semester of the program. It is generally scheduled on that semester's Reading Day (the day following the last day of classes). The exam is four hours long and consists of two questions with two hours devoted to each question.

The examinations are graded by three-member faculty committees in the appropriate concentration who award pass or fail grades to each of the two essays. The student must receive passing grades from at least two of the three graders and must pass BOTH questions they answer. The examinations are structured as follows:

• U.S. concentration: Each student is presented with three questions and must answer two of them.
• European concentration: Each student selects the early or modern European period. He or she is presented with three questions and must answer two of them.
• Global concentration: Each student is presented with two questions in general Global History and must answer one of them. Then he or she is presented with two questions in his or her geographical area of specialization and must answer one of them.
• Public History concentration: Each student is presented with two questions on the general theme of Public History and must answer one of them. Each student must choose either the first or second half of U.S., European, or Global History. He or she is presented with two questions in that concentration and must answer one of them.

Remember: You are responsible for accessing copies of the books on the reading list for the concentration in which you will test by using the library, purchasing the books, or reading copies that are available in the T.A. Office. The books in the T.A. Office are available on a non-circulating basis. In other words, use them in the T.A. Office.

Work together

--form a study group

--Divide responsibility for reading the books on the comps list among yourselves

Prepare one-page synopses of the books on your reading list

 --these should explain argument or arguments of the work in two or three succinct sentences

--list two or three of the book’s most important contributions to the historiography

--list two or three of the most important criticisms of the book

--list two or three ways it relates to the other books on your list concerning the same subject

Remember, the reading lists are designed to give you a baseline knowledge of the most important literature in your field, including both classic works and cutting edge new works

--They are not exhaustive

--You will be able to pass your exam if you show a mastery of only the books on the list

--But you should not limit yourself to the books on the list

--Go back and review the other books you have used in your classes and in your research projects

--Talk to your advisers about what they think are the most important works in your field

--We strongly encourage you to be able to cite those works in your exam essays as well

 Find a good undergraduate textbook to read as you prepare for comps

--This will help you master the chronology and the basic historical narrative in your field

--some good ones have sidebars about historiography or scholarly disagreements that you will find useful

 Think about broad relationships as you study

--how do the pieces of the historical puzzle fit together?

--how does one major historical trend or theme lead to the next one and why?

Strive to master your subject on two levels:

--the” big picture” or broad canvas of history

--and the more intimate, detailed picture of individual subjects

--think carefully about how these parts fit together to form the whole

You should compose answers that make clear you have a command of the historical facts and narrative pertinent to the question, but which also show an appreciation of the various scholarly interpretations relevant to it.

 Do not merely incorporate a laundry list of books and articles into your answers

 Cite the books on your reading lists only when they are relevant and when they help you make your larger points.

--They should support the argument you are making in your essays

 Prepare thoroughly, but don’t over-prepare

--Don’t study to the point where it all becomes a blur

--and you feel overwhelmed by the task

First, Relax!

--Remember, you have four hours ahead of you, which is plenty of time

Read the exam questions carefully and thoroughly

--Make sure you understand exactly what they mean and exactly what you are being asked

--Respond to the question that is asked, not the question you had hoped would be asked

Decide which questions you plan to attack 

Think carefully about what you are going to do before you begin writing

--Take the time to sketch out an outline of your answers

Structure your essay

--It should have a thesis

--It should have a well-articulated introduction, body and conclusion

Budget your time for each question

--Don’t get caught in the middle of your second essay as time expires

A good essay question does two things:

--It shows a mastery of the historical subject matter

--It displays a mastery of the historical literature and historiography of its subject

--this command of the historiography is what sets graduate students apart from good undergraduates

Demonstrate that you understand in detail the subject at hand

--but also demonstrate that you understand the scholarly conversation on that subject

--that you appreciate the contending points of view on a subject and how they evolved

--that you understand the disagreements among historians on the subject

There is no correct or incorrect length for an exam answer. You should write as thorough an answer as possible that incorporates both narrative substance and relevant historiography.

Europe

1. TRANSFORMATION OF MEDIEVAL INSTITUTIONS

W.C. Jordan, The Great Famine, 1996.
D. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 1988
C. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 2007
R. N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England, 1989.
B. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, ca. 1050–1614, 2014
M. Bailey, After the Black Death: Economy, Society, and the Law in Fourteenth-Century England, 2021.
J. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society, 2001.

2. EARLY MODERN EUROPE

Renaissance

C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, 1982.
J. R. Hale, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Europe, 1995
L. Martines, Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy, 1979.
M. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 3rd edition, 2008.

Early Modern Globalization

F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, Vol. I, Structures of Everyday Life 1400-1800, 1967
I. Wallerstein The Modern World System, vol. 1, 1974
Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans and Indians and their Shared History, 1400-1900, 2009

Reformation

S. Clark, Thinking with Demons, 1999.
J. Black, Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seventeenth-Century World (2011).
D. MacCullogh, The Reformation: A History, 2004
T. Brady, German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 2009 

Absolutism and Ancien Regime

J. Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great, 2003.
N. Z. Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 1975.
N. Elias, Court Society, 1983
P. Monod, The Power of Kings, 2001
J. Price, Dutch Culture in a Golden Age, 2011
P. Anderson, Linages of the Absolutist State​, 1974

Scientific Revolution

S. Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, 1996 

3. ENLIGHTENMENT

W. Doyle, The Origins of the French Revolution, 1999.
T. Munck, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 2000

4. AGE OF REVOLUTION

J. Brewer, Sinews of Power, 1989.
S. Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery, 2009
E. J. Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, 1996

5. INDUSTRIALIZATION, GENDER AND CLASS FORMATION

R. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, 2008.
P. Gay, Schnitzler’s Century, 2002
J. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, rev. ed.1999

6. NATIONALISM AND NATION BUILDING

B. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 1983
L. Colley, Britons, 1992
E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 2nd ed, 2009
E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 1976.

7. WORLD WAR I AND REVOLUTIONS

S. Audoin-Rouzeau and A. Becker, Understanding the Great War (2002)
G. Magee and A Thompson, Empire and Globalization: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, 1850-1914, 2010
R. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917, 2005
J. Winter and A. Prost, The Great War in History, 2005 

8. GREAT DEPRESSION AND TOTALITARIANISM

K. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History, 1995
D. Hoffmann, The Stalinist Era, 2018
S. Payne, Civil War in Europe, 1905-1949, 2011

9. WORLD WAR II

D. Dwork and R. Van Pelt, Holocaust: A History, 2003
M. Hastings, Inferno: The World at War, 2011
T. Snyder. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, 2010.

10.POST-WAR EUROPE

R. Betts, Decolonization, 1998D. Painter, The Cold War: An International History, 2007

Global 

PART I: General Readings: All students in this track read this part of the list

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London:  Penguin Books, 2019)
Jerry Bentley. Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in PreModern Times (1993).
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politicsof Difference (Princeton: 2012)
P. Cain and A. Hopkins, British Imperialism (2vols) (New York: Longman, 1993).
Alfred W Crosby. The Columbian Exchange: The Biological and Social Consequences of 1492 (Praeger, 2003).
Philip Curtin. The Rise and Fall of the plantation Complex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

John Darwin. After Tamerlane: Global History of Empire since 1405 (Bloomsbury Press, 2008)
Niall Fergusson. The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World (Basic Books,2002)
Sumit Guha, Tribe and State in Asia through Twenty Five Centuries (New York: Columbia University press, 2021)
Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, latest edition).
Ann McClintok. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (Routledge: 1995)Sidney Mintz. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Penguin, 1986).
Kenneth Pomeranz. The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern
World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Marcus Rediker. The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking, 2007)
Mary Louise Pratt. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (Routledge,1992).
P. Stearns. The Industrial Revolution in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Third Edition, 2007).
Ann Stoler. Carnal Knowledge: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (University of California Press, 2010).
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Connected Histories: Essays and Arguments (London: Verso, 2022)
Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern world System. Vol. III (New York: Academic Press, 1974).
Odd Westad. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, 2011)


PART II, Track-Specific Reading List (Students read only those books in their specific track)

MIDDLE EAST

Betty S. Anderson, A History of the Modern Middle East:  Rulers, Rebels, and Rogues (Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 2016)

James Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

Andrew Rippin and Teresa Bernheimer, Muslims:  Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, 5th edition (New York:  Routledge, 2019)

Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects (NY: Columbia University Press, 2001)

Priya Satya, Spies in Arabia (Oxford Univeristy Press, 2009)

Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (Picador, 2001).

Sarah Shields, Fezzes in the River (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, 2012)

Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers (Stanford University, 2010).

Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (California, 1997)

Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism (California, 2000)

Eve Troutt-Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism (California, 2003)

Max Weiss, In the Shadow of Sectarianism (Harvard, 2010)

Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens (Columbia, 2000)

Nekki Keddi, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2003).

Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashimite Iraq (Stanford, 2010).

James Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (University of California Press, 1999).

Lisa Pollard, Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing and Liberating Egypt, 1863-1923 (2004)

Beth Baron, The Orphan Scandal (Stanford, 2014)

 

B. LATIN AMERICA

General

Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America. (8th ed. Oxford, 2012)

Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin America. (7th ed. Oxford, 2009).

Chasteen, John Charles. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America (3rd ed. W. W. Norton and Company, 2011.)

Higman, B. W. A Concise History of the Caribbean, (1st ed. Cambridge University Press, 2010.)

Woodward, Ralph Lee. Central America: A Nation Divided. (3rd ed. Oxford, 1999.)

Skidmore, Thomas. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. (Oxford, 1999).

Colonial Period

Restall, Matthew. Latin America in Colonial Times. (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Stern, Steve J. Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640. (Wisconsin, 1982).

Cope, R. Douglas. The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico, 1760-1720. (Wisconsin, 1994).

Johnson, Lyman, and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds. The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America. (New Mexico, 1998).

Walker, Charles F. Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath. (Duke University Press, 2008).

Beezley, William H., Cheryl English Martin and William E. French (ed). Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico. (Scholarly Resources, Inc. 1994).

Bauer, Arnold J. Goods, Power, History. Latin America’s Material Culture. (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. (Oxford University Press, 2004).

National Period

Chasten, John Charles. Americanos. Latin America’s Struggle for Independence. (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Beezley, William H. and Linda Curcio-Nagy (ed.). Latin American Popular Culture Since Independence. An Introduction. (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2nd ed. 2011).

Lynch, John. Argentine Caudillo: Juan Manuel de Rosas. (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001).

Chambers, Sarah C. From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854. (Penn State University Press, 2011).

Andrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America: 1800-2000. (Oxford, 2004).

Perez, Louis A., Jr. On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture. (Ecco, 2001).

C. AFRICA

General Reading

Robert Collins (ed.), Documents from the African Past (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001).

Basil Davidson, Africa in History, revised edition (New York: Touchstone, 1995).

Toyin, Falola, The Power of African Cultures (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008).

Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent since Independence (United Kingdom: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, African Women: A Modern History (Westview Press, 1997).

Susan Geiger, Nakanyike Musisi, Jean Allman, Women in African Colonial Histories (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002).

Kevin Shillington, History of Africa, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).

Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya (New York: Vintage Books, 1962).


Western Africa

Emmanuel K. Acheampong, Themes in West Africa’s History (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006)

Nwando Achebe, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005).

A.G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (Columbia University Press, 1995)

Eastern Africa

Robert Collins (ed.), Eastern African History: Text and Readings (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1990).

Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo and Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Women, Work and Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900-2003 (James Currey, 2006)

Paul Bjerk, Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Sovereignty in Tanzania, 1960-1964. (University of Rochester Press: New York, 2015).

Central Africa

David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin (eds.), History of Central Africa: the
Contemporary Years since 1960 (Longman, 1998).

Christine Saidi, Women’s Authority and Society in Early East-Central Africa (New York, University of Rochester Press, 2010).

Leo Zeilig, Lumumba: Africa’s Lost Leader, London: Haus Publishing, 2015)

Southern Africa

Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: the Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (New York: Hachette Book Group, 1997).

Amy McKenna, The History of Southern Africa (New York: Britannica Educational Publisher, 2011).

Colin Bundy, Short-Changed? South Africa Since Apartheid. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014).


D. EAST ASIA

General

Patricia Ebrey, Anne Walthall, and James Palais, East Asia: A Cultural Social, and Political History. (Wadsworth, 2009) 

China

Mark Elvin. The Pattern of the Chinese Past. (Stanford University Press, 1973)

F. W. Mote. Intellectual Foundations of China. (McGraw-Hill, 1989)

Klaus Mühnhahn, Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping (Belknap, 2020)

Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. (Columbia University Press, 1984)

Phlip Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure. (Harvard University Press, 1970)

Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937. (University of California Press, 1995)

Yeh Wen-Hsin, Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and Origins of Chinese
Communism. ( University of California Press, 1996)

Frank Dikötter. The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945-1957 (Bloomsbury, 2018)

Lloyd E. Eastman, Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937-1949 (Stanford University Press, 1984)

Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2008)

Japan

Mikiso Hane, Pre-modern Japan: A Historical Survey. (Westview, 1991)

Jeffrey Mass & William Hauser, eds., The Bakufu in Japanese History. (Stanford University Press, 1985)

Andrew Gordon. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa to the Present (Oxford, 2019)

W. G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration. (Stanford University Press, 1972)

Marius Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization (Princeton University Press, 1965)

Gordon Berger, Parties Out of Power in Japan, 1931-194I (Princeton University Press, 1977)

Akira Iriye, Power and Culture: the Japanese-American War, 1941-1945. ( Harvard University Press, 1981)

John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. (Norton, 2000)

Richard Katz, Japan, the System that Soured: the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Economic Miracle (M. E. Sharpe, 1998)

SOUTH ASIA:

General Reading:

Asher, Catherine & Talbot, Cynthia, India Before Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Bandyopadhyay, Sekar, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2015)

Guha, Ramachandra, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco Books, 2019)

_________________, Gandhi Before India (New York: Vintage Books, 2015)

_________________, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World (New York: Allen lane, 2019)

 
Modern South Asia

Achaya, K.T, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994)

Alam, Muzaffar, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India 1707-1748 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986)

Amin, Shahid, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922-1992 (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995)

Bayly, C.A, Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars: North India in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

Chaudhuri, K.N, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)

Cohn, Bernard, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)

Derrett, J.D.M, History of Indian Law (Leiden: Brill, 1973)

Dhulipala, Venkat, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Ganti, Tejaswini, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Indian Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2013)

Guha, Ranajit, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996)

Guha, Sumit, Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2013)

Nandy, Ashis, Exiled at Home (New Delhi: Oxford University press, 1998)

___________, Return from Exile (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Roy, Tirthankar, An Economic History of India 1707-1857 (London & New York: Routledge, 2021)

Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University press, 2002)

United States

Historiography (Recommended)

Banner, James M. (ed.). A Century of American Historiography. New York: Bedford St. Martins, 2009.

Foner, Eric and McGirr, Lisa (eds.). American History Now (Critical Perspectives on the Past). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011.

Colonial Period to the American Revolution

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Enlarged ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. 20th anniversary ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Kulikoff, Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 2000.

Parkinson, Robert G. The Common Cause: Creating Race & Nation in the American Revolution.Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2016.

Norton, Mary Beth. Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Taylor, Alan. American Colonies. Revised ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 1998. To replace Radicalism of the American Revolution

Zagarri, Rosemarie, Revolutionary Backlash: Women & Politics in the Early American Republic. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 

The Early Republic to the Civil War

Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 2003.

Cott, Nancy. The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Chandra Manning, What this Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War. Vintage, 2008.

Glympth, Thavolia, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon, 1974.

Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: Norton, 1983.

Johnson, Walter. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Perdue, Theda, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835. University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. 20th anniversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Reconstruction to the Great Depression

Bodnar, John, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America. Indiana University Press, 1987.

Chauncey, George, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Basic Books, 1995.

Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.

Jones, Martha, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Basic Books, 2020.

Licht, Walter, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Williams, William A. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.

Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877-1913. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1951.

The New Deal to the Present

Cohen, Lizabeth. Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.

Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Joseph, Peniel E. Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. Holt Paperbacks, 2006.

Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2005.

Leffler Melvyn P. For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union and the Cold War. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

McGuire, Danielle L. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance – A New

History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. Vintage, 2011.

Reynolds, David. From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt's America and the Origins of the Second World War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001.

Rossinow, Doug. The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. Columbia University Press, 1998.

Sparrow, James T. Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Public

Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene, and Laura Koloski, Letting Go?  Sharing Authority in a User-Generated World (2011)

David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2002)

Andrea Burns, From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement (2014)

Alison J. Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America (2001)

Steven Conn, Do Museums Still Need Objects? (2010)

Karen Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices (2008)

Karen Cox, Dixie’s Daughters:  the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (2003)

Thomas Denenberg, Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America (2003)

Steven C. Dubin, Displays of Power:  Controversy in the American Museum from the Enola Gay to Sensation (1999)

Jennifer Eichsted and Stephen Small, Representations of Slavery:  Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums (2002)

Kenneth E. Foote, Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (2003)

Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (1990)

David Glassberg, Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (2001)

Anders Greenspan, Creating Colonial Williamsburg:  The Restoration of Virginia’s Eighteenth Century Capitol (2002)

Katherine Grier, Culture and Comfort: Parlor-Making and Middle Class Identity, 1850-1930 (2013)

Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (1997)

Karen Harvey, History and Material Culture (2017, second edition)

Lara Leigh Kellend, Clio's Foot Soldiers: Twentieth-Century U.S. Social Movements and Collective Memory (2018)

T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (1994)

James Lindgren, Preserving Historic New England: Preservation, Progressivism, and the Remaking of Memory (1995)

Denise Meringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks:  Toward a New Genealogy of Public History (2012)

Jules David Prown and Kenneth Haltman, American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture (2000)

Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life  (1998)

Kirk Savage, Monument Wars (2009)

Cathy Stanton, The Lowell Experiment:  Public History in a Post-Industrial City (2006)

Lisa Tetrault, The Myth of Seneca Falls:  Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 (2014)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Age of Homespun:  Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (2002)

Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History:  The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (2018)

Patricia West, Domesticating History: Political Origins of America’s House Museums (1999)

Stephanie Yuhl, A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historic Charleston (2005)

U.S. History:

How and why has the scope and size of the federal government changed between 1850 and 1950? 

Much of the scholarship on American history has been defined by the “holy trinity” of race, class, and gender. Do you agree or disagree? How do these categories help us better understand the past? 

American history is often taught as being separate from global history. However, scholars have increasingly argued that we cannot understand American history in isolation from the rest of the world. How have events/people/movements that transcend national boundaries shaped the development of America since the end of the Civil War?

European History (Modern):

What were the economic, social, and political consequences of the shift from the Mediterranean economy to the Atlantic economy in the early modern period? 

How did nationalism change from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century?” Answer this question by examining one or more European nations. 

Compare and contrast the origins of the two world wars in Europe. Distinguish between unique, analogous, and recurring elements.

Global History (General Section):

Imperialism can be divided into formal and informal types.  Define both and explain how they were different and how they were similar.  Provide examples to illustrate your major points. 

Define nationalism and compare and contrast an example of successful and unsuccessful non-Western nation-building in the 20th century, focusing primarily on what factors contributed to success and failure.

Select one of the following issues.  Define it and discuss its significance to global history (ca 1500-present):  technology, identity, political ideology, race, gender, nationalism. 

Public History (General Section):

Discuss how three specific public history spaces--such as museums, historic sites, memorials, or digital creations--use material objects to shape the interpretation of a particular past.

How has the relationship between public history professionals and the public changed over time, and what and who has influenced these changes? 

How did twentieth-century social movements affect the practice of public history?  How successful were those who sought to revise the public interpretation of America’s past, and how do those efforts continue to evolve?