History

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Faculty

Abigail Balbale, PhD, Harvard University

Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic history
Conflict and coexistence among Jews, Christians, and Muslims
Material culture

Paul Bookbinder, PhD, Brandeis University

History of Germany
Holocaust
Political violence

Vincent Cannato, PhD, Columbia University

Twentieth-century American political history
Urban history
Immigration

Jonathan M. Chu, PhD, University of Washington

Colonial America
American Revolution
American legal history

Spencer DiScala, PhD, Columbia University

Modern Italy
History of socialism
Nineteenth-and 20th-century Europe

Heidi Gengenbach, PhD, University of Minnesota

East and southern Africa, particularly social and environmental history , gender, food security, rural livelihoods, humanitarian intervention, oral history

Timothy A. Hacsi, PhD, University of Pennsylvania

Nineteenth- and 20th-century United States
History of public policy
History of poverty and welfare
History of education

Sana Haroon, PhD, University of London

Islam in early modern and modern South Asia
History of Pakistan and Afghanistan

David Hunt, PhD, Harvard University

French social history
Peasant society
Vietnam

Benjamin Johnson, PhD, University of Chicago

Latin America, Mesoamerica, and Mexican history
Brazil
Histories of colonialism

Elizabeth McCahill, PhD, Princeton University

The City of Rome
The Papal Court
Humanism in the early 15th century

Ruth Miller, PhD, Princeton University

Modern Middle East
Ottoman Islamic law in the modern period

Joshua Reid, PhD, University of California Davis

American Indian and indigenous
Borderlands
Environment

Olivier Weisser, PhD, Johns Hopkins University

History of medicine
Early modern Britain
Women’s and gender history

Julie Winch, PhD, Bryn Mawr College

Afro-American history
Maritime history

Roberta L. Wollons, PhD, University of Chicago

American Progressive Era history
Women’s history
History of education

Part-Time Faculty

Maryann Brink, PhD, Brown University

Medieval
Legal history
Renaissance and Reformation

Thomas Johnson, ABD, Boston University

African history

Gary Miller, PhD, Yale University

Early modern Europe

The Program

The History Department offers a master’s degree in history with a choice of four tracks: history, history and archival methods, history teaching, and public history.

History

The MA program in history offers a rigorous set of courses that emphasize skills such historical research and methods, historiography, critical thinking and analysis, and writing. The MA program offers a wide array of courses on various topics in American, European, and non-Western history. Both demanding and flexible, the program suits those students who intend to pursue a PhD as well as those who seek a career in secondary-school teaching. Students who wish to pursue advanced studies for their own intellectual enjoyment and development or test their capacity for graduate work also benefit from the program’s design. All graduate courses consist of seminars that are capped at 15 students, therefore affording the graduate student close faculty attention and support.

History and Archival Methods

The Department of History offers both an archives track in its History MA Program and a graduate-level certificate in archives. Both programs introduce students to archival practices; traditional methods of preserving, arranging, describing and providing access to information; and digital technologies and skills for preserving born digital materials.

Archivists acquire, manage, preserve, and provide access to historical records of all kinds. They work with individuals, groups, institutions, companies, and governments to preserve and retrieve materials with historical value. They help groups and organizations rediscover their past, assist communities in documenting their cultures, and serve citizens searching for family and personal histories. Today, archivists collaborate with other professionals to utilize digital technologies and other media to maximize access to important historical resources. The archives track and certificate in archives prepare students to enter this exciting information-age field.

While archivists are charged to preserve and provide access to the past, they are more than custodians of records. In their choices to acquire, arrange, describe, and provide access to material, they shape the historical record. The nature of the work infuses archivists with power; their daily choices — what to retain and discard, how to preserve, what to emphasize, and what to showcase — construct the past to a degree. Learning the theory, methodology, and current practices of archival science enriches the work of historians just as understanding historians’ methodology and research needs can enhance how archivists approach their work.

History Teaching

The history teaching track is specially designed to meet the needs of current and prospective secondary-school teachers of history and social studies. It emphasizes extensive and varied course work in history, culminating in a capstone project rather than a thesis. It is not a teacher licensure program. Students interested in teacher licensure should consult with the Graduate College of Education and Human Development’s Teacher Education Program to determine the requirements for licensure at either the initial or professional level. Those requirements may be satisfied in coordination with the History MA Program.

Public History

Public historians study the way we remember and interpret the past. They use historical methodologies to preserve, collect, present, and interpret history with and for public audiences. Public historians work with historic landscapes, sites, parks, and monuments; in museums and historic buildings; on film and in digital media; and with community groups and organizations, families, and institutions. Public historians help people understand personal and community histories and their relationships to broader historical contexts.

The public history track prepares students to become professional historians who are not only engaged with public life, but also possess a firm foundation in historical methods and scholarship. The program trains students in public history practice, as well as theoretical foundations of the field, and prepares them for professional roles in government agencies such as the National Park Service, historical societies, museums and historic houses, and libraries. Public historians are playing a larger and larger role as scholars and practitioners in the professional field of American history.

Training in historical methodology is a crucial foundation for practicing public historians, thus public history students earn an MA in history, rather than a specialized MA in public history or public history and archives. Public history students need to gain strong subject area knowledge and research skills as well as an introduction to the theory and methods of public history.

The mission of UMass Boston’s public history track within the history MA program is:

To prepare students to become professional historians with the knowledge and skills to analyze, preserve, and interpret the past with and for a broad range of audiences and communities
To provide students with practical experiences in historical and cultural institutions
To serve as a space for students, faculty, and practitioners to collaborate on civically engaged historical projects.

Programs

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