The Global History Ph.D.

The Ph.D. Program in Global History

This creation of a Ph.D. program in global history resulted from four years of discussions. They began with a memorandum in November 1997 from three members of the history faculty—Peter Coclanis, Miles Fletcher, and Michael Hunt—to the entire department recommending moves toward strengthening global/third world/comparative studies. Soon afterwards, a Global History Group (GHG) began meeting on a regular basis each semester to plan a schedule of speakers and to plan initiatives within the department related to global history. Graduate students as well as faculty took a keen interest in the GHG. Subsequently, the department established an undergraduate field in global history and an option in global history for the second field of a doctoral program.  Faculty then introduced and taught regularly two new courses at the graduate level in global history (721/205a and 722/205b). In the spring of 2001, several graduate students composed a draft for a Ph.D. program in global history. After a year of discussion within the department, the faculty unanimously agreed at the end of the spring 2002 term to make global history a doctoral program.

PART I: Introduction

The field of global history has a coherence that sustains its claim to autonomy as one field amidst many in the historical profession. Support for this proposition can be found in three distinct realms.

First and perhaps foremost is the conceptual foundation on which global history rests. On 24 August 1998, John Headley writing as convener of the Global History Group supplied a memo to department faculty proposing the establishment of global history as a field (without a doctoral program at that point). Because that memo contains an articulation of the conceptual foundation that is difficult to improve on now, it deserves to be quoted at length:

By its nature global history would appear to be both potentially comprehensive in its scope and specifically local in its analysis of a theme, problem or issue that transcends the regional, the national and the civilizational contexts. While maintaining a planetary reference, global history studies how diverse peoples and cultures contend with a specific issue such as disease, labor—free and unfree, population growth, interoceanic trade, the family, the missions of world religions, technology's advance and the environment's degradation. Problem or issue-oriented, global history in the elegance of its selectivity and of its analysis differs from world history, which is essentially narrative and descriptive in its aggregative effort to deal as a compendium with the totality of the past. Thus global history intrinsically has the capacity to examine common issues which heretofore have been treated in the parochial context of a region or nation or at best comparatively and are now examined in a more interconnected and comprehensive perspective.

Yet global history, if it is to be meaningful, must be more than a bundle of topical sorties into the vast terrain of recorded human experience. It would seem necessary to strive toward a coherence both in its methodology and in its focus upon a range of issues pervasively operative in the world scene. Methodologically it needs to discover, select and analyze the fissures and tensions between the global and the local, the universalizing and the fragmentizing. In terms of a range of current, pressing issues the ecological/environmental, the reduction and control of violence, of over-population and of poverty, human rights, the rule of law, and democratically constitutional government present themselves.

In short, global history is the study of processes that transcend regions, nations, and even any single civilization.

Second, a look at well-elaborated professional practice strengthens the case for a genuine field of global history. There are many signs that global history is now firmly embedded in the profession.

·         Globalists have created their own professional association, The World History Association¹ with its own journal (The Journal of World History) published since 1990.

·         Publications on a wide range of fronts attest to the growing appeal of global history. The premier professional journal, The American Historical Review, has created a separate section for book reviews on studies relating to "Comparative/World" history. The AHR has also regularly published pieces relevant to global history over the past decade, including notably Geyer and Bright's World History in a Global Age (1995) and a string of special features such as the retrospective on Said's Orientalism (1994) and the collection of review essays of James Scott's Seeing Like a State (2001). Publishers such as W. W. Norton have initiated series in global history, as has the American Historical Association itself in a series edited by Michael Adas and a series edited by Bonnie Smith. Texts for the undergraduate classroom have begun to proliferate, prompted by publishers' confidence in a growing market. Some dozen different texts aspire with varying degrees of success to treat the global history of the twentieth century world, while virtually the same number seek to encompass the post-1945 world.

·         A variety of programmatic initiatives reflect the rise of interest in global history. Several history departments where especially enterprising faculty are located have already identified global history as an area of specialization, and gone on to create various kinds of centers and programs. The University of Hawaii (Jerry Bentley), Northeastern University (Patrick Manning), and Ohio State (Carter Findley and John Rothney) come at once to mind. Foundations have signaled a commitment to graduate training with a global bent. Duke History Department's "Oceans Connect" initiative got off the ground thanks to precisely this kind of foundation support.

·         Finally, job advertisements express a strong interest in candidates with global history training. A survey of job advertisements from Perspectives (the AHA newsletter) from January to December of 2000 found twenty-eight jobs listing global or world history qualifications as primary. An additional twenty-four made those qualifications secondary.

The final point in the case for global history is to be found in the emergence of a discrete body of interpretative, methodological, historiographical, and pedagogical issues. Concerns specific to the field come into especially sharp focus in the collections recently edited by Ross E. Dunn and Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens.² To illustrate the point, consider some of the overarching issues preoccupying those teaching and writing global history. Those working in the contemporary period, for example, debate whether powerful transnational forces have overwhelmed states, weigh the merits of a cultural versus a political economy approach to understanding colonialism, search for appropriate ways to problematize that broad process of transformation labeled variously as globalization, Westernization, modernization, and Americanization, and argue over the degree to which late twentieth century globalization was unprecedented. In the premodern period, controversies have swirled around the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the reasons for Western dominance established sometime after the sixteenth century.³

These elements taken together—a coherent concept, vigorous publications, well-elaborated professional practices, and a focal set of problems—leave no doubt that global history has not just clearly emerged as an increasingly self-conscious and self-confident field but now raises questions that engage other fields and promotes among them both intellectual interchange and interpretive and methodological cross fertilization. The field thus serves as more than a distinct site of inquiry. It is also one that in a profession marked by specialization and fragmentation is inherently open to interaction with other, older historical fields. The degree to which global history can be integrative and promote conversations across field lines has already become evident in our department—as we have seen in global history graduate classes, in the faculty who self-identify as part of the global group while also working within other fields, and in work being done by graduate students determined to transcend field boundaries.

PART II: Program for a Graduate Student with a concentration in Global History

1.      Primary theme. Upon application to the graduate program in global history at UNC-Chapel Hill, a student must suggest a theme as the area of concentration. On arrival, the student will have an adviser with an appropriate background. The possibilities, depending on faculty interest, include but are not limited to:

2.      Other areas of study. Beside the primary area, students in global history must select three additional areas. One or two may be geographical fields (for example, North America, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Europe, Russia), and one or two may be chronological (pre-1800, post-1800). Thus, beyond the primary thematic field, a student may define two area fields and one chronological field, or one area field and two chronological fields. If a student decides to have just one chronological field, it must lie outside of the main chronological emphasis of the primary field.

3.      Comprehensives exams.

Before Fall 2007: In each of the four areas, there will be a three-hour written examination. A student may take all four examinations in one semester or over two consecutive semesters. The adviser must approve the schedule early in the semester in which the first examination is taken. As part of constructing this schedule, a student must secure the approval of each participating faculty member to the time for his/her examination. A faculty member may ask a student to synchronize an examination with those of other students.

Each student will prepare for each of the four examinations with an appropriate member of the faculty. In each case, student and faculty will decide on a reading list of 25 books, or their equivalent in articles, for each field. As a rule, they will also discuss the topics and issues from which the examination question is to come.

After Fall 2007: Recently, the faculty in the Global History field agreed to make some changes in the regulations for comprehensive examinations in the Global History doctoral field. These changes will take effect in the fall 2007.  Students who are planning to take comprehensive examinations during the current academic year, 2006-2007, may take their examinations under the current regulations or the new ones, whichever the studentsprefer.  The aim of the changes is to make the regulations for comprehensive examinations more uniform across the fields.

The changes are to allow eight hours for each examination, instead of three hours, and to set a guideline of 10-15 pages (typed and double-spaced) for each examination, whereas under the current regulations for the global field there is no guideline for the length of each examination response.

The Global History field will still require four comprehensive exams, and the regulations for defining the fields for those exams will remain the same.  There will be an examination in the student's primary thematic field.  In addition, one or two of the three remaining fields may be geographical areas (for example, North America, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Europe, Russia), and one or two may be chronological areas in global history (pre-1800, post-1800). Thus, beyond the primary thematic area, a student may define two geographic
areas and one chronological area, or one geographical area and two chronological areas. If a student decides to have just one chronological area, it must lie outside of the main chronological emphasis of the primary thematic area.

Click here for more information about Comprehensive Exams.

4.      Required Courses. Two courses will be required for the global history field: History 721/205a (Global History up to about 1800) and History 722/205b (Global History, Post-1800).

5.      Foreign language. Students taking a doctoral field in global history will be expected to pass reading examinations in at least two pertinent foreign languages. This requirement is important not just for the completion of a student's main research project but also for providing a firm basis for the student's future development as a scholar of global history.

6.      Administration of the field. The Global History Group will convene as necessary each semester to make decisions on policy relating to the global history field. The GHG faculty will meet in the spring to review the progress of graduate students pursuing a field in global history and to elect a convener for the next academic year.

7.      Program of study. The typical program for a student in Global history is as follows:

o        First Year (Master's Degree) — requirements:

o        Second Year (Master's Degree) — requirements:

o        Doctoral candidacy — requirements (to be completed within three terms for UNC M.A.'s and four terms for M.A.'s from elsewhere):

Part III: Resources

a.       The department offers a number of courses beyond History 205a and 205b that address transnational themes and events. Below is a list of courses that are relevant to global history. As in other fields, students should feel free to arrange with faculty independent reading courses.

1. • History 512/139 Technology and Imperialism
   • History 513/140 Imperialism and the Third World
   • History 514/141 Museums, Monuments, and Collective Memory
   • History 515/143 History of Socialist Thought
   • History 534/180 The African Diaspora
   • History 725/222 Selected Readings in the Comparative or Global History of Women
   • History 718/225 Colloquium in World Military History
   • History 730/228 Feminist Theory for Historians
   • History 717/261 Introduction to Military History
2. Students keep in mind the availability of faculty support and course offerings outside the Department of History. Other College of Arts and Sciences departments on campus worth considering include notably Anthropology, City and Regional Planning, Communication Studies, Economics, English, Geography, Political Science, Religious Studies, and Sociology. In addition, units in other UNC schools—Public Health, for example—offer possibilities for supporting global history work. Faculty at Duke as well as NC State offer scheduled courses and arrange ad hoc readings courses in global history.

c.       Students pursuing global history have funding needs that should be a special, continuing concern. Grants and fellowships are available from a wide variety of sources from within the university (e.g., the Foreign Language and Area Studies grants administered by the University Center for International Studies) and outside. The part of the graduate program website dealing with funding as well as faculty with whom students are training are especially valuable sources of preliminary information.

Endnotes

1. There is a well-known tension between scholars of world history and global history, with the latter emphasizing the analysis of transnational and trans-regional forces. Despite the name of the World History Association, many global historians belong to it. For example, the founder, Professor Jerry Bentley, is recognized as a prominent global historian.

2. Ross E. Dunn, ed., The New World History: A Teacher's Companion (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000), and Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens, eds., Conceptualizing Global History, (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993).

3. Gale Stokes, "The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent Macrohistories," American Historical Review 106 (April 2001): 508-525.