Graduate Program

Overview

The Department of History at the University of Kansas ranks among the best in the country. It is in the top 25 public university programs according to the US News and World Report. The program has strength in the areas of US, modern European, medieval, British, Russian/East European, East Asian, Latin American, Military, and Environmental history.

The graduate program currently enrolls about 80 graduate students. Graduate students come to the department from all over the country, and from foreign countries, including Japan , China , Russia , and Italy . The program is highly selective, admitting in recent years about a third of applicants.

Recent Ph.D.s have successfully found employment at such institutions as Penn State University, the University of Georgia, the University of California, Riverside, Wright State University, Iowa State University, Virginia Tech, the University of Arkansas, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the University of Nebraska-Omaha, the University of Alaska-Anchorage, the College of Charleston, Briar Cliff College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Calvin College, Marshall University, Florida Atlantic University, Western Illinois University, Utah Valley State College, Eastern Oregon University, Central Missouri State University, Humboldt State University, Truman State University, the University of Utrecht, the US Air Command and Staff College, Command and General Staff College, the German Historical Institute, the Walden Woods Project, the RAND Corporation, and the US Holocaust Museum.

We offer an outstanding opportunity for the most talented students to become professional historians. Our faculty include internationally-prominent scholars (see Faculty), and our graduates go on to hold positions of importance in the profession. We offer great flexibility in the choice of fields, which are defined both by traditional geographical and chronological parameters, and by thematic topics. Our students represent a very diverse group, and we encourage equally applicants from traditional and non-traditional backgrounds.

In 2003, the History Department at KU was selected as one of ten nationally to participate in the History section of the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. The Carnegie Initiative is intended to examine how graduate education is conducted in six key disciplines, and to develop and test innovative approaches. In this context, the Department is currently recasting its program, with the goal of becoming the benchmark institution in the discipline. We are redesigning the curriculum to emphasize professionalization, preparing our graduates to take the careers of their choice and to become not only practitioners, but also stewards of their discipline. Graduate students are playing key roles in the re-creation of our program. It is an exciting time to join the department.