Nikhil Singh: Areas of Graduate Study

Division: United States

Students in preparing a field in United States Intellectual History will be expected to master several key intellectual debates, currents and schools of thought that have shaped the political culture of the US. The specific emphasis of the field is methodological, more specifically, understanding the impact of forms of knowledge production upon national, social, and political life. Students will therefore be encouraged to focus their inquiry into a few key areas (e.g., American pragmatism, the development of the social sciences, the Puritan Covenant, New England Transcendentalism), rather than pursuing a broad chronological survey. Students working in African American History will be expected to attain broad mastery of the major forces and events that have shaped African-American life in the US and within the Atlantic world since the 17th century. The field is organized into three areas: 1) slavery and abolitionism; 2) citizenship and social movements; 3) culture and politics. The bulk of the field work concentrates upon blacks in the US. Students, however, will be expected to develop some comparative, or cross-national dimension of study.

Division: Comparative History (Comparative Ethnicity & Nationalism)*

Students preparing a field in Comparative Ethnicity and Nationalism will digest the major contemporary and historical theories of nationalism and nation-formation and congruent theories of ethno-racial formation, the latter having been understood as something that can both complement and contradict national aspirations. This field is primarily theoretical and has no precise chronological or geographical limits, though nationalism is understood to be a characteristically "modern" political value and concept. Students will be expected to test theoretical arguments against case material drawn from their own specific areas of research.

*Students may not offer a field in the Comparative History division as a first field.