Areas of Graduate Study:
Comparative History
The University of Washington's Department of History is hospitable to the study of comparative history at the graduate level, in part because many faculty in the department focus their own research on trans-regional, trans-national, and other comparative topics. Graduate students interested in exploring comparative historical approaches have the option of mastering literature in one of four sub-fields: "Historiography," "Comparative Ethnicity and Nationalism," "Comparative Gender," and "Comparative Colonialisms." Each of these fields allows graduate students to situate their own focused research in broadly conceived historiographies.
Historiography
Historiography has two related definitions: the writing of history and
the study of the history of historical writing. Both aspects are the subjects
of fields offered by historians whose fields range in time from antiquity
to the present and in place from the Mediterranean to the southeast Pacific.
Students in these seminars examine techniques and assumptions employed
in historical research, studying the
relationship between history and other scholarly disciplines as well as
the uses of social science methodology and literary theory in the interpretation
of historical sources. Specific topics vary with the individual offerings.
They can include the nature of oral tradition, the reckoning of time,
and the significance of historicism, Marxism, poststructuralism, feminism,
and globalization for historical research. Students build their reading
lists in consultation with their field advisors.
Associated Faculty
Purnima
Dhavan
Associate Professor
Mughal and Post-Mughal South Asia
Vicente Rafael
Professor
Philippine History; Filipino History
Laurie
Sears
Professor
Indonesia
Carol
Thomas
Professor
Ancient Greece
John Toews
Professor
Modern European Intellectual History
Joel Walker
Associate Professor
Late Antiquity
Comparative Ethnicity and Nationalism
This field prepares graduate students to analyze the historical formation of ethnic and national identities across time and space. Students will explore the ways in which race, ethnicity, and nation are shaped in conversation with gendered, class-based, political, and regional senses of self. Those focusing on this field will be expected to study relevant theoretical literatures emanating from various sub-fields of History. In addition, they may choose to concentrate on particular case studies related to their areas of interest.
Associated Faculty
Madeleine Yue Dong
Associate Professor
Modern China
Susan
Glenn
Professor
Twentieth Century U.S.; Cultural and Social History; Gender
Moon-Ho Jung
Associate Professor
Asian American History
Terje
Leiren (adjunct, Scandinavian Studies)
Professor
Scandinavian History and Literature
Vicente Rafael
Professor
Philippine History; Filipino History
Adam Warren
Associate Professor
Latin America
Comparative Gender
The field introduces students to gender as category of historical analysis, examining the impact of feminist theory within the discipline of history. Students trace historiographical debates in women's and gender history and explore, through cross-cultural comparisons, how scholars have conceived their analysis of femininity and masculinity as well as the relationship between gender and categories such as class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. Students will normally work with a primary field advisor and consult with a second faculty member to determine the comparative dimensions of their studies.
Associated Faculty
Jordanna
Bailkin
Professor
Modern Britain, France, European Cultural History
Purnima
Dhavan
Associate Professor
Mughal and Post-Mughal South Asia
Madeleine
Yue Dong
Associate Professor
Modern China
Susan
Glenn
Professor
Twentieth Century U.S.; Cultural and Social History; Gender
Ileana Rodriguez-Silva
Assistant Professor
Latin America and the Carribean
Lynn
Thomas
Professor
Africa Since 1500
John
Toews
Professor
Modern European Intellectual History
Joel
Walker
Associate Professor
Late Antiquity
Comparative Colonialisms
This field approaches the comparative study of colonialisms through debates about the past by turning to the spatial and temporal constructions of modernity and what is sometimes called postmodernity. One manner in which this can happen is to draw cultural critics and historians of Europe, and the U.S., but also Latin America and Africa into comparative historical conversations about non-western studies. Continuing the dialogues with the social sciences that comparative studies have always entailed, this field seeks to integrate literary, historiographical, postcolonial, and psychoanalytic theories into these discussions by questioning the development of nations and identities, and the disciplinary constructions of modernity, ethnicity, gender, and culture.
For the purposes of this area of study, we will avoid positing a past
time of tradition that has been overcome by modernity. “Tradition”
and “modernity” both come into focus at the same time, and scholars
can only recognize tradition in the light of modernity. What we must call
“culture,” for lack of a better term, cannot be separated from
the colonial moment and posited as an unchanging part of non-European
civilization waiting for Europeans to uncover, interpret, document, or
eventually reconstruct it. What social scientists call “tradition”
developed within an atmosphere in which 19th century discourses of progress
and science were percolating, both contributing and drawing from European,
African, and Asian intellectual exchanges. This course will strive towards
a re-envisioning of European histories that show the influence of Asian,
African, and New World knowledges on the constitution of European mentalities.
Associated Faculty
Jordanna
Bailkin
Professor
Modern Britain, France, European Cultural History
George Behlmer
Professor
Modern Britain
Richard
Johnson
Professor
Colonial America
Hwasook Nam
Associate Professor
Modern Korea
Ileana
Rodriguez-Silva
Assistant Professor
Latin America and the Carribean
Vicente
Rafael
Professor
Philippine History; Filipino History
Laurie Sears
Professor
Indonesia
Stephanie Smallwood
Associate Professor
Atlantic World
Lynn
Thomas
Professor
Africa Since 1500
Adam Warren
Associate Professor
Latin America