About the Program

The Department of History offers a PhD program in History. The program prepares the student in four selected fields of study: Three fields of history (called the first, second, and third field) and one field in another discipline (called the outside field). Students indicate their choice of the first field at the time of application to the program, and they decide upon the second, third, and outside fields by the end of the first year of study.

The department represents a rich spectrum of research interests, collaborations, and approaches spanning 16 established fields of history: Africa, America Since 1607, Ancient Greece and Rome, Byzantine, Early Modern Europe, East Asia-China, East Asia-Japan, Global, Jewish, Late Modern Europe, Latin America, Medieval, Middle East, Science, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The depth and breadth of our program and the strengths of our faculty members, students, and other professionals provide an especially stimulating and congenial setting for graduate training.

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Admissions

Admission to the University

Minimum Requirements for Admission

The following minimum requirements apply to all graduate programs and will be verified by the Graduate Division:

1. A bachelor’s degree or recognized equivalent from an accredited institution;
2. A grade point average of B or better (3.0);
3. If the applicant comes from a country or political entity (e.g., Quebec) where English is not the official language, adequate proficiency in English to do graduate work, as evidenced by a TOEFL score of at least 90 on the iBT test, 570 on the paper-and-pencil test, or an IELTS Band score of at least 7 on a 9-point scale (note that individual programs may set higher levels for any of these); and
4. Sufficient undergraduate training to do graduate work in the given field.

Applicants Who Already Hold a Graduate Degree

The Graduate Council views academic degrees not as vocational training certificates, but as evidence of broad training in research methods, independent study, and articulation of learning. Therefore, applicants who already have academic graduate degrees should be able to pursue new subject matter at an advanced level without the need to enroll in a related or similar graduate program.

Programs may consider students for an additional academic master’s or professional master’s degree only if the additional degree is in a distinctly different field.

Applicants admitted to a doctoral program that requires a master’s degree to be earned at Berkeley as a prerequisite (even though the applicant already has a master’s degree from another institution in the same or a closely allied field of study) will be permitted to undertake the second master’s degree, despite the overlap in field.

The Graduate Division will admit students for a second doctoral degree only if they meet the following guidelines:

1. Applicants with doctoral degrees may be admitted for an additional doctoral degree only if that degree program is in a general area of knowledge distinctly different from the field in which they earned their original degree. For example, a physics PhD could be admitted to a doctoral degree program in music or history; however, a student with a doctoral degree in mathematics would not be permitted to add a PhD in statistics.
2. Applicants who hold the PhD degree may be admitted to a professional doctorate or professional master’s degree program if there is no duplication of training involved.

Applicants may apply only to one single degree program or one concurrent degree program per admission cycle.

Required Documents for Applications

1. Transcripts: Applicants may upload unofficial transcripts with your application for the departmental initial review. If the applicant is admitted, then official transcripts of all college-level work will be required. Official transcripts must be in sealed envelopes as issued by the school(s) attended. If you have attended Berkeley, upload your unofficial transcript with your application for the departmental initial review. If you are admitted, an official transcript with evidence of degree conferral will not be required.
2. Letters of recommendation: Applicants may request online letters of recommendation through the online application system. Hard copies of recommendation letters must be sent directly to the program, not the Graduate Division.
3. Evidence of English language proficiency: All applicants from countries or political entities in which the official language is not English are required to submit official evidence of English language proficiency. This applies to applicants from Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Latin America, the Middle East, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, most European countries, and Quebec (Canada). However, applicants who, at the time of application, have already completed at least one year of full-time academic course work with grades of B or better at a US university may submit an official transcript from the US university to fulfill this requirement. The following courses will not fulfill this requirement:
   • courses in English as a Second Language,
   • courses conducted in a language other than English,
   • courses that will be completed after the application is submitted, and
   • courses of a non-academic nature.

If applicants have previously been denied admission to Berkeley on the basis of their English language proficiency, they must submit new test scores that meet the current minimum from one of the standardized tests. Official TOEFL score reports must be sent directly from Educational Test Services (ETS). The institution code for Berkeley is 4833. Official IELTS score reports must be mailed directly to our office from the British Council. TOEFL and IELTS score reports are only valid for two years.

Where to Apply

Visit the Berkeley Graduate Division application page. 

Doctoral Degree Requirements

PhD Program Requirements at a Glance

Students should make progress toward completing graduate coursework and language requirements as outlined in the program guide, Higher Degrees (see history.berkeley.edu). Students must pass a third-semester examination concentrating on their first field² prior to the start of their fourth semester. Before taking the doctoral qualifying examination, students must satisfy all course and language requirements. Students must take the PhD qualifying examination no later than the end of the spring semester of the third year, for students in a six-year field, and by the end of the spring semester of the fourth year, for students in a seven-year field. Advancement to doctoral candidacy immediately follows the qualifying exam upon approval of a dissertation committee and written dissertation prospectus. After advancing, students will continue to be enrolled and submit annual progress reports. Final completion of the PhD requires submission and approval of the dissertation.

Program Fields of Concentration

The program prepares the student in four selected fields of study: three fields of history (called the first, second, and third field) and one field in another discipline (called the fourth or outside field). Students indicate their choice of the first field at the time of application to the program and they decide upon the second, third, and outside fields by the end of the second year of study. Students are bound by normative time requirements of the first field. The graduate advisers committee must formally approve the selection of these fields, normally by the end of the second year.

Fields

1. Africa
2. America Since 1607
3. Ancient Greece and Rome3
4. Byzantine
5. Early Modern Europe
6. East Asia–China
7. East Asia–Japan
8. Global
9. History of Science
10. Jewish History
11. Late Modern Europe
12. Latin America
13. Medieval
14. Middle East
15. South Asia
16. Southeast Asia

PhD Coursework Requirements

Students complete a minimum of 34 course units, not including language, and maintain a minimum overall grade point average of 3.0 (3.5 or above in history graduate courses).  Courses that are being applied to the program must be taken for a letter grade. The program of study must conform to the following guidelines: 

A. 12 to 16 units in the first field: two graduate seminars in any combination of 275s and 280s (both must be completed by the end of the first year) and two 285s (one should be completed by the end of the first year if possible).

Students in the fields of East Asia–China and East Asia–Japan have one additional required 4 unit seminar. Students in East Asia–China must take a reading seminar (280) or a survey seminar (275) in Japanese history. Students in East Asia–Japan must take a reading or survey seminar in Chinese history. Exceptions require the approval of the graduate advisor committee.

Students in the field of History of Science must take, in addition to other required coursework, the historical colloquium (290) in each semester of their first two years. The 290 is worth 1 unit and is graded on a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory basis.

B. 8 to 12 units in the second and third fields: two graduate seminars in any combination of 275s and 280s or one 285 and either one 275 or one 280.  

C. 3 to 4 units in the third field: one graduate-level graded course in a field and department other than history.

D. 4 units of methodology: Historical Method and Theory (283).  Students are required to take this in their first semester.

E. 2 units of pedagogy: Teaching History Pedagogy Seminar (formerly 300, now 375).  A pedagogy course is required of all first-time graduate student instructors (GSIs). Students are required to take the Department of History’s 375 during their second semester.

PhD Foreign Language Requirements

The language requirements for the PhD vary by field between one and four. Students whose field requires two or more languages are advised to come to the program with significant preparation in the languages most critical to the field (e.g., students in medieval history should have intermediate Latin at the time of application). Students should attempt to complete one foreign language applicable to the selected field by the end of the first year. Please see history.berkeley.edu for a list of language requirements by field and for options for fulfilling the language requirements. Students must satisfy all language requirements before taking the doctoral qualifying examination. Faculty in the field can help students make a plan for completing the requirements.

Curriculum

Courses

History

Faculty and Instructors

+ Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Faculty

Diliana Angelova, Associate Professor. Early Christian and Byzantine Art, women, gender, material culture, history of ideas, late antique art, the Virgin Mary, early Christian empresses, imperial iconography, power and material culture, the empress Helena, the relic of the True Cross, urban development of Constantinople, textiles, ivories, mythology in Byzantine art, myth and genre in Archaic and Classical Greek art, and romantic love in ancient and medieval art .
Research Profile

Stephan H. Astourian, Associate Adjunct Professor. Armenia, Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Modern Turkey, Diasporas .
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Janaki Bakhle, Associate Professor. Intellectual history of religion, politics and modern India, South Asia.
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Andrew E. Barshay, Professor. Social thought, modernism, social sciences in modern Japan, marxism, Japanese history, Japanese-Russian relations.
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Mark Brilliant, Associate Professor. 20th century US history, with a focus on political economy, civil rights, education, law, and the west.
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Cathryn Carson, Professor. History of physics, science and society, history of universities, German history, intellectual history, ethnography, data science, nuclear waste.
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Margaret Chowning, Professor. Mexico, history, gender, women, Latin America.
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John Connelly, Professor. Modern East and Central European political and social history, comparative education, history of nationalism and racism, history of Catholicism, Late Modern Europe.
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Thomas Dandelet, Professor. Renaissance Italy and Europe, Spanish Empire, early modern Mediterranean.
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Brian DeLay, Associate Professor. US, the Americas, International History, nineteenth century, Native American history, American West, Borderlands.
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Nicholas Dirks, Professor. History and anthropology of South Asia, social and cultural theory, history of imperialism, historiography, cultural studies, globalization.
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Sandra Eder, Assistant Professor. Gender, sexuality, medicine, science, US History 20th century, popular culture.
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John M. Efron, Professor. Cultural and social history of German Jewry.
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Susanna Elm, Professor. History of the Later Roman Empire, pagan - Christian interactions, ancient medicine, slavery and the evolution of Christianity, leadership and empire, reception of antiquity.
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Victoria Frede-Montemayor, Associate Professor. Enlightenment, Russian intellectual history, sentimentalism, eighteenth and nineteenth century, anti-religious thought, romanticism, history of friendship.
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Bruce Hall, Associate Professor. Africa.
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David Henkin, Professor. History, US History, urban history, cultural history, History of Time.
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Rebecca Herman, Assistant Professor. Latin American history in a global context.
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Carla Hesse, Professor. France, modern Europe, history of women.
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Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Associate Professor. Modern German and European History, Conceptual History, Transnational History, urban studies.
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Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, Associate Professor. U S women’s history and African-American history.
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Abhishek Kaicker, Assistant Professor. South Asia, Mughal, early modern, cities, history, Persian.
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Tabitha Kanogo, Professor. Colonialism, nationalism, women and gender, childhood and youth.
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Ethan Katz, Associate Professor. Jewish history, modern France, empire, Jewish-Muslim relations, secularism.
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Geoffrey Koziol, Professor. Medieval history, History of Medieval Christianity, Medieval Political Institutions.
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Emily Mackil, Associate Professor. Ancient Greek history.
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Waldo E. Martin, Professor. African American History , Modern American Culture.
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Maria Mavroudi, Professor. Byzantine studies.
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Massimo Mazzotti, Professor. History of science, History of Mathematics, social theory, science and society, STS .
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Rebecca McLennan, Associate Professor. North America: 1763-present, law and society, crime and punishment, prisons, society and culture, capitalism, global foodways .
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Maureen Miller, Professor. Medieval history.
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+ Carlos F. Norena, Associate Professor. Roman history.
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Michael Nylan, Professor. Gender, history, East Asian studies, early China, the fifth century BC to the fifth century AD, with an emphasis on the sociopolitical context, aesthetic theories and material culture, belief.
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Vanessa Ogle, Associate Professor. Late Modern Europe, Western Europe.
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Dylan Penningroth, Professor. African American history and in U S socio-legal history.
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Christine Philliou, Associate Professor. Middle East, Ottoman Empire political and social history, Turkey and Greece as parts of the post-Ottoman world.
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Isabel Richter, Assistant Adjunct Professor. Modern German history (18th – 20th centuries), yransnational youth cultures in the 20th century, history of death in modern Europe, cultural anthropology, material and visual history in the 19th and 20th centuries, national socialism, gender history and interdisciplinary gender studies.
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Caitlin C. Rosenthal, Assistant Professor. American history, capitalism, economic history, slavery.
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Daniel Sargent, Associate Professor. American history, International History, Contemporary History.
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Elena A. Schneider, Associate Professor. Cuba and the Caribbean, colonial Latin America, The Atlantic World, 1400-1888.
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+ Ethan H. Shagan, Professor. British history, early modern European history, history of religion.
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Jonathan Sheehan, Professor. Religion, Christianity, Europe, secularism, Secularization.
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Ronit Stahl, Assistant Professor. Modern America.
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Nicolas Tackett, Associate Professor. Ethnicity, elites, China, cities, national identity, social networks, medieval history, death ritual, Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty, Liao Dynasty.
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James Vernon, Professor. Britain, its Empire and World, 1750 to present.
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Wen-Hsin Yeh, Professor. History, East Asian studies, Qing and Modern China.
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Peter B. Zinoman, Professor. Vietnam, Vietnam War, Vietnamese literature, Southeast Asian history, communism, nationalism, colonialism.
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Lecturers

Christoph Hermann, Lecturer.

Elizabeth Schwall, Lecturer.

Jennifer Terry, Lecturer.

Joseph Kellner, Lecturer.

Margo Boenig-Lipstin, Lecturer.

Andrej Milivojevic, Lecturer.

David Wetzel, Lecturer.

Emeritus Faculty

Richard M. Abrams, Professor Emeritus. Politics, recent US history: business foreign relations, etc .
Research Profile

Anthony Adamthwaite, Professor Emeritus.

Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Professor Emeritus. Germany 1860-1945, Kulturkampf, the Center Party (Zentrum), 19th century European Catholicism, the 19th century European Religious Revival, Democratisation more generally and comparatively, comparative elections and electoral politics, European (and esp German) Relations with the late Ottoman Empire, Armenian Genocide.
Research Profile

Robert M. Berdahl, Professor Emeritus.

Mary Elizabeth Berry, Professor Emeritus. Late medieval and early modern Japan.
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Thomas A. Brady, Professor Emeritus.

Richard Candida Smith, Professor Emeritus. Identity, memory, narrative, 19th and 20th century US cultural and intellectual history, cultural interaction and exchange with France and Latin America, oral history and personal testimony as historical sources.
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Jan De Vries, Professor. Economics, demography, history.
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+ Robin L. Einhorn, Professor Emeritus. Taxation, United States political history, urban history, nineteenth century.
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Paula S. Fass, Professor Emeritus. History of childhood, social and cultural history of the United States, immigration and ethnicity, history of education, child abduction.
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+ Erich S. Gruen, Professor Emeritus. Classics, Greek and Roman history, Jews in the Greco-Roman world.
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Samuel Haber, Professor Emeritus.

John L. Heilbron, Professor Emeritus. History of the physical sciences, biography.
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Richard Herr, Professor Emeritus.

David Hollinger, Professor Emeritus. US history.
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Eugene F. Irschick, Professor Emeritus.

David G. Johnson, Professor Emeritus. History, East Asian studies, city-god cults of T'ang and Sung China, ritual and sculpture in Chinese religion.
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Kerwin L. Klein, Professor Emeritus.

Ira M. Lapidus, Professor Emeritus.

John Lesch, Professor Emeritus.

Linda Lewin, Professor Emeritus. Race, social history of 19th andamp,amp, 20th century Brazil--family andamp,amp, kinship, illegitimacy andamp,amp, inheritance rights, banditry (emergence of cangaco), slavery, andamp,amp, color, oral poetic tradition in NE region (repentistas, desafio), cotton production in 19th-century NE Brazil.
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+ Leon F. Litwack, Professor Emeritus.

Thomas R. Metcalf, Professor Emeritus.

+ Robert L. Middlekauff, Professor Emeritus.

Sheldon Rothblatt, Professor Emeritus.

Mary P. Ryan, Professor Emeritus.

Peter Sahlins, Professor Emeritus. Early modern France, animal-human relations, immigration, citizenship and nationality in pre-modern Europe .
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Irwin Scheiner, Professor Emeritus.

Charles G. Sellers, Professor Emeritus.

Yuri Slezkine, Professor. Russia, Late Modern Europe.
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John M. Smith, Professor Emeritus.

Randolph R. Starn, Professor Emeritus.

William B. Taylor, Professor Emeritus.