All PhD students must take 9 credits of graduate courses to fulfill the requirements of World/Comparative Field. The World/Comparative Field will have dual purposes of (1) providing opportunities that allow students to learn and explore global and comparative perspectives of students’ research subjects, and (2) offering credible training in world history as a teaching field.  No preliminary examination is required for the World/Comparative Field. Students must pass all three courses with a minimum grade of B+.   All students (except those who take World History as their General field*) are required to take 570, 571, and one more field course (either 571, a graduate field course outside their General Field, or a 400- or 500-level course outside History.

*Students who pursue World History as their General Field must define a comparative field in consultation with their major professor, and take at least 9 credits of graduate field courses that will focus on specific geographic areas outside their Primary Field, or 6 credits of those courses and one course outside the discipline of history.

Checklist: Ph.D. in History

The PhD program in History at WSU trains professional researchers who are competent in historical theory and methods.  Our program prepares students for careers in historical research, public history, and teaching at colleges and universities.

PhD students must satisfy the requirements in three fields (Primary, General, and World/Comparative), and pass preliminary examinations in Primary and General Fields.

Primary Fields

(eight-hour Preliminary Exam)

The Primary Field is embedded in the General Field.  The Primary Field provides expertise for student’s research focus as expressed in the doctoral dissertation.

List of Field of Study Faculty

Please note:
All students must consult with their major professors to select appropriate General and Comparative Fields. A Public History student has the option of choosing the U.S. General Field as his/her Primary Field (8-hour exam) with approval of his/her major professor.

General Fields

(six-hour Preliminary Exam)

The General Field provides a broader geographical, chronological, and historiographical framework for the primary field.

• U.S.
• Middle East
• Early Modern Europe
• Modern Europe
• Public
• East Asia
• World

List of Field of Study Faculty

World/Comparative Field

The World/Comparative Field provides spatial and temporal context to complement Primary and General Fields and to provide research and teaching breadth. The World/Comparative field must be different from the Primary and General Fields.

All PhD students must take 9 credits of graduate courses to fulfill the requirements of World/Comparative Field. The World/Comparative Field will have dual purposes of (1) providing opportunities that allow students to learn and explore global and comparative perspectives of students’ research subjects, and (2) offering credible training in world history as a teaching field. No preliminary examination is required for the World/Comparative Field.  Students must pass all three courses with the minimum grade of B+. All students (except those who take World History as their General field*) are required to take a World field, consisting of: 570, 571, and one more field course (either 571, a graduate field course outside their General Field, or a 400 or 500-level course outside History).

List of Field of Study Faculty

*Students who pursue World History as their General Field must define a comparative field in consultation with their major professor, and take at least 9 credits of graduate field courses that will focus on specific geographic areas outside their Primary Field, or 6 credits of those courses and one course outside the discipline of history.

General Program Requirements

The program consists of 72 credit hours beyond the bachelor’s degree. A minimum of 36 of those credits must be from graded courses and the remainder from dissertation research.  The student’s program of study will be formulated in close consultation with his/her faculty advisor subject to approval by the Graduate Studies Committee.  The student must file a program of study with the Chair of the Department of History by the end of the second semester of enrollment in the doctoral program. The program establishes the student’s committee, outlines a course of study, and proposes a dissertation topic. The Program of Study Form should be submitted to the Chair of the Department of History. If students are seeking the transfer of graduate credits from another institution, they must list those courses when filing their program of study. See the Graduate School policy on transferring graduate credits for specifics.

Preliminary Examinations: Students will be examined in two fields: Primary and General.  The PhD program is designed to achieve depth and breadth of training.  Toward these ends, students are strongly encouraged to work in close consultation with their major advisor in selecting their examination fields.

Seminar Requirements: Six (6) credits in research seminars.  Seminars are research workshops taken in conjunction with the primary field.  Each 3-credit seminar is linked with three (3) credits of History 800: Dissertation Research (taken with student’s major professor).  All six credits of seminar must be taken prior to Preliminary Examination (i.e., before fifth semester of study). Research seminars taken during master’s programs may not be transferred in or subtitled for this requirement.

Field Course Requirements

Nine (9) credits in the General and World/Comparative fields.

Other Requirements

• History 580: Historiography (3 credits)
• History 595: Teaching History in College (3 credits)
• 400/500 Elective (15 credits)
• History 800: Dissertation Research (36 credits)

Pertinent courses taken for the master’s degree may be included in the core program. Nine (9) credit hours may be taken outside the Department of History.  Students transferring hours from another school may use up to a maximum of ½ of the graded credits for the master’s and doctoral degrees. If required courses are not available during the student’s tenure in the program, appropriate substitutes may be taken (History 597, independent readings, etc.) with the approval of the major professor and the Director of Graduate Studies.

Foreign Language

The language requirement for the Ph.D. shall consist of the language(s) stipulated by the major professor, with the understanding that a reading knowledge of at least one foreign language will be required. Continued funding is contingent upon passing the language examination by the end of the third semester of the doctoral program. If a student has English as a second language and if it is appropriate to his or her program, the student may count the native language as the foreign language. All language requirements must be fulfilled prior to the scheduling of preliminary examinations (see Language Examination Guidelines).

Preliminary Examinations

Upon satisfying the core program and foreign language requirements, students will be eligible to take their preliminary examinations. Candidates are required to present themselves for examinations in two fields of study. Students should select their preliminary examination fields in consultation with their major professor during their first semester of study. Examinations in the two fields will be both written and oral. Student’s work in their World/Comparative Field may be evaluated in their preliminary examinations (either written or oral).  Students are expected to take their preliminary examinations no later than their fifth semester of full-time enrollment in the doctoral program. Examinations will be given during the fourth and fifth weeks of the fall semester. The Director of Graduate Studies will coordinate the development of both the written and oral stages of the preliminary examination and will be responsible for scheduling them. Continued funding is contingent upon passing the preliminary examinations by the end of the fifth semester of the doctoral program.

The Written Examination

The professor or professors responsible for composing the written examinations will determine their nature and scope. The Primary Field ordinarily provides the intellectual basis for the dissertation and the student’s later emphasis in teaching and research. The student is expected to achieve depth and breadth of scholarly sophistication and mastery in this field. In the General and Comparative fields, the student is ordinarily expected to show broad and comprehensive knowledge to place his/her research into a broader spatial, temporal, and comparative context, and to support the ability to teach undergraduate courses.

The two portions of the written examination must be passed before the student may proceed to the oral preliminary examination. The examination in the two fields will be judged separately by the examiner(s) in each field. After all written examinations have been completed and evaluated, the examiners will report results of each field to the committee chair who will then report overall results to the Director of Graduate Studies.  The Director of Graduate Studies will then report exam results to the student.  Prior to this notification, each examiner is strictly enjoined to maintain absolute confidentiality with respect to the student’s performance on the examination.

Students who fail part of their examinations will be required to retake only the part failed before proceeding to the oral examination. Second examinations are a final opportunity and may not ordinarily be scheduled sooner than 3 months after the date of the first written examination.

The Oral Examination

The oral preliminary examination will be conducted in accordance with the Policies and Procedures of the Graduate School and will be approximately 2 hours in length.  At least three faculty must be present at the oral examination, including one from each preliminary examination field.

The oral examination must be held during the same academic term in which the written examination is passed, except in the case of a reexamination. The Department of History will not approve and forward to the Graduate School requests to schedule the oral preliminary examination until the director of graduate studies has confirmed that the student has passed all portions of the written examination. Because the Graduate School requires two weeks advance notice to schedule the oral preliminary examination, there will be an interval of at least two weeks between such notification and the taking of the oral examination.

The Doctoral Dissertation

The doctoral dissertation must be an original work of historical research in the candidate’s primary field.  The committee will advise the student on all aspects of the preparation and presentation of the dissertation in accordance with the Policies and Procedures of the Graduate School. Students must hold a D‑1 meeting with the committee within four months of passing the oral exams at which time the student will present a dissertation proposal for the committee’s approval. If necessary such meetings will continue until such approval is achieved. The major professor (chair of the committee) will at that point file a report on the proposal for the student’s file and provide the student with a copy.

When the dissertation is written and approved by the committee, the candidate must schedule an oral dissertation defense. The dissertation defense will be conducted in accordance with the Policies and Procedures of the Graduate School. The student must enroll for the minimum hours as specified by the Graduate School during the semester in which the final examination is held. After passing the final examination, the student must provide a hardbound copy of the dissertation to the Department of History. Any departmental expenses incurred in submitting the completed dissertation (office printing, xeroxing, and thesis binding) will be charged to the student’s account.

September 26, 2018

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany that followed a year later, life in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) has undergone considerable upheaval. Economic integration with the former West Germany, environmental clean-up, and the alteration of historical memory are but a few of the many changes there. Some of these have also led to considerable social discontent across the provinces of the former East Germany. Such discontent has recently coalesced into the new populist, far-right political party “Alternative for Germany” (AFD), founded in 2013. Currently the third largest political party in Germany, the AFD holds 94 seats in the German national parliament. Students interested in opportunities to study abroad in Germany are especially encouraged to attend as Dr. Fuchs will also discuss study abroad opportunities at Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg and the Hochschule Magdeburg/ Stendal, both in the city of Magdeburg, which was once part of the former East Germany and dates to the year 805 A.D. Dr. Thomas Fuchs teaches English at the Hochschule Magdeburg/Stendal and is an alumnus of the German Academic Exchange Service (D.A.A.D.). His colleague, Christian Kulosa, is a member of the General German Cyclist Club that promotes green-transportation and environmental causes across German.

 September 20, 2017

Oil has long inspired Americans to think about their future in sacred terms. Extracted from the earth in mysterious ways, often with the help of spiritualists, oil was at its origins imagined as the divinely sanctioned lifeblood of a modernizing nation. America’s powerbrokers and rank-and-file both ascribed a special status to this resource, and in turn used its wealth to construct and legitimate imposing corporate and church institutions, missionary organizations, and an expansive petro-state. This lecture explores how religion and oil together shaped existence for modern Americans, paying special attention to oil patches west of the Mississippi, 1890s-1940s, when, amid petroleum’s most violent boom-bust cycles, wildcatters and residents theologized their encounter with soil and its subsurface wealth and constructed a distinctive life geared to new logics of capitalism, technology, time, energy, environment, and political power.

October 21-24, 2015

October 21-24, 2015, the Columbia Chair in the History of the American West and the Washington State University Department of History were sponsors of the Western History Association’s 55th Annual Conference, “Thresholds, Walls, & Bridges,” in Portland, Oregon. The event was the largest annual meeting of historians of the American West; it boasted dozens of academic sessions, book displays from publishers of western history titles, five local history tours and parallel exhibits, as well as an opening reception at the Oregon Historical Society, and a banquet honoring recipients of several awards bestowed on western historians. Several faculty and graduate students from WSU’s Department of History gave papers, lead tours, chaired committees, and otherwise participated in the conference. Download the official conference program

March 25, 2015

In popular culture, connections between the American West and Italy rarely extend beyond consideration of America’s western films that invaded Italy in the post-World War II period and the rise of the so-called Italian Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s. Professor Laegreid’s research, however, expands and deepens our understanding of the reciprocal influences between the U.S. and Italy, focusing on the idea of the American frontier in Italy from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Based on research for her current book project, Professor Laegreid will speak on three waves of western American influences on Italy, and how Italians have used western American mythology for their own personal, political, and financial purposes.

Prof. Laegreid is the author of Riding Pretty: Rodeo Royalty in the American West (2006), and co-editor of Women on the North American Plains (2011) and “Finding the American West in Twenty-First-Century Italy,” Western Historical Quarterly (Autumn 2014).

February 01, 2012

Michael O. Finley, chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and co-author of Finding Chief Kamiakin: A Life and Legacy of a Northwest Patriot (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2008), will be speaking on issues confronting Native Americans in the United States, in particular from the perspective of Native Americans whose ancestral homes are in eastern Washington state.

September 21,  2011

Andy Kirk’s research and teaching focus on the intersections of cultural and environmental history in the modern U.S. with a special interest in the American West and public history. His recent publications include Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (rev. ed., 2011) and “From Wilderness Prophets to Tool Freaks: Post WWII Environmentalism” in The Blackwell Companion to American Environmental History. His current work includes “The Art of Testing and the Culture of Secrecy at the Nevada Test Site.” His talk at WSU, “Doom Towns of the West,” concerns the nuclear industry and western places.

October 11, 2010

Andrew Fisher received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University. His research and teaching interests focus on modern Native American history, environmental history, and the American West. His recently completed book is Shadow Tribe: The Making of Columbia River Indian Identity (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010). It examines off-reservation communities and processes of tribal ethnogenesis in the Columbia River Basin of the Pacific Northwest. You can find more on this important work at www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/FISSHA.html.

Applicants admitted to the Graduate School as either regular or provisional students may be admitted to the program for the master of arts in history if they meet the following qualifications:

1. Application materials must be received by January 10 for those seeking eligibility for financial assistance. Materials must be received by March 1 for admission to commence the following academic year.
2. A baccalaureate degree.
3. A minimum undergraduate cumulative GPA of 3.3 in the applicant’s undergraduate major.
4. A complete application file (see above).

Applicants to the MA program must be accepted by a major professor with whom they wish to work in their primary field of study. Please contact the appropriate faculty member before the application deadline (see Guide to Fields of Study and Major Professors).

Applicants admitted to the Graduate School as regular students may be admitted to the Ph.D. program in history if they meet the following requirements:

1. Application materials must be received by January 10 for those seeking eligibility for financial assistance. Materials must be received by March 1 for admission to commence the following academic year.
2. Admission is contingent upon the completion of a master of arts degree by the beginning of the semester in which graduate studies begin. A master of arts degree in history is preferred. Applicants who hold a master’s degree in fields other than history and who have been admitted to the Graduate School as regular students must have completed at least 15 graduate credits in history.
3. A minimum graduate GPA of 3.5.
4. Evidence of competence in at least one (1) foreign language demonstrated either through the completion of at least 2 years of university course work, appropriate non-academic experience, or passage of a 2-hour examination in which the applicant will translate into smooth idiomatic English approximately 600 words (or the lexical equivalent) from a foreign language.
5. A complete application file (see above).

Applicants to the Ph.D. program must be accepted by a major professor with whom they wish to work in their primary field of study. Please contact the appropriate faculty member before the application deadline (see Guide to Fields of Study and Major Professors).

PhD Admission Requirements for WSU Master’s Students

Students completing a master’s degree in history at WSU and requesting admission to the PhD program must meet the admission requirements for all applicants to the PhD program and must submit the following:

• A new statement of purpose (see Writing Your Statement of Purpose).
• An unofficial WSU transcript.
• A new writing sample.
• Three (3) new letters of recommendation, one (1) of which must be from the student’s major professor in the master’s program.
• A new PhD Preferred Fields of Study Form.
• A new Master’s Preferred Fields of Study Form.
• A new Language Background Form.

Students seeking eligibility for financial support must submit all materials by the January 10 deadline. Financial support as a teaching or research assistant will be determined on a competitive basis in conjunction with all students entering the graduate program.

It should be stressed that admission to the MA and PhD programs is competitive. Satisfying these minimum requirements does not, by itself, guarantee admission. At the same time, the decision to admit is based on consideration of the entire file, and promising applicants in unusual circumstances whose records fall below the minimum requirements should not be discouraged from applying.

What to expect from a history degree AFTER graduation

Click here to see “Careers For History Majors,” presented by the American Historical Association.

Click here to visit Candid Career’s Major Explorer to watch interviews from specialists offering insight on 17 different career opportunities for History Majors

To find out more about the attributes employers are seeking among recent college graduates, visit Job Outlook 2016: Attributes Employers Want to See on New College Graduates’ Resumes.

In addition to being a core major for a liberal arts degree, an undergraduate degree in history can lead to work as a teacher, historian, archivist, librarian, information specialist, writer, researcher, or work in government service.

With further study, you can go into college teaching, business, medicine, law, politics, or ministry. Double majors—combining history with one or more such fields—are easily accommodated.

The study of history is an excellent way to develop skills in critical reading and the ability to come to draw conclusions by analyzing and interpreting materials. These skills can serve as a foundation for success in a variety of disciplines.

For example, you can combine your program in history with selected classes in political science, English, speech, and business to prepare for law school. Students have also combined a pre-med program with a history major; in fact, the percentage of those with history majors admitted to medical schools has sometimes been higher than applicants with biology majors.

Because history is one of the best fields in which to receive a broad and liberal education, job opportunities for historians are not limited to teaching and writing history. Training in historical methodology fits persons for many types of historical and non-historical careers outside of teaching. Governmental service offers careers as historians, archivists, information specialists, immigration officers, and social security officials. The Interior and State Departments, Smithsonian Institution, Agriculture Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency also fill positions with persons with historical training. Our students usually do well in the competitive examinations given by the United States Civil Service Commission and by the State Department.

WSU History Alumni Testimonials

See what WSU History alumni are doing with their degrees.

Mr. Bradley Richardson is the Executive Director of the Clark County Historical Museum in Vancouver, WA