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Summary Description We
have made some significant efforts to transform our approach to
developing researchers and scholars Concerned that our students have
been overly dependent on the vagaries of their relationships with a
primary advisor, we introduced a more structured curriculum that sets
out clear expectations in terms of the development of skills, research
experience and research methods, and that spells out the obligations of
both faculty advisors and student advisees. These
reforms include a revamping of the two first year courses. History 301
introduces the questions that animate the discipline today. History 302
highlights the archival strategies and research methods with which
historians pursue their intellectual quarry. We
are also requiring our students to take at least two research seminars
in their second year. These seminars will provide hands on
opportunities for students to analyze primary sources in their
geographical and/or thematic areas of expertise.
History 302 (Spring 2005)
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Tools and Resources
Duke is part of rich, regional academic network that includes the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State
University in Raleigh, and North Carolina Central University, also in
Durham, as well as a slew of Triangle-wide history reading groups, many
of which hold monthly sessions at the National Humanities Center.
Cross-registration and use of libraries, as well as cooperative
programs, are a major asset. Duke's own library system is one of the
leading institutions in the country, holding in excess of 5,000,000
volumes and a highly regarded Special Collections library, both of
which have particular strength in history. The nearby University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill has a comparable collection, which is
further complemented by the library holdings of North Carolina State
University, and North Carolina Central University. Together these
institutions comprise the Triangle Research Libraries Network, one of
the strongest humanities and social science research facilities in the
United States.
Department of History, Duke University
Perkins Library
Sources in British History
This is a handout I give to my graduate students.
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Goals for Students The
PhD is conferred on students who have successfully demonstrated their
ability to bring historical evidence to bear on a question of scholarly
significance. The doctoral degree recognizes a scholar's readiness to
train other scholars, which in the case of our discipline, involves a
close familiarity with a wide range of primary sources, the raw
materials on which historical narratives are constructed. Students
should not only be able to identify the kinds of sources most likely to
illuminate particular historical questions. They should be able to
analyze these sources in relation to the broader contexts from which
any source derives its meaning. Postgraduates should also be aware of
the historical circumstances under which sources were produced and
preserved.
Curricular Goals
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Program Context Our
program places a premium on cultivating intellectual breadth,
familiarity with global, comparative, and transnational history, and
the ability to speak to a broad audience of hsitorians and others
interested in careful analysis of the past. We seek to build
intellectual community across the boundaries of era, geography, and
thematic approach. There is a tension, but a productive one we believe,
between the encouragment of breadth and the requirement of specificity
by the kinds of primary sources with which historians wrestle. Our
specialized research courses are embedded within more thematic and
comparative readings courses with the hoped for result that students
are continually locating the local in the global and vice versa.
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How Do We Know? Our
department is working hard to improve the quality of faculty mentoring.
This includes asking faculty to provide extensive written feedback,
assessing every students strengths and weaknesses, including the
facility with which students engage primary sources.
Mentoring guidelines
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Unanswered Questions The
changes we have implemented in connection with the CID have focused
primarily on years 1-3. We will be particularly interested to learn
more this weekend about how we as a departmental community can continue
the education of our ABD's as they pursue their independent research
projects and as they write up the dissertation. Are public,
department-wide seminars useful to students at this stage of their
development? Are smaller working groups more useful? Do students
benefit most from presenting material to their peers, to faculty, or to
mixed audiences? How could the department's intellectual environment
better sustain faculty research and writing as well?
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Contact Information Susan Thorne, sthorne@duke.edu Reena Goldthree, reena.goldthree@duke.edu
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