American & New England Studies

PhD in American & New England Studies

The PhD program is committed to the interdisciplinary study of American culture. While the resources of New England offer unique opportunities for research in the history and culture of the region, the program’s orientation is emphatically national and cross-cultural in scope. With strong participation from faculty members in history, English, art history, anthropology, archaeology, and other disciplines, the program encourages students to develop their own distinctive blend of courses and independent study. Students are urged to select a course of study from a variety of disciplines that provide a foundation in literary and historical perspectives. While pursuing the PhD degree, students may concurrently work toward a Master of Arts degree.

The program maintains a close relationship with a number of New England museums and historical agencies, and internships are often available. Students have worked, for example, at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Peabody Essex Museum, Historic New England (formerly known as SPNEA), the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Museum of American Textile History. Students also have access to the archival collections and galleries of these institutions.

In addition to those external resources, PhD students may use the library holdings of Boston College, Brandeis University, Northeastern University, Tufts University, and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The Boston Public Library also offers significant holdings for reading and research.

Advisor

The program assigns a temporary advisor to all incoming students; students then choose their own permanent advisors.

Course of Study

Students entering the program with a BA take 16 graduate-level courses before proceeding to their PhD qualifying examinations; those with an MA take eight courses before their qualifying exam. Two required courses, GRS AM 735 Studies in American Culture and GRS AM 736 The Literature of American Studies, provide an introduction to analytical methods and theoretical problems. Otherwise, students devise their own programs of study, choosing courses from a wide variety of disciplines: anthropology, architectural history, art history, decorative arts, English, film, historical archaeology, history, political science, sociology, and women’s studies. GRS AM 901, 902 Directed Study provides a means of working individually with faculty.

Language Requirement

Students must demonstrate reading competence in a single modern foreign language. This can be accomplished in one of the following ways: through an examination given by the program, by earning a score of 570 in the Graduate Student Foreign Language standardized exam, or by successfully completing a language reading course numbered 621 offered through the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Major Paper

The candidate must submit a polished scholarly paper, usually a revised essay written for a graduate seminar, that employs a range of interdisciplinary methods. The paper, distributed in written form, must be approved and signed by first and second readers and the program director before scheduling the PhD Qualifying Examination.

PhD Qualifying Examination

A student must pass oral qualifying examinations in a major and two minor fields. The major field must be presented in full historical depth and with an awareness of global contexts. At least one of the minor fields must be in a discipline different from the major. Students who major in art history also take a slide examination, and part of the oral examination may involve the interpretation of objects. Details on the composition of the major and minor fields are available in the American Studies office, as well as on the website.

Dissertation Prospectus

See General Requirements for the PhD. Each student is required to submit a prospectus for approval within four months after the PhD Qualifying Examination has been passed. This prospectus should be prepared in consultation with the prospective dissertation advisor. The prospectus, distributed in written form, must be approved and signed by the prospective first and second readers of the dissertation before submission to the program director. The prospectus explores the main issues to be addressed in the dissertation, the methods to be employed, and the sources to be consulted.

Dissertation

A dissertation reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the program is required. See General Requirements for the PhD.

Residency Requirements and Final Oral Examination

See General Requirements for the PhD.

Financial Assistance

All incoming PhD students receive a comprehensive package of five years of full fellowship support that covers tuition and mandatory fees, student health insurance, and an annual stipend.

As members of the program in American & New England Studies, students may be eligible to teach courses at Boston University during the academic year and in Metropolitan College’s summer school. Students may, as part of their curriculum, be eligible to undertake an internship at a program-approved museum or historical or cultural agency. These internships may provide on-site training as well as course credit and financial assistance.

Courses

Required Courses for First-Year PhD Students

  • GRS AM 735 Studies in American Culture
  • GRS AM 736 The Literature of American Studies

Electives

  • CAS AM 501 Special Topics in American Studies
  • CAS AM 502 Special Topics in American Studies
  • CAS AM 524 New England Cultural Landscapes
  • GRS AM 730 Seminar in New England Architecture
  • GRS AM 765 American Vernacular Architecture
  • GRS AM 867 Material Culture
  • GRS AM 901, 902 Directed Study in American & New England Studies
  • GRS AM 945, 946 Practicum

Courses Offered Through Departmental Curricula

  • CAS AA 502  Topics in African American Literature
  • CAS AA 514  Labor, Sexuality, and Resistance in the Afro-Atlantic World
  • CAS AA 590  The World and the West
  • CAS AH 501, 502  Practicum in Museum Studies
  • CAS AH 520  The Museum and Historical Agency
  • CAS AH 521  Curatorship
  • CAS AH 570  Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century American Architecture
  • CAS AH 584  Greater Boston: Architecture and Planning
  • CAS AN 568  Symbol, Myth, and Rite
  • CAS EN 533  American Literature: Beginnings to 1855
  • CAS EN 534  American Literature: 1855–1918
  • CAS EN 536  Twentieth-Century American Poetry
  • CAS EN 545  The Nineteenth-Century American Novel
  • CAS EN 546  The Modern American Novel
  • CAS EN 547  Contemporary American Fiction
  • CAS EN 572  Studies in American Literary Movements
  • CAS EN 585  Contemporary American Poetry
  • CAS EN 587  Studies in African American Literature
  • CAS HI 502  Drafts of History: Journalism and Historical Revisionism
  • CAS HI 555  The Black Community and Social Change
  • CAS HI 560  The American Transcendentalists
  • CAS HI 566  Ideas and American Foreign Policy
  • CAS HI 575  The Birth of Modern America
  • CAS HI 580  The History of Racial Thought
  • CAS HI 584  Labor, Sexuality, and Resistance in the Afro-Atlantic World
  • CAS HI 586  African Americans Abroad
  • CAS HI 698  African American History
  • CAS PO 507  Development of American Constitutional Law
  • CAS PO 508      The Judiciary and Civil Liberties
  • CAS PO 514  Political Movements in America
  • CAS PO 578  United States as World Power
  • CAS SO 534  Modernity and Social Change
  • GRS AH 779  Visual Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States
  • GRS AH 782  Colloquium in Nineteenth-Century Architecture in Europe and America
  • GRS AH 785  Colloquium on Twentieth-Century American Painting
  • GRS AH 884  Seminar in Nineteenth-Century Architecture
  • GRS AH 891  Seminar in Photography
  • GRS AR 702  Contemporary Theory in Archaeology
  • GRS AR 780  Archaeological Ethics and Law
  • GRS EN 746  The South in Modern American Fiction
  • GRS EN 788  Transnational Modernism
  • GRS HI 702  Science and American Culture
  • GRS HI 705  American Thought and Culture, 1776 to 1900
  • GRS HI 706  Intellectual History of the United States, 1900 to the Present
  • GRS HI 708  Religious Thought in America
  • GRS HI 721  The American Revolution, 1750–1800
  • GRS HI 737  The United States, 1900–1945
  • GRS HI 745  Seminar in Early American History and Culture
  • GRS HI 750  History of the Atlantic World
  • GRS HI 761  Black Radical Thought
  • GRS HI 794  US-Mexican Borders
  • GRS HI 849  United States History 1830–1900
  • GRS HI 850  American Historiography
  • GRS HI 851  Recent American History
  • GRS HI 852  Readings in American Political History
  • GRS HI 854  Economic History of the United States
  • GRS HI 855  American Immigration History
  • GRS HI 857  Topics in American Cultural History
  • GRS HI 859  The United States as a World Power
  • GRS HI 861  The Civil War Era
  • GRS HI 862  The Gilded Age, 1877–1914
  • GRS HI 863  Topics in American Intellectual History
  • GRS HI 865  The United States Since 1968
  • GRS HI 866  History of American Foreign Relations Since 1898
  • GRS HI 872  The Twentieth-Century American Presidency
  • GRS HI 875  A History of Women in the United States
  • GRS RN 613  Hinduism in America
  • GRS SO 808  Seminar: Ethnic, Race, and Minority Relations