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MA in History (36 Graduate credits)

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The Master of Arts in History degree takes you on an academic journey exploring the key historical events, people, and cultures that fundamentally shaped the world today. Through research, discussion, and analysis, you will obtain a knowledgeable perspective of how future societies progressed through time. Concentrations in this online graduate program offer you the flexibility of focusing on the most favored eras in history including American, Ancient and Classical, European, Global, and Public History. This master’s degree attracts professional educators, historians, and enthusiasts alike, and is also helpful in developing professional skills that include quality writing and communications, research and analysis, and the ability to present compelling arguments.

University faculty members teaching these courses are published historians who bring unique perspectives and relevant research into the classroom. You’ll also connect and interact online with other students who share your enthusiasm for history.

Degree Program Objectives

In addition to the institutional and degree level learning objectives, graduates of this program are expected to achieve these learning outcomes:

  • Demonstrate a broad knowledge of historical individuals and events and the global complexity of human experiences over time and place.
  • Distinguish the historical schools of thought that have shaped scholarly understanding of the profession.
  • Apply persuasive arguments that are reasoned and based on suitable evidence.
  • Evaluate secondary resources, through historiographical analysis, for credibility, position, and perspective.
  • Assess a variety of primary sources, digital and archival, in the process of deeply researching the past.
  • Generate research that makes original contributions to knowledge, through the use of advanced historical methods.
  • Produce a high-quality research paper that meets professional standards typical for a conference presentation or academic publication.

Core:

500 Historical Research Methods

501 Historiography

Concentration in Ancient and Classical History (30 semester hours)

Covers the broad sweep of European history and provides a foundation in historical theory, trends, and concepts for further study of topical history at the graduate level. Topics include Greek civilization through the 4th century B.C., the fall of the Roman empire, the development of the Ottoman culture, and the Crusades.

Objectives

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

  • Explain and critique Ancient Greece’s political, economic, social, and intellectual movements.
  • Explain and critique Roman history from its beginnings until the Age of Constantine including the political and social developments in the Republic and the early empire.
  • Examine and appraise great Byzantium leaders, the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, the recapture of Constantinople from the crusaders, and the impact of Byzantium culture on Western intellect.
  • Explain and assess European social, political, economic, and religious institutions and cultural and intellectual phenomena in the light of the changing historical environment from the end of the Ancient World to the Renaissance.
  • Explain and assess the medieval church and rise of the Renaissance papacy; growth of humanism, including painters, architects, and sculptors; city-states and monarchies of the Holy Roman Empire; religious upheavals of Protestantism; Anabaptists; the Catholic Reformation.

531 Greek Civilization

532 Roman Republic and Empire

533 Late Antiquity and Byzantium

534 Medieval Europe

535 Renaissance and Reformation

597 Graduate Seminar in European History

611 Ancient Warfare

643 Ottoman Empire

Final Program Requirements:

691 Writing a Thesis Proposal

699 MA in History – Thesis

MA in History (36 Graduate credits)

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The Master of Arts in History degree takes you on an academic journey exploring the key historical events, people, and cultures that fundamentally shaped the world today. Through research, discussion, and analysis, you will obtain a knowledgeable perspective of how future societies progressed through time. Concentrations in this online graduate program offer you the flexibility of focusing on the most favored eras in history including American, Ancient and Classical, European, Global, and Public History. This master’s degree attracts professional educators, historians, and enthusiasts alike, and is also helpful in developing professional skills that include quality writing and communications, research and analysis, and the ability to present compelling arguments.

University faculty members teaching these courses are published historians who bring unique perspectives and relevant research into the classroom. You’ll also connect and interact online with other students who share your enthusiasm for history.

Degree Program Objectives

In addition to the institutional and degree level learning objectives, graduates of this program are expected to achieve these learning outcomes:

  • Demonstrate a broad knowledge of historical individuals and events and the global complexity of human experiences over time and place.
  • Distinguish the historical schools of thought that have shaped scholarly understanding of the profession.
  • Apply persuasive arguments that are reasoned and based on suitable evidence.
  • Evaluate secondary resources, through historiographical analysis, for credibility, position, and perspective.
  • Assess a variety of primary sources, digital and archival, in the process of deeply researching the past.
  • Generate research that makes original contributions to knowledge, through the use of advanced historical methods.
  • Produce a high-quality research paper that meets professional standards typical for a conference presentation or academic publication.

Core:

500 Historical Research Methods

501 Historiography

Concentration in Ancient and Classical History (30 semester hours)

Covers the broad sweep of European history and provides a foundation in historical theory, trends, and concepts for further study of topical history at the graduate level. Topics include Greek civilization through the 4th century B.C., the fall of the Roman empire, the development of the Ottoman culture, and the Crusades.

Objectives

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

  • Explain and critique Ancient Greece’s political, economic, social, and intellectual movements.
  • Explain and critique Roman history from its beginnings until the Age of Constantine including the political and social developments in the Republic and the early empire.
  • Examine and appraise great Byzantium leaders, the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, the recapture of Constantinople from the crusaders, and the impact of Byzantium culture on Western intellect.
  • Explain and assess European social, political, economic, and religious institutions and cultural and intellectual phenomena in the light of the changing historical environment from the end of the Ancient World to the Renaissance.
  • Explain and assess the medieval church and rise of the Renaissance papacy; growth of humanism, including painters, architects, and sculptors; city-states and monarchies of the Holy Roman Empire; religious upheavals of Protestantism; Anabaptists; the Catholic Reformation.

531 Greek Civilization

532 Roman Republic and Empire

533 Late Antiquity and Byzantium

534 Medieval Europe

535 Renaissance and Reformation

597 Graduate Seminar in European History

611 Ancient Warfare

643 Ottoman Empire

Final Program Requirements:

691 Writing a Thesis Proposal

699 MA in History – Thesis

Allan Bloom on History

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History, sharing Greek origins with political science, also has elements of the ancients-moderns identity crisis, in addition to the other problems of the strictly modern social sciences. As already mentioned, both participants and observers are unsure whether it is a social science or one of the humanities. Its matter is resistant to the techniques of the behavioral sciences, since it is particular, and therefore not easily generalizable, deals with the past, and is therefore beyond controlled experiments, but it does not want to be merely literature. I believe that none of the other social sciences includes history as part of the social science schema, with the exception of that part of political science which is concerned with political practice as opposed to social science, e.g., some aspects of American politics and of international relations. History until the nineteenth century meant primarily political history; and it, unlike political science, was not refounded in early modernity. Its traditional role was enhanced during the new foundings because it told what happened, as opposed to old political science, which told what ought to have happened. Therefore history was understood to be closer to the truth of things. History had to wait until the nineteenth century for its modernization by historicism, which argued, as it were, that being, certainly man’s being, is essentially historical. Historicism appears to have been a great boon for history, a radical step upward in status. But the appearance is somewhat deceptive. Historicism is a philosophical, not a historical, teaching, one not discovered by history. Rather than the prestige of philosophy adhering to history, the reverse occurred. All humanities disciplines are now historical—not philosophy, but history of philosophy, not art, but history of art, not science, but history of science, not literature, but history of literature. Thus history is all of these, but also none of them, because they are discrete disciplines in the humanities. History became the empty, universal category encompassing all the humanities, except insofar as it remained its modest, narrow political self. But because it does not have an anchor in political passion as does political science, it could float easily away from that dock under the influence of the prevailing winds, as politics was depreciated by so many other things, especially historicism. So, history, a wonderful, useful study, full of most learned individuals, is as a whole a medley of methods and goals, six disciplines in search of a self-definition.

The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom, c 1987, p 366-367, fn 17.