HISTORY DEPARTMENT HOMEPAGE

The Master's Degree in History

     The Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once wrote that, "Any fool can make history, but it takes genius to write it." For students who wish to develop a genius for writing about the past, the Master's Degree in history at the College of Staten Island provides opportunities for personal growth and career development. The program meets the highest intellectual and professional standards of the historical discipline, offering training in the analytic and communications skills demanded by all the professions.

     Whether graduate students are interested in the master's degree to satisfy curiosity about the past, or as a preliminary step toward doctoral study, they will benefit from an explanation of the histories of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America; they also will learn to recognize historical questions and to apply the methods historians have developed to analyze and describe critical human events.

     The program is also suited to teachers in the social sciences with initial certification who wish to deepen their knowledge of history as they complete the master's degree qualification demanded for professional certification. Careers in cultural institutions are also open to students with the professional training in historical research provided by the master's program.

     Graduates of the Master's program in History at the College of Staten Island will acquire an overview of global history and a focus on a geographic area of specialization. The curriculum requires coursework distributed across four of the department's five fields of concentration: History of Africa and the Middle East, History of Asia, History of Europe, History of Latin America and the Caribbean, and History of the United States. Students will explore one of these areas of concentration, and will complete a significant work of historical scholarship, a master's thesis, under the supervision of a thesis director. Students desiring recommendation for doctoral work will demonstrate competence in at least one foreign language.