HISTORY DEPARTMENT HOMEPAGE

The Master's Degree in History

     The past, like the sea, has its mysteries. For students drawn to explore them, 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 particularly suited to teachers in the social sciences with provisional certificates, who can deepen their knowledge of history as they complete the master's degree qualification demanded for permanent 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 thorough knowledge of a geographic area of specialization. The curriculum requires course work 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 in depth, and will complete a significant work of historical scholarship, either a master's thesis under the supervision of a thesis director, or a research project tailored to the student's specific professional interests under the supervision of a research director. Students desiring recommendation for doctoral work will demonstrate competence in at last one foreign language.