Early Modern Grad Programs
19 March, 2006
Early Modern Grad Programs
Hello, the internets! Super-wonderful ex-student wants to go to grad school in Early Modern History. England, and most likely Reformation and/or recusancy. Student is giving a paper at a conference (yeah, still an undergrad …) on the Jesuits and shifts in confessional culture sometime soon. Anyway, student is looking for programs where student could get a good PhD, good mentoring, and (duh) an eventual job. Obviously, student is looking for funding, otherwise grad school won’t happen. So, anybody got any recommendations for where a very bright and affable student (madly working on the languages) should apply? Student isn’t limited to the US or to any geographic area, as long as there’s funding.
9 Comments
leave one →
Blogenspiel 
David Cressy is at Ohio State, and there seems to be a good Early Modern England crowd there. He does religion/popular culture stuff. Otherwise a lot of the interesting people I can think of seem mostly to be in England (I’m thinking particularly of Eamon Duffy and maybe Anne Hudson? I forget if the latter is the right name or not). I think there’s also an EM England guy at UCSB, yes? Sorry to be so vague.
Anne Hudson sounds right to me, at Oxford–Lollards and their long arm, inter alia. I don’t know about history at UCSB, but they have a strong balladry interest amongst their English-dept. English early modernists, FWIW. (If there’s actual UCSB interest, I know someone who could be asked for a clearer inside scoop.)
I think Sears McGee is still at SB, and the student would do really well with Sharon Farmer, I think.
Anne Hudson has been retired for some years now.
King’s College London has a nice M.A. program in Early Modern History: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/pgp06/programme/114One of the Latin teachers is a former curator at the CRRS at Toronto who I knew well in my grad school days.
I second David Cressy. Also, is Peter Lake still at Princeton? This is *exactly* the stuff he works on. Carlos Eire (and Keith Wrightson) at Yale might also be good. Alas, I’m not a historian, but I could brainstorm tons of people in English departments (it’s a hot field, and it’s something I’m interested in myself), if you thought they’d be useful.
I would not recommend that any graduate student pursue early modern British history: there were less than a half dozen searches in that field last year, and most of the pool were postdocs with books out and many good articles. Much better to do Atlantic world? first empire; there is a good deal of room for comparitive studies in religion and especially ecclesiology. Cressy is close to retirement, ditto Sears, Lake eccentric and only does well with very very strong students. If the student wants to stick it out, talk to Ethan Shagan at Northwestern, who is a former student of Lake and can drawn on his network. By no means go to Oxford, Cambridge, London–too expensive and you’ll get zero practical experience, i.e. teaching. This from an ex member of Cambridge with CUP who know’s the deal.
Northwester is high on student’s list, so thanks. One nice thing about US MA?PhD programs is that we generally graduate with two fields, plus a couple of ‘teaching fields’, so the student will be primarily Early Modern, but with a second field in medieval and a third in Atlantic, I’m guessing.
I have to agree with Kingers about not going into Early Modern England, which breaks my heart. Unless the student takes a secondary field in general Early Modern Europe, search committees may not see the candidate as qualified to teach general early modern. The job market is bad; common sense says that when Cressy and Harris’ generation retire universities may be less willing to fill an Early Modern England position.If the student has any interest in Modern Britain, I would reccommend that with a minor in Modern Europe, the Middle East, and / or China. That would have been a good combination for the markets in 2003-2005. With any luck, my predictions will be wrong (and I hope they are) and there will be a renewed interest in Early Modern England.