Degree Requirements

Students may apply for admission to one of three graduate programs offered by the History Department. In each of these programs, students concentrate on two or three areas of historical scholarship distributed between broadly defined divisions of history. Our formal divisions for these purposes are: the Ancient World, Medieval Europe, Early Modern Europe, Modern Europe, Russia, United States, Latin America, China, Japan, India, Africa, and 'Other'.

Master of Arts without admission to the Ph.D. program (Plan B M.A.)

This master's degree is designed for students who want to obtain an M.A. degree and who do not intend to continue on for a Ph.D. degree. A student pursuing the Plan B M.A. usually completes a total of 30 credit hours of graduate course work followed by an examination in the major area of study. Plan B M.A. students may opt to write an extensive research essay instead of taking an examination. Such students need to work closely with a faculty advisor soon after beginning their studies. If a Plan B M.A. student later wishes to continue in our doctoral program, she or he must formally apply and be considered alongside all new applicants during the regular admissions process.

Because support for graduate students at the University of Iowa is quite limited, we normally cannot offer Plan B M.A. students appointments as Graduate Research Assistants or Graduate Instructors in History. Plan B M.A. students must support themselves by other means during the year or so it takes to complete the degree. We do recommend our students for positions elsewhere in the University.

Master of Arts leading to admission to the Ph.D. program. (Plan A M.A.)

Applicants for this degree intend to take the M.A. degree and to continue immediately in the doctoral program if admitted at the end of the Master's work. This degree requires 30 credits of graduate course work and the completion of a substantial research essay in the student's major division of history. The essay is not a Master's thesis, but serves some of the same purposes in that it demonstrates the student's ability to carry out original research and writing. The faculty normally consider the student for admission to the Ph.D. program at the oral defense of the research essay. Plan A M.A. students do not need to apply for doctoral status through the Departmental admissions committee.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Students who complete the Plan A M.A. in History are automatically considered for admission to the doctoral program. Students who have an M.A. in History from another university may apply directly to our Ph.D. program during the annual admissions cycle. The Ph.D. degree requires 72 credits of graduate course work (including the credits obtained for the M.A. degree), comprehensive examinations in three fields of history (distributed between two of our major divisions, as listed above) and completion of a doctoral dissertation under the direction of a member of the department.

Applicants with an M.A. from another university may transfer up to 30 credit hours of graduate credit from their Master's program, if the credits are accepted by the University of Iowa's transcript service. This is the number of credit hours that students must complete for an M.A. degree in our program. Doctoral students thus need to complete an additional 42 hours of graduate credit for the Ph.D.

In addition to the course requirements, the comprehensive examinations and the dissertation, individual faculty may require their students to master one or more languages, to demonstrate proficiency in particular research methods (quantitative analysis, paleography) or to develop other skills as necessary for their fields of study and dissertation projects.