Nov 27, 2024  
2024-2025 Graduate Catalog 
    
2024-2025 Graduate Catalog

Digital History, PhD


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Program Description


Digital history utilizes computer technology to foster new ways to collaboratively collect, preserve, and share historic artifacts and voices with a variety of publics. The creation of computational methodologies also provides historians with new ways of developing and investigating historical research questions. It allows historians to conduct textual, spatial, and network analysis and visualize these results over time and space. In addition to training students to enter the professoriate, this program prepares students for a variety of careers through its combination of critical humanistic inquiry, computational training, and a required internship.

Students enter the program with an MA or MS degree, but they may come from different fields and backgrounds. The course sequence includes both courses in traditional history fields and in digital history methods and historiography. It does not assume prior training, but students receive credit for courses whose equivalent they have already taken, at Clemson or elsewhere. All students must successfully defend a dissertation based in part upon the use of digital methods. This dissertation may be in written and/or digital form.  

For more information see the department website.

Admission


Students are admitted to the graduate program by the dean of the graduate school upon the recommendation of the program director or department chair. All persons applying to the PhD program in digital history must submit the following to the Graduate School:

  1. Unofficial Transcripts (final-official transcripts are required once admitted)
  2. TOEFL, IELTS or PTE, and Duolingo (for international applicants)
  3. Three Letters of Recommendation
  4. Resume/CV
  5. Statement of Purpose (1-2 pages)
  6. Writing Sample (15-30 pages)
  7. Optional: Example of digital engagement (submitted as a .pdf, url, or other file format)
  8. A completed Graduate School application form

Summary of Degree Requirements


Students must take or transfer in a minimum of 72 hours of credit, including dissertation hours. This must include 18 hours in digital history, 12 hours in their major field of history, six hours in a concentration field, nine hours of historical methods (HIST 8010 , HIST 8810 , and a graduate research seminar) and nine hours of career diversity, including three hours of internship.

In addition, students are expected to demonstrate reading ability in one foreign language, usually satisfied at the masters level; pass comprehensive exams in Digital History, one major field in History, and one concentration field; and complete a dissertation.

The program is flexible in the amount of time students spend preparing for exams, participating in internships, and researching and writing their dissertations. The number of credits students take in those areas can expand as needed, though all students must take a total of at least 18 hours of dissertation research.

Coursework


Required Courses
Content Courses
  • 12 credits of content courses selected from 8000-level HIST seminar courses. 6000-level courses may be selected with consent of the program director.
Elective Courses

Outcomes, Learning Objectives, and Graduation Requirements


On completing the program, students will be able to:

  • Ethically and professionally conduct archival research.
  • Make an original contribution to the field of history.
  • Ethically and professionally collect, analyze, and visualize using various techniques.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of the literature in digital history and two other fields of history.
  • Write and present historical research on a professional level appropriate to digital history.
  • Demonstrate proficiency in at least two digital history methods.

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