Graduate students apply to and specialize in one primary field of study. They explore those fields generally and develop specializations within them. While in the program, they explore two secondary or minor fields that could be in another discipline, in a studies program, or in history itself. Our primary fields of study are below.
MSU’s doctoral program in African History has long been one of the premier programs in the nation and is ranked #3 by US News & World Report. From 1967 to 2026, more than 100 students from Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States completed PhDs in our program.
Professors Nwando Achebe, Peter Alegi, Walter Hawthorne, and Michelle Moyd specialize in West, East, and South African history, with a focus on women, gender, sport, popular culture, technology, politics, warfare, and slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. John Aerni-Flessner, a Lesotho specialist, Aminda Smith, a China specialist, and David Wheat and Peter Beattie, who are Atlantic and African diaspora scholars, often work closely with Africanist graduate students, as do faculty in African American History.
Applicants to our program are considered for generous multi-year funding packages that include a stipend, tuition, health insurance, and research support. Our students benefit from MSU’s African Studies Center, which offers instruction in many African languages and often provides fellowships under the FLAS Title VI program. Students also value the research assistance of Africana librarians who staff one of the three largest Africana library collections in the United States. And students derive much from having the Journal of West African History in the department. In addition, MSU History leads the way in African digital scholarship through MATRIX (MSU’s digital humanities center), the “Africa Past & Present” podcast, and the Lab for Education in and Advancement of Digital Research (LEADR).
African history has been one of a small number of fields in the discipline in which the number of jobs equaled the number of new PhDs. The future looks bright for Africanist scholars, and the MSU Africa program’s job placement rate for graduates has long been excellent. Our PhDs hold positions at a range of institutions, from Research I universities to liberal arts colleges.
Apply to be a part of an outstanding cohort of Africanist graduate students. Please contact us with questions. We welcome inquiries: history@msu.edu and 517-355-7500.
During the Black Studies movement, the Department of History at Michigan State University introduced its first courses focusing on the African American experience. Since then, the study of African American history at MSU has expanded by leaps and bounds. Shaped significantly by the contributions of renowned historian Darlene Clark Hine, MSU’s doctoral programs in African American history and Comparative Black History have enjoyed national reputations for more than two decades.
Graduate students who join our program can work with a vibrant community of African Americanists: Glenn Chambers, Pero G. Dagbovie, LaShawn D. Harris, and Nakia Parker. These scholars’ expertise ranges across major eras and topical specialties in the African American experience, including black women’s history, slavery studies, Afro-Diasporic studies, black intellectual history, and the civil rights-Black Power movement. Applicants to our program are considered for substantial multi-year funding packages and admits the opportunity to work as teaching and/or research assistants for scholars engaged in innovative research in African American history and Black Diaspora studies. Our students benefit from workshops, speaker series, and events sponsored by the Comparative Black History Program as well as programs and classes offered by MSU’s Department of African American and African Studies.
According to a recent issue of the American Historical Association’s Perspectives on History, African American history is one of the topical fields that has experienced significant growth in Ph.D. recipients since 2000. The MSU Department of History is an ideal place to pursue a Ph.D. in African American history. Graduates specializing in this dynamic field at MSU have secured employment at a range of colleges and universities, including Arizona State University, Buffalo State University, Calvin College, Florida Memorial University, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Northwestern University, Southern Illinois University, State University of New York at Oswego, University of Kansas, University of Arizona, University of South Carolina Upstate, Washington University in St. Louis, and Wayne State University.
It is hard to overstate the importance of East Asia. China is home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations, with unique religious and philosophical traditions. The allure of the Orient fueled the ambitions of explorers the world over, and the military and economic power of Asian states has assured their continued prominence. From the ways that pre-modern Asia helped shape the world to modern trans-Pacific international relations, knowledge of Asian history has become essential to those interested in everything from business and politics to science and education.
MSU is an excellent place to explore that history and to pursue advanced study of East Asia. Several core faculty members comprise the East Asian field: Aminda M. Smith and Yulian Wu specialize in Chinese history, Charles Keith is a scholar of Vietnam, Shayan Rajani is a historian of South Asia, and Ethan Segal focuses on Japan. In addition, history faculty Liam Brockey and Naoko Wake focus on connections between Asia and the West from the early modern era to the present day.
The department’s East Asia caucus works closely with scholars across the university when directing graduate students with interdisciplinary interests. Michigan State is a Title VI nationally recognized graduate resource center with an impressive range of speaker series, cultural events, and conferences. Graduate students can apply to the center for FLAS fellowships that cover tuition and offer a stipend in support of the study of a range of Asian languages. MSU is the proud home of MATRIX, a cutting-edge digital humanities center, and faculty and students regularly collaborate with H-Net, which hosts electronic discussion groups like H-Japan, H-Asia, H-PRC, and H-Buddhism. Our students are well prepared to compete for faculty positions, as well as for positions in government, business, and education.
We welcome applications from qualified students interested in pursuing doctoral study of Asian history. Please feel free to contact the department for more information.
MSU’s program in European history conceives of Europe as itself a time-bound and shifting object of study. We do not assume any fixed definition of Europe’s internal divisions – between Eastern and Western or Northern and Southern Europe – or of the continent’s external boundaries – at the Ural Mountains, the Mediterranean Sea, or the Atlantic Ocean. Rather, we investigate the diverse people and processes that have constituted European spaces as such, and we attend to the wide variety of interactions and exchanges that have linked this region to others across the globe.
Our faculty has research and teaching strengths in the early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, with a concentration of scholars who work on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recent publications focus on migration and statecraft, consumption and material culture, nationalism and identity, childhood and education, medicine and public health, culture and science, religion and empire, protest and democracy, transitional justice and genocide, and social and political imaginaries.
Graduate students can choose primary fields in modern European, Russian, or Ottoman and Turkish history, or they can construct a field that bridges traditional geographic or chronological divisions. The program draws on the Department’s strengths in migration, gender, and world history and in the history of science, and it encourages linkages with other regional foci, including the Atlantic World, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and East Asia. In addition, the European History Colloquium offers a forum for graduate students to present their work and to join faculty in discussing current developments in the field.
Faculty in the field include: Rich Bellon, Liam Brockey, Emine Evered, Sean Forner, Karrin Hanshew, Noah Kaye, Matthew Pauly, Amy Simon, Ronen Steinberg, Emily Tabuteau, and John Waller.
Europeanists work closely with several interdisciplinary programs and centers and have close ties to scholars of Europe in other colleges and departments, including:
MSU’s Department of History has a flourishing program in Latin American and Caribbean History that builds on decades of tradition. At present our faculty specialize in the study of Brazil, the Spanish Caribbean, the Southern Cone, and the Atlantic World. We have thematic strengths in Gender, Luso-Brazilian World and Atlantic Studies, Urban Studies, Political culture, Institutional History, and Labor and Migration.
Core faculty members include: Peter Beattie, Glenn Chambers, Edward Murphy, Javier Pescador, and David Wheat. There is productive overlap in the interests of our faculty members, and the specializations of each also provide in-depth coverage of a wide range of the regions and eras that mark Latin American and Caribbean History. This combination facilitates a broad and yet focused approach, contributing to a vibrant intellectual environment that builds both specific expertise and an ability to engage with general trends.
Our students have a strong track record in receiving funding support and gaining employment after graduating. The Department of History provides excellent funding packages to qualified students, while other MSU units, such as the Graduate School, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the College of Social Science also offer sources of support. Our students have received prestigious external research grants, including Fulbright Fellowships to Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the Caribbean. Some of our recent graduates now hold tenure-stream positions at major universities and colleges, including Florida International University and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY).
Science, medicine, and technology have shaped virtually every aspect of modern life. From how we see our place in the cosmos to how we battle illness, wage wars, and produce food, human life has been transformed as a result of investigating the physical world. But given that science seems to go from strength to strength it may not seem obvious that historians can do anything other than follow the tidy trails of reason which lead to current knowledge.
In fact, science is a rich, fascinating, and complicated topic for historical inquiry. For all the extraordinary accomplishments of science, it is neither as objective nor as straightforward as we are often led to believe. The route to new discoveries is seldom straight or narrow, scientific methods are far more complex than they may at first seem, and the history of science is replete with failed theories and misconceptions. Historians of science seek answers to fundamental questions about the nature of science, the credibility of its claims to truth, and the qualities which distinguish it from other ways of acquiring knowledge. Above all else, historians have revealed the social, cultural, political, and material circumstances which shape scientific inquiries, and they have explored the contexts in which the findings of science are interpreted, applied and sometimes abused.
Faculty in this caucus include Rich Bellon, Helen Zoe Veit, Naoko Wake, and John Waller.
The U.S. History faculty at Michigan State University enjoys a national and international reputation for research, teaching, outreach, and digital humanities. The size and scholarly activity of the U.S. faculty at Michigan State create a unique intellectual environment. The U.S. field includes more than a dozen tenure-stream faculty members with diverse research and teaching interests, with particular strengths from the mid-eighteenth through the twentieth century; African American and comparative Black history; comparative and transnational history; cultural, intellectual, and religious history; digital humanities; food and environmental history; history education; the history of gender, family, and sexuality; Jewish, Asian American, and Latinx history; journalism, film, and media history; labor history; Native American history; and sports history. The graduate program in U.S. history offers students the opportunity to pursue their research interests from a national, transnational, or comparative perspective.
The History Department also has strong links to study centers and specialized programs across campus that support collaborative research and training, including, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Asia Pacific American Studies Program, Center for Gender in Global Context, H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online, and Jewish Studies. Meanwhile, the MSU library has world-class collections in U.S. history, including the Russell B. Nye Popular Culture Collection, the American Radicalism Collection, the Ethnic Studies Collection, the Comic Book Collection, the Changing Men Collection, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Collection, and one of the country’s largest historical culinary collections.
Faculty in this caucus include James Anderson, Glenn Chambers, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Pero Dagbovie, Kirsten Fermaglich, Delia Fernández-Jones, Lisa Fine, Nakia Parker, Javier Pescador, Dean Rehberger, Michael Stamm, Thomas Summerhill, Helen Zoe Veit, and Naoko Wake.
The Department of History at Michigan State University has offered both major and minor graduate fields in Women’s and Gender History for over a decade. Over the last two decades we have developed breadth and depth in Women’s and Gender History and can provide our graduate students with an opportunity to explore related topics in almost every geographic and temporal context. Our faculty offers expertise in the history of sexuality, masculinities, intersection of science and gender, history of the family, race and ethnicity, women and work, political activism, urbanization, popular culture, and immigration. In addition, students benefit from involvement with MSU’s thriving Center for Gender in Global Context.
Graduate students learn basic content knowledge, current theoretical approaches, and sophisticated research skills. The core course for the major and minor field is History 860. Graduate students can repeat this course up to three times with different professors. In consultation with their advisor and the graduate director, graduate students can broaden their knowledge with other gender-oriented courses within the history department or elsewhere. It is strongly encouraged that graduate students who elect to do their major field in Women’s and Gender History also complete a minor field in a specific geographic area and time period. They will be required to develop the language, research, and teaching skills necessary for both areas. Students may also draw from departments across the university: Anthropology, Family and Child Ecology, Labor and Industrial Relations, American Studies, German, French, Italian and Classics, Spanish and Portuguese, Linguistics, the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, and the College of Law.
Faculty who work on women’s and gender history include Nwando Achebe, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Emine Evered, Kirsten Fermaglich, Lisa Fine, LaShawn D. Harris, Edward Murphy, Ethan Segal, Aminda Smith, Helen Zoe Veit, Naoko Wake, and Yulian Wu.
Secondary fields offer students an opportunity to cultivate expertise in a particular methodology or in a geographical region outside their primary field. They also provide the option of transcending national and regional borders altogether. In all instances, students are encouraged to work with faculty outside of their primary field and may even choose to work with faculty in a different discipline or in one of MSU’s studies programs, such as African American and African Studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Muslim Studies. In this way, students are able to take full advantage of faculty strengths that cluster around thematic interests as much as geographic ones and that cut across departments.
Graduate students at Michigan State also have the opportunity to develop their program with a significant digital history component.
Possible secondary fields include: