Bachelor of Arts/Master of Arts in History (Accelerated)

The department encourages students to pursue imaginative, relevant, and inspired approaches to the national and global past. Students gain vital skills in writing, critical thinking, and the evaluation of information. The department offers undergraduate courses that range from large introductory classes to small, focused seminars that encourage intensive interaction with individual professors and with other students. Beyond the introductory level, most of our courses are also writing intensive and promote in all students critical reading skills and the ability to formulate effective written arguments. Through its core curriculum, the major deepens these capabilities and also cultivates skills specific to the historian, especially research and writing based upon the systematic analysis of primary documents. The department also offers a minor in history, an honors track for the highly qualified major culminating in a senior honors thesis, and a BA/MA program for the exceptional student.
The BAMA Program is an accelerated program that allows the undergraduate to complete a BA and an MA in history in four years. It is designed for students who demonstrate exceptional scholarly ability and assumes that the student will complete most other requirements for graduation by the end of the junior year. Minimum prerequisites for admission include a GPA of 3.8 or higher, completion of language requirements through the intermediate level by the end of the junior year, and the securing of a faculty sponsor in the department of history in advance of application. Students seeking admission into the BA-MA program shall submit a formal application to the regular graduate program in history: the application deadline is December 15 of the junior year. The program of study during the senior year includes 6-7 credits of graduate reading and research seminars or independent study each semester, mastery of the scholarship in the student's area of research concentration as demonstrated by the successful completion of a graduate field examination in that area of concentration, and, in lieu of the senior thesis, the completion of a major scholarly research essay equivalent in quality to those completed by first year graduate students in the regular doctoral program.