The Department of History offers both the MA and the PhD degrees. All History graduate students will be exposed to a range of historical fields and methodologies. Faculty expertise includes colonial and 19th-century U.S. history, Native American history, environmental history, borderlands and trans-national history, European history (particularly the Middle Ages, modern Europe, military history, and the Holocaust), gender and women’s history, the Middle East and terrorism. Methodological specialties include historical geography, ethno-history, and digital and spatial history.
There are three options for the Master’s degree. The thesis option requires 24 hours of coursework and satisfactory completion of an extended essay (the MA thesis) based on independent research. The non-thesis option requires the satisfactory completion of 30 hours of coursework. Students who follow the thesis option must defend their thesis in an oral examination, while non-thesis students must pass a comprehensive oral examination based on their coursework. Promising junior History majors can also apply for the History 4+1 program, which enables successful candidates to begin the Master’s program while completing their BA degree.
PhD candidates are required to take at least 24 credits of graduate coursework in addition to thesis credits toward their degree. They may concentrate in North American or international history, or a field related to their advisor’s expertise. They also take at least one graduate course in a field related to their intended research outside of history. Doctoral students have two benchmark assessments before they focus on their dissertation research. First, a comprehensive written and oral examination (“comps”) follows the conclusion of coursework. Second, the student writes a dissertation prospectus - their research plan - which they discuss with their committee at the prospectus defense. The final assessment is the dissertation defense, where the student summarizes their research findings and discusses the dissertation with their committee.
Candidates for the PhD degree are expected to demonstrate competence reading a foreign language. MA students have the option of requesting approval by their advisory committee of an alternate skill relevant to their research or career goals, such as GIS, computer programming, or oral history methodologies. In all cases, the student’s advisory committee is responsible for determining specific requirements.
Admission to the History graduate program is decided twice a year, with application deadlines on October 15 for spring admission and January 15 for admission the following fall. GRE scores are not required for application. Financial support for outstanding students is available through teaching assistantships, which pay a substantial stipend, waive the cost of tuition. and cover half the cost of student insurance. Students may also compete for University scholarships and apply for History Department support for research and conference travel. Faculty mentors also help students find external grants related to their research, and research assistant positions on faculty projects are sometimes available.
The Raymond Fogler Library is the historian’s research center. Among its most significant holdings are journals, books, and extensive document collections related to the history of Maine, New England, and Eastern Canada. The journal Maine History is edited by History Department students and faculty; it provides opportunities for graduate students to learn about professional peer review, manuscript editing, layout, graphics, and printing.
In recent years, the varied topics of History MA theses and doctoral dissertations have included a comparison of the Holocaust as it affected people in urban, rural, and forest environments in Białystok, Poland; technoscientific citizenship and ecological domesticity in the late 20th century; knowledge systems and agricultural change in marginal farming regions of Maine and central Germany; automobility and tourism in the Maine/New Brunswick borderlands; plurality in the political theology of Ernst Kantorowicz; cookbooks and the negotiation of domesticity in Anglo-America 1830-1880; the importance of print communication among frontier Baptist communities in Maine/Canadian borderlands; and struggles for control of public space in Irish and Irish-North American communities in the early 19th century.
Graduate Faculty
Joel Anderson, PhD (Cornell, 2015), Associate Professor. Medieval Europe, Viking and medieval Scandinavia, cultural and religious history.
Mary Freeman, PhD (Columbia, 2018), Assistant Professor. New England and Maine History
Anne Kelly Knowles, PhD (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993), McBride Distinguished Professor and Graduate Coordinator. Historical Geography, Holocaust, geovisualization and historical GIS, history of cartography, and 19th-century U.S. immigration and industrialization.
Michael Lang, PhD (University of California, Irvine, 1997), Associate Professor. Modern Europe, historiography, intellectual history, international relations.
Mark J. McLaughlin, PhD (University of New Brunswick, 2013), Associate Professor of History and Canadian Studies. Environmental History, Canadian History, History of Science and Technology, Comics Studies.
Stephen M. Miller, PhD (University of Connecticut), Adelaide & Alan Bird Professor and History Department Chair. Great Britain, South Africa, Military, Imperialism.
Asif Nawaz, PhD (Kansas State University), Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs.
Gabriel Paquette, PhD (University of Cambridge), Professor and Associate Provost for Academic Affairs.
Micah Pawling, PhD (University of Maine, 2010), Associate Professor, ethnohistory of Native North America, Native American, Wabanaki, environmental, United States, and Canadian history.
Kara Peruccio, Ph.D. (University of Chicago), Assistant Professor. Mediterranean, Women and Literature, Islam, 20th Century.
Liam Riordan, PhD (University of Pennsylvania, 1996), Professor. Colonial British America, American Revolution, and Early U.S. Republic, cultural and social history.
Collaborative and Affiliated Graduate Faculty
Libby Bischof, Professor of History, University of Southern Maine
Stephen Hornsby, Professor of Geography, University of Maine
Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine
Daniel Soucier, Adjunct Instructor in History, Maine Studies, and Franco-American Studies
Stefano Tijerina, Lecturer in Management, Maine Business School, University of Maine
Emeritus Gradute Faculty
Richard Blanke, Professor Emeritus
Nathan Godfried, Professor Emeritus
Mazie L. Hough, Associate Professor Emerita
Richard W. Judd, Professor Emeritus
Beth McKillen, Professor Emerita
Graduate School
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