MPhil in History (US History)

University of Oxford

The MPhil in History (US History) will immerse you in the historiography and current debates in American history and provide you with rigorous training in historical research, writing and argumentation.

The MPhil has a sustained period devoted to archival research and writing, and is designed to give you a thorough training in historical research, improve your ability to conceptualise and engage with historical problems, and enlarge your understanding of the historical and historiographical context in which your own research is set. The course can serve as either a free-standing graduate qualification, or as a springboard to doctoral study. Students wishing to proceed to doctoral study will be encouraged to develop their doctoral proposals during the first few months of the second year. Skills training and option-choice are flexible and open-ended, to allow you to gain the knowledge and training needed to complete your research project.

Ranging from the emergence of Native America to the history of the present, the course allows you to discover the richness and dynamism of past and contemporary American historical writing and develop intellectual familiarity with advanced research in American history. In addition to emphasising the unique intellectual and methodological contributions driven by the American historical profession, this course emphasises American history’s openness to inter-disciplinarity and to global intellectual currents that have shaped the discipline of history as a whole. This deep historiographical grounding equips you to undertake your own research design and master the long-term development of historical writing in the field of American history.

American history in Oxford covers a wide range of specialities from Native American history to the history of capitalism, including intellectual, borderlands, and environmental history. Oxford is also host to the Harmsworth Visiting Professorship and the Rothermere American Institute.

You will take three compulsory core papers and two optional papers, as well as undertake an original research project. There is also a research masterclass, which is not assessed. This structure gives access to a wide range of both general and specialised training within the field of history.