Imagine a historian. What do his/her surroundings look like? Is he/she surrounded by coworkers in a bustling work environment? Or is he/she sitting alone at a desk, kept company by stacks of books? If your imagination conjured something closer to the latter image, you’re not alone. PhD students, and historians in particular, often work in […]
Continue reading →For any historian not studying U.S. history (and not a few who do), being able to read foreign languages is an essential skill. The reason is simple: our job is to read, and the more languages we can read, the broader the range of materials available to us. The question of which languages to […]
Continue reading →We just finished the first week after spring break here at the University of Chicago. This break was especially enjoyable/productive for me because I finished my winter quarter grading the weekend before AND somehow managed to make it through the rest of the week without getting any emails from students wanting to discuss their grades. […]
Continue reading →I thought that it was about time to explain a little bit more about my research interests and the dissertation I’m supposed to be writing. To help me put the ‘d’ back in ABD, so to speak, I’ll refer to a document I’ve been reading recently that encapsulates a number of the issues my dissertation […]
Continue reading →Many friends and family know that my wife and I are planning to spend 2016-17 in China while I do research for my dissertation. Those who have asked entirely reasonable questions, like “How long will you be there?” Or “How are your preparations coming?” have often met with altogether abbreviated, unsatisfactory, and, on at least […]
Continue reading →In the hit TV series Breaking Bad, it takes the main character, Walter White, five seasons to traverse the trajectory from high school chemistry teacher to meth kingpin. If Walter were a PhD student in history, he would earn rave reviews for completing this journey so quickly – hardly anyone finishes a history PhD in only five […]
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