The Master of Arts in Public History program provides students both the theoretical and practical skill sets needed to perform public history work in a variety of vocations, whether as museum professionals, archivists, government contractors, community consultants, teachers both inside and outside the classroom, among others.

Curriculum

The Master of Arts in Public History requires 30 credit hours of coursework and a 1 credit hour in a Public History Internship, for a total of 31 credit hours.

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Required Courses
HIST 400	Twentieth Century Approaches to History	3
One 500-level Research Seminar		3
Five Public History Courses		15
HIST 479	Public History Media
HIST 480	Public History: Method & Theory
HIST 481	Management of Historic Resources
HIST 482	Archives & Record Management
HIST 487	Management of History Museums
HIST 582	Public History Internship	1
Three minor field courses		9
Total Hours		31

Comprehensive Examination

Toward the end of their graduate program, public history students must pass a two-hour oral examination in the field of public history before a two-person faculty committee, one of whom must be the Public History Program Director. There is no examination in the minor field, but students must maintain at least a B average (3.0) in the three minor field courses.

Public History Portfolio

The portfolio, which represents the capstone of the program, documents the achievements of master’s students and thereby identifies their strengths, weaknesses and abilities as professional historians. Students begin compiling their portfolio during the first semester in the program. The portfolio will be evaluated by the student’s faculty advisor annually, and the final version will be submitted to the faculty committee a minimum of two days prior to the oral exam. Successful completion of the portfolio is required for admission to and/or continuation in the PhD program.

Graduate & Professional Standards and Regulations

Students in graduate and professional programs can find their Academic Policies in Graduate and Professional Academic Standards and Regulations under their school. Any additional University Policies supercede school policies.

Upon completion of the MA in Public History, graduates will be able to:

• Use public history methods and theories to share historical interpretation with a broad range of public audiences;
• Apply new media digital tools to the preservation and presentation of archival material;
• Utilize the best professional practices to preserve, catalog, and present historical artifacts and records;
• Understand and employ local, state, and federal preservation rules to establish the significance of historic properties;
• Demonstrate the ability to work with public history institutions to make the past relevant to diverse communities;
• Perform historical research in archives and libraries and evaluate the provenance, context, validity, and biases of these sources from the past;
• Apply the necessary research skills to produce original scholarship on a chosen historical topic using primary sources while evaluating the validity, context, and biases of secondary source literature produced by other scholars;
• Demonstrate the ability to deploy multiple forms of communication (written, oral, and new media) to discuss their own historical scholarship and graduate-level knowledge of their chosen fields.