Funding

Teaching Assistantships, Fellowships, and Other Support

Many graduate students are funded through teaching asssistantships. The History Department receives approximately twenty-five teaching assistantships per year from various sources; it also has a small number of graduate assistantships. Many full-time graduate students receive full tuition waivers. In addition, the Department has available to it a series of Presidential Fellowships, created by the president of the university, to be used to recruit promising new doctoral students. The Department also has an endowed fellowship, known as the Evan Frankel Foundation Fellowship, that is given each year to an outstanding first year student in the doctoral program and continues for four years. The Gardiner Graduate Fellowship awards funding to a graduate student researching early American history or subjects related to aspects of American history in which the Gardiner family played an important role - principally colonial American history and the history of the greater New York region.

Everyone who applies is automatically considered for financial assistance from the History Department, usually in the form of a Teaching Assistantship/Tuition Scholarship. There are no special forms to fill out for Departmental support.

Graduate Council Fellowships and Turner Fellowships – Entering graduate students in history may also be nominated by the admissions committee to compete for these university-sponsored awards. If you wish to be considered for either of these financial opportunities, you will need to have your application completed before January 1st. Students wishing to be considered for these awards must be U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents.  Turner Fellows must self-identify as either African-American, Native American, or Hispanic on their application

US Citizens and Permanent Residents are also eligible for other forms of financial aid, which are applied for via the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form.  Click here for more information, also to apply.

Most NY residents are also eligible for the NYS Tuition Assistance Program (TAP).  Click here for more information, also to apply.


Various Awards and Other Funding for Existing Students

The History Department has limited funds to subsidize graduate student travel to conferences and research depositories through the Werner T. Angress Graduate Student Fund. The Fred Weinstein Award is presented annually to the student judged to have written the best dissertation chapter. The Ernesto Chinchilla/Aguilar Award is presented annually to a distinguished graduate student in Latin American History. In addition, a small number of graduate student summer travel grants are available through a grant form the Mellon Foundation.

Stony Brook’s Graduate Student Organization provides a yearly award for professional development known as the Resource Access Project (RAP). RAP forms can be found here.

Students already in the history doctoral program, especially once they get to the dissertation-writing phase, have a strong track record of earning additional university-wide as well as outside grants and fellowships.  See Awards & Achievements for a list of those recently earned by our doctoral students.

Graduate Blog

HIS 542–Modern Latin American History (Graduate Field Seminar)

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

This Field Seminar introduces some major debates and literatures about Latin American history since 1820. It is designed for MA-level students who intend to go on to a Ph.D. in Latin American History, though advanced students from other geographic concentrations, disciplines, and area universities are more than welcome.

The focus is mainly historiographical or methodological: We critically engage–via intensive readings, weekly discussions, and debate–about ten model monographs in the field. Rather than cover all of the “great books” in this vibrant field, whether of trendy or classic vintage, we’ll concentrate on a broad theme found through much recent historiography: nation-building, nationalisms, nationality, and the construction of national identities in the region. The seminar begins by revisiting Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (a book which has worked its influence everywhere) and by sharpening some perspectives on questions of nationality. Then, with close readings of a dozen or so major new monographs, we’ll examine diverse angles on Latin American “nationalisms”: from the cultural, peasant, regional, and ethnic nation to the revolutionary, gendered, and even trans-national kind. (Sorry: some obvious topics, such as economic or labor nationalism, or citizenship and nation, get overlooked here) We hope to end up with a critical awareness of how well Latin American historians–at least those working in the United States– have deployed such concepts for post-colonial Spanish America, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

- Requirements/Expectations
- There are a few basic requirements for the seminar. 1) Consistent commitment to readings and to energetic participation in weekly group discussions. 2) A collective writing assignment–of 7-9 pages–during Weeks 6-7, to evaluate how you think and write on paper. 3) Concurrent participation in the New York City Workshop in Latin American History (NYCWLAH), a collaborative project with scholars from Columbia and NYU. The Workshops are scheduled from 12-2 on three Fridays (Sept. 24, Oct. 26th, Nov. 30) at Stony Brook Manhattan (28th and Park Ave). Students report on at least one of these seminars 4) A final paper, due December 11, of 12-15 pages, surveying a national historiography of “nationalism/national identities” for one Latin American country, or a comparative essay on a specific thematic approach to nationality across several historiographic sites. Paper topics should be narrowed by Week 8, in time for the scheduled individual student conferences.
- Readings
- Major Latin-Americanist Monographs:
- Benedict Anderson, IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: REFLECTION ON THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF MODERN NATIONALISM (Verso, 1995, revised version)
- Claudio Lomnitz, DEEP MEXICO, SILENT MEXICO: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF NATIONALISM (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2001)
- Mark Thurner, FROM TWO REPUBLICS TO ONE DIVIDED: CONTRADICTIONS OF POST-COLONIAL NATIONMAKING IN ANDEAN PERU (Duke Univ. Press, 1997)
- Ada Ferrer, INSURGENT CUBA: RACE, NATION AND REVOLUTION, 1868-1898
- (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999)
- Greg Grandin, THE BLOOD OF GUATEMALA: A HISTORY OF RACE AND NATION
- (Duke Univ. Press, 2000)
- Nancy Appelbaum, MUDDIED WATERS: RACE, REGION, AND LOCAL HISTORY IN COLOMBIA, 1846-1948 (Duke University Press, 2003)
- Daryle Williams, CULTURE WARS IN BRAZIL: THE FIRST VARGAS REGIME, 1930-45
- (Duke University Press, 2001)
- Eric Zolov, REFRIED ELVIS: THE RISE OF THE MEXICAN COUNTERCULTURE
- (Univ. Of California Press, 1999)

Posted in Faculty, Graduate, Home Page, Nation State & Civil Society by Paul Gootenberg on June 16, 2009 at 2:24 pm |

Conference: “The Worlds of Lion Gardiner”

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

The State University of New York at Stony Brook, in cooperation with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, will hold a conference in Stony Brook on March 20-21, 2009, on “The Worlds of Lion Gardiner, c. 1599-1663: Crossings and Boundaries.” Military man and engineer, chronicler and diplomat, lord of a New English manor married to a Dutch woman, Gardiner led a life replete with crossings: of the English Channel to engage in Continental wars, of the Atlantic, of the lesser waters of Long Island Sound, of national, imperial, and colonial borders, of racial divides, and of the very bounds of colonial law. The many crossings in which he and his contemporaries were involved did much to create boundaries between things previously less clearly separated.

Conference website, schedule, and other info

On-line Registration

Posted in Department News, Empire Modernity & Globalisation, Graduate, Home Page, Research by Ned Landsman on February 1, 2009 at 3:12 pm |

Stony Brook Initiative in the Historical Social Sciences

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Please click here for this fall’s schedule of papers and speakers in this initiative. The series is a collaborative effort of the History and Sociology Departments at Stony Brook.

Posted in Department News, Graduate, Research by Chris Sellers on September 26, 2008 at 9:02 am |

Conferences (2008-09)

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Mark your calendars for two major conference being sponsored by the History Department in 2008-2009.

I. “Cosmopolis 18th Century in the Age of Sail”

Stony Brook Manhattan October 23 and October 24, 2008

Schedule, Abstracts, Bios of Main Speakers

II. “The Worlds of Lion Gardiner, c. 1599-1663: Crossings and Boundaries”

Stony Brook, New York, March 20-21, 2009

Conference site, schedule, and other info

Registration

Link to the call for papers

Posted in Department News, Empire Modernity & Globalisation, Graduate, Home Page, Research by Nancy Tomes on August 21, 2008 at 3:51 pm |

Department Colloquium Series (Spring 2007)

Monday, January 15th, 2007

All presentations will be held in SBS N303.

Dr. Chris Sellers, “What was Earth Day?”
Thursday, February 9, 2007, 2:20-3:40pm

Dr. Robert Goldenberg, “When did ‘the Jews’ begin to Notice Christianity?”
Thursday, March 1, 2007, 12:50-2:10pm

Dr. April Masten
“The Challenge Dance: Mid-Nineteenth Century Migrations of Afro-Celtic Popular Culture”
Thursday, March 22, 2007, 12:50-2:10pm

Alberto Harambour
Thursday, April 12, 2007, 12:50-2:10pm

Posted in Faculty, Graduate by Nancy Tomes on January 15, 2007 at 5:40 pm |