Preliminary Examination Preparation

Not long after you begin your first semester as a Ph.D. student, you will start to feel a heavy weight on your chest – prelims. You don’t quite know what they are yet, but they are a distant source of anxiety. Don’t panic! HGSA is here to help!

As with all aspects of degree progress. Refer to the Department of History requirements and Graduate School Manual, and especially your academic advisor, for specific plans of study, information on paperwork, and the content of your exams. The plan of study is pretty self-explanatory, and can be accessed from MyPurdue, but talk to your major field advisor and Fay if you have any questions. (p.s. Fay is your God now. Fay knows all. All good things come from Fay.)

Preliminary exams or prelims (also called comprehensive exams or comps) consist of defining your major field of study, as well as two other outside fields. These may be reading lists designed to help you teach a survey course, learn about a new area of study, or supplement what you already know. Each reading field, and its corresponding booklist, will be managed by a different professor who specializes in that field. These three professors form your committee. [Refer to the detailed history department requirements found on the History Graduate Program website.] Then in consultation with your committee members, you develop reading lists for each of your fields, read the books, and finally complete written and oral exams in a pre-approved format. Reading these booklists takes around two semesters, while the exam period itself usually takes place over a course of several weeks to a month. Keep in mind, these are rough guidelines, as every student, faculty advisor, and committee member has their own way of forming preliminary exam fields and testing their students, while each graduate student has their own ways of reading, studying, and taking the exams.

To prepare yourself, mentally and academically, talk to your fellow graduates. Talk to ABD students that have already passed their exams. It is a big achievement, so most of us are more than willing to share our experience with anyone that will listen. Everyone’s exams are different, so don’t feel pressured to follow any example exactly. As with all things, rely on your primary academic advisor and Dr. Atkinson for guidance.

Here are reading lists from graduate students in a variety of fields. Do not copy these lists exactly, but they can be used as a guideline when drafting your own exam reading lists. Please feel free to e-mail any of the students with questions or any of the HGSA student contacts for prelim advice.

Major Field Reading Lists

American History Areas

• U.S. 19th Century History (Alberts)

• U.S. Environmental History (Bayless)

• U.S. Social History - Post 1865 (Fisher)

• U.S. Social History - Post 1877 (Kvaran)

• U.S. Social History - Post 1877 (Lombardo)

• 19^th C. U.S. Political History (Childress)

• 20^th C. U.S. History and Popular Culture (Corzine)

• U.S. Western Expansion (T. Johnson)

• Early American History - Diplomacy, Slavery & Religion (R. Johnson)

• U.S. Business and Economic History to 1930 (Hunter-Smith)

• U.S. History - General Field (Moss)*

• U.S. Social since 1877 (Ward)

European History Areas

• Modern European Social and Cultural History (Bouquet)

• Early Modern Europe (Dermineur)

• Modern European Gender History (Harris)

• Early Medieval Europe (Schlosser)

• Modern Imperialism (Sproat)

• 20th Century Europe (Sproat)

• Transnational History, Central & Eastern Europe Focus (Snively)

Global History Areas

• Modern Japan (Washington)

• Women and Asia (Park)

Minor Field Reading Lists

American History Areas

• U.S. in the World: Transnational approaches to U.S. History (Alberts)

• U.S. Political History - Post 1877 (Corzine)

• U.S. Women’s History - Post WWII (Park)

• U.S.-Middle East Relations (Ward)

• 20th C. U.S. Environmental (Ward)

• U.S. in the World:  Transnational Approaches to U.S. History 1789-1918

European History Areas

• Early Modern French History - Diplomacy, Slavery & Religion (R. Johnson)

• 17th C. England - Women and Religion (Hunter-Smith)

• Habsburg Legacy in Central Europe (Snively)

• 20th Century Europe,Western Europe Focus (Snively)

Global History Areas

• Travel History (Alberts)

• Colonialism, Post-Colonialism, and African Women (Harris)

• 19^th C. Mexico and Latin America (T. Johnson)

• Spanish Borderlands (Childress)

• Gender and Sexuality in Global History (Lombardo)

• Early Islam (Schlosser)

• Modern Japan (Fisher)

• Global Feminisms (Sproat)

• Travel History (Alberts)

Interdisciplinary Fields

• Women’s Studies - Feminist Theory (Kvaran)

• “Sociality” of Religion (Washington)

Comparative Studies

• U.S. and Sub-Saharan African Women’s History (Bayless)

• Women in the U.S., France, and Sub-Saharan Africa, 1950-2000 (Dermineur)

*The general field is no longer required during preliminary examinations. The reading lists do, however, provide an excellent overview of texts in American History from 1492 to present.