Hello there

I graduated in 2019 with a BA in History from a regional school. I didn't have phenomenal grades, but an in-major GPA of 3.75 and connected very well with many of my history professors. After graduation, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life, and was talked out of pursuing academia. The incredibly bleak job market and the fact that my diploma wasn't from a top 20 school, was enough to sway me then. Instead I found myself, (like many other history students) enrolled at Law school. Very quickly I began to regret my decision. Long story short, for a number of reasons, I ended up taking a leave of absence after my first year. I found a remote job to pay rent, and am trying to figure out my next step now.

I absolutely love the historian's craft and now long for the nights I would spend in the library in undergrad. As laughable as it may sound to PhD's and tenured professors, in my free time I've been writing episodes and scripts for a little podcast that is centered around my capstone topic (like everyone in their 20's is now). I may never release it, but its fun to do and I find it to be therapeutic. Doing this has gotten me thinking about looking at academia once again.

The issues involved with entering academia haven't gone away. This makes me worried about committing ~ seven years of my life and an incredible amount of effort, in a PhD program, when the job market remains bleak and my diploma is from a state school. It seems less of a risk and very fun to try to get my MA in history.

My question to you historians. Is there merit in getting one's MA in history before trying to be accepted into a PhD program? Or would I be wasting my time?

What can one do with a MA in history?

Are there any good combinations to go with a MA in history to make one more marketable either in or out of academia?

Have things changed in American academia in the past 2-3 years? Are things on the up and up or has COVID sent the job market spirally down even more than it was before?

Lastly, do any of you have any other guidance or advice for a person like myself in this situation?

Thanks,

John

My husband and I were discussing this question and I was curious to know if there has been any exploration on this issue. I would think despite it being high desert, the area east of the Sierras would likely have had a decent amount of wildlife such as mule deer going to lower elevations to winter in better weather, plus the Truckee River could have been a decent water source. What compelled the party to stay at the pass as opposed to heading down a bit from where they came?

I know that there were both free landholding farmers and latifundia manned with slaves and/or paid laborers.

My question is, what is the relative importance of these categories in the Roman empire (say after 0 AD)? By relative importance I mostly mean number of people, but I'd also be interested in importance in terms of surface farmed or even value produced if historians know it.

Obviously this will vary depending on the time and place, but I would be quite interested in knowing how and why this makeup changed geographically and over time, especially towards the end of the period (in the West). If there are other important factors (such as the type of crops...) that impact the type of labor I'd be interested as well.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

So Julius Caesar named the fifth month of the year after himself. He was later assassinated and decried as a wannabe tyrant. Why did his enemies let him keep the honour of having a whole month named after him?

August at least makes a bit more sense because he won, but surely contemporaries were still mocking him in the same was as we mock tinpot dictators who name months after themselves today? Or were they too scared?

So why did these two names stick? Did anyone else try to rename a month after themselves have it stick?

Reading about different explorers through history, on Wikipedia, I noticed that the Greek explorer Pytheas is noted as ”discovering” northern Europe in the 4th century BC. Nothing about his finds is cited though.

However, reading that made me think about Ahmad ibn Fadlan and how he described the Norse a few centuries later. Fadlan claimed that the Norse were unhygienic, engaged in strange socioliberal rituals, etc. Did Pytheas view differ or liken Fadlan’s?

It's interesting to me that Mexico chose to name itself after a Nahuatl endonym, and to use an Aztec symbol on its flag, particularly when most of Mexico outside its dense core had few ties to the Aztecs or even had some historical emnity with them, to say nothing of the distinctly white and Spanish ruling class of the country at the time.

after scouring through the internet i find it a bit wierd for a general like hannibal to lose in his own territory as well as well being a sufet afterwards for a while so its a bit strange also that the only one we trust with this battle was polybius which had a link with scipio africanus and his descendants mostly so did the battle really happened or was it a propaganda made by polybius like other historians claim

Hello historians, I was wondering how the Romans reacted to destruction of Pompeii and there religious beliefs to why it happen, what gods are responsible, and what supposedly happened to the spirt of the dead. Did they attributed it to the forge and fire god Vulcan? Did they believe the those who died without the proper burial and rituals were doomed to walk the river Styx or wonder the earth (similar to the Greek tradition mentioned in 7 against Thebes )? Also I remember reading something about Titus minting large amounts of various coins devoted to different gods/goddess, and the article implied that this was done as an appeasement to these gods as during his reign there were additional disasters, such as a plague and fire in 80 AD. Thank you for any information you could give.

Not sure if it's allowed, but can I tag a user? I know Cole is on reddit and this is a subject he is extensively knowledgeable in - hence him making a game about it. Not sure if that is discouraged though (or maybe just poor form - I don't want to be rude).

Thanks!

A telegram from Lumumba's government to Khrushchev asking him to monitor the Katanga crisis, along with examples of cultural and educational cooperation, is often cited as evidence that the DRC and Pan-African movement that Lumumba led were falling under Soviet influence. The depth and direction of this relationship are also often cited as one of the core reasons that the CIA organized Lumumba's assassination at Eisenhower's personal direction with support from the Belgian colonial apparatus.

However, this relationship with the Soviet Union is variably described as a desperate reaction to Western betrayal during the Katanga crisis, an attempt to scare the West into an at least less nakedly neo-colonial stance on the crisis, the irrelevant afterthought of a man with many more pressing priorities, nothing more than an attempt to stake out a genuinely non-aligned position in the still young Cold War, or a reflection of communist ideology being deeply rooted in Lumumba's contribution to the Pan-African movement.

To the extent that we can interrogate his priorities today, can any of these competing narratives be said to accurately describe Lumumba's relationship with Khrushchev, the Soviet Union, ideological communism, and the communist world in 1960?

Earlier today, I bore witness to some conversation about whether or not Abraham Lincoln/the Republican Party at its founding was conservative, and I recalled the fact that not only did Karl Marx write to Lincoln praising him, but also that Marx was the European correspondent for the New York Tribune, a prominent newspaper for Republicans of the time.

I also know that Lincoln did “damage control” of sorts, assuring the country that the broad brush of abolitionism that Republicans were being painted with was inaccurate, and more radical than what the party really stood for (hence the quote used in the earlier-referenced discussion “The Republican Party is eminently conservative”).

All that said, I wondered if the common American man between the 1850s-1860s would have known of Marx’s work outside of the Tribune, and how that might have affected the perception of the Republican party as radicals.

So, my understanding is that until about WW2 time frame, African American first names were mainly European based... your typical Georges, Michaels, Martins etc. But then at some point this has changed... because now a lot of the African American names seem to be completely invented ... LeBron James, Selena Williams, Ha'Sean "Ha Ha" Treshon Clinton-Dix and so on. Where these came from, how and why? Is it purely American cultural thing, or is there a wider world-wide theme for this?

Hopefully this question is allowed by rules but please let me know otherwise.

The Byzantines when dealing with the Turk incursions and expansion must have been aware of their military and logistical short-comings when facing the Turk methods, primarily mounted troops (and archers), hit and run and other non-conventional tactics, and the flaws in their approach to defending their borders and territory.

My understanding is the Turks were seen as a major if not existential threat, why was adaption to this new reality not seemingly forthcoming?

I've tried asking this once or twice to no avail, but didn't really get a response. This is obviously inspired by recent questions of voter suppression but I am genuinely curious about the history, not just the present politics.

One of the things that I didn't realize about Jim Crow voting laws growing up was that unlike segregation, they do not seem to be written explicitly along racial lines. They typically enacted disenfranchisement indirectly by targeting ostensibly non-racial traits like literacy or the ability to pay a tax. I have to assume that this workaround was for the purpose of avoiding the 15th amendment, which seems to forbid explicit disenfranchisement by race.

This made me wonder: when people defended Jim Crow voting laws, what did they say? Did Southern politicians directly acknowledge that it was targeting black people, or did they feel compelled to use other excuses in their rhetoric? And if they did use other excuses, did any of the public actually buy into it, or was it largely recognized that it was all about race?

As far as I know, the Second Sino-Japanese War is considered to be a part of the second World War. Why then is it often said that WW2 started on September 1st, 1939 instead of July 7th, 1937?

Is it because it only became a true world war in 1939 since previously combat was limited to Asia or is there another reason?

All I’ve ever learned about him in schools was that he was the president, had fake teeth, and that picture of him crossing the Delaware River.