The past is present
While most graduate students focus on the labor of reading for comps, compiling the reading lists themselves takes time and reflection. Be strategic and minimize your workload, but also be aspirational by considering the themes you want your future dissertation to explore.
The written and oral portions of your comprehensive exams may seem daunting, but try to remember that when you get to this step you are ready.
Comprehensive exams are less about recalling every detail of every book than about building a durable system of arguments, interventions, and stakes. Read with precision, take structured notes, test your memory, and lean on community—the process is as much formation as it is evaluation.
Comprehensive Exams, or 'Comps,' can be confusing and intimidating for graduate students, but the first step to conquering Comps, and the fear they elicit, is to understand what they are, what they are designed to test, and how they work.
Machines reconfigure work. And yet, historians or other humanistic researchers rarely think about the way that our digital workflows—the tools that we use to do our work—enable or disenable the kinds of questions we pursue and the evidence that we marshal to answer them.
The academic year is packed with work, meetings, readings, and teaching, but the summers can feel empty and hard to navigate. Here is some advice on how to find the summer employment opportunity that best fits your needs.
New to TAing? Learn how to prep your first class, lead discussion, and find the support you need to make it through.
Perusall is an online social annotation tool that aims to increase student engagement with course materials. Here is a quick guide to setting up your course with a discussion of assignment options and some suggestions for how to help students make the most of it.
Foreign research trips can be exciting for graduate students, but once you sit down to plan the trip, that excitement can quickly turn into anxiety. Here are some tips to ensure that you make the most of your time abroad.
You received a postdoc, which means that—depending on the postdoc—you have the rare opportunity to direct your energies towards your own research and writing without the responsibilities that come with being a faculty member and with (hopefully) more resources than you had as a graduate student. So, how do you make the most of your postdoc?
Clio and the Contemporary 