The Master of Arts in History & Archival Studies combines training in the researching and writing of scholarly history with the study of archival practice and maintenance, preparing students for careers in special collections, libraries, museums, and other entities that recognize the critical value of keeping and maintaining historical documentation.
The Archival Studies program provides a theoretical and practical framework for creating and understanding archival collections, including why we make them and how we maintain them. Theoretical and scholarly historical work is complemented by experiential learning opportunities, such as internships, in order to ground your knowledge in the current practices of the professional world. Throughout the program, you may take advantage of the many benefits that CGU’s History Department confers: access to faculty-scholars who specialize in U.S. and European history and abundant opportunities to collaborate with students and faculty in other CGU departments as well as at other member institutions of the highly ranked Claremont Colleges. You’ll gain a broad-based, humanistic education that equips you with the research, analytical, and communication skills critical for successful careers.
Program Highlights
You will have access to the archives of the Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, one of the largest collections in California. The Huntington Library, one of the world’s finest research libraries for English and American history, is nearby.
Students may take archival studies courses as part of any degree program.
Program At a Glance
UNITS
48 units
ESTIMATED COMPLETION TIME*
2 years
*This estimate assumes full-time registration and pursuit of the degree. Actual completion times will vary and may be higher, depending on full- or part-time course registration, units transferred, and time to complete other degree requirements.
Introduces archival theory and practice in which you explore professional work through archives, records, and special collections.
HIST 315
Museums, History & Story Telling
Explores the theory, methods, and politics of museum exhibitions through a partnership between the Autry Museum of the American West and Claremont Graduate University.
HIST 367
Nuclear America
Studies the powerful and pervasive effects of nuclear energy—military, commercial, and civilian—on the U.S. from 1945 to the present with an additional focus on such global events as Chernobyl and Fukushima.
HIST 323
Reformation Europe
Explores the Protestant Reformation and its aftermaths and backlashes in Europe and the British Isles, as presented in recent and classic historiography.
HIST 321
Texts & Context: America to 1776
Undertakes a close reading of such primary texts as sermons, diaries, and cartographic records, within the context of recent historiography of Colonial/British America.
ARCH 312
Research Methodologies in the Archive
Provides an understanding of the methodologies of original archival research using such primary sources as manuscripts, letters, photographs, and other “four-cornered” documents, as well as digital materials.
Curriculum
Courses
Required History courses (4 units)
History 300 (4 units)
Archival Studies courses (12 units)
Archival Studies 310: Introduction (4 units)
Archival Studies 311: Topics & Advanced Training (4 units)
History elective courses (28 units)
Open elective courses (4 units)
Research Tools Requirement
One language–reading proficiency in historical materials (European studies requires French or German)
Research Paper
One substantive research paper
Thesis
An original scholarly work written in consultation with a Thesis Committee and based on an array of primary and secondary sources.
Internship
You can gain professional experience in the field through a required internship in archives or special collections at numerous institutions in the L.A. region, including:
Iranian American Women Foundation
Orange County Museum of Art
LACMA Curatorial and Collections
Claremont Heritage
Collections Internships at the Wende Museum
Intern Position for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Faculty & Research
Joshua Goode
Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and History
Chair, Cultural Studies (Fall 2022)
Research Interests
Modern Spain, 19th- and 20th-century Europe, Genocide and racial thought, Museums and commemoration, Memory
As a student in the School of Arts & Humanities, you have the option of completing one of five interdisciplinary concentrations.
American Studies
The American Studies concentration takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of United States culture, society, civilization, and identity through the curricular lenses of history, literature, critical theory, and more.
The Early Modern Studies concentration undertakes interdisciplinary examination of history, culture, politics, and society within the transitional and transformative period that stretched between Medieval and modern societies, marked especially by the advent of print, Christian confessional war, and the rise of the modern state.
A comparative analysis of culture in the Americas, the concentration in Hemispheric & Transnational Studies explores how scholarship on the Atlantic, borderlands, and diaspora have reshaped U.S. American Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Latin American Studies, emphasizing the topics of empire, race, religion, and revolution.
Situated at the bustling intersection of cultural studies, new media, critical theory, and popular culture, the burgeoning field of Media Studies examines the creative and critical practices of media consumers, producers, artists, and scholars, focusing on questions of representation, power, technology, politics, and economy.
The Museum Studies concentration investigates the history and political role of museums in society, the interpretation and display of a wide variety of cultural productions, and topics of special concern to museums as cultural organizations, using a multidisciplinary, practice-based approach to understand the historical development of this evolving field.
