A written comprehensive exam and an oral defense of thesis are required of students writing a thesis. Non-thesis students must pass a comprehensive exam. Students must have or develop a working knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese. A seminar which inquires into the ways historians use evidence to reconstruct the past. Students will learn to distinguish and use different types of historical evidence such as government documents, newspapers, correspondence, diaries, photographic and oral testimony.
Students become familiar with library reference works as well as archival sources.
In addition, they will learn to distinguish internal from external evidence and, in general terms, discover how historians go about their craft of researching and writing history. An independent research course designed to immerse students in an archive or other primary source collection. Students utilize this course as a first step toward the development of a research project for the Master's thesis. Typically, this course is offered in the Summer and is a prerequisite to the thesis course. A seminar in which students learn to develop a proposal for a research project or thesis.