General Timeline of the History Honors Thesis Program

You should begin thinking about and planning your thesis as soon as possible, but certainly during your Junior year. Before you apply to the History Honors program you must find a faculty member who approves your proposed topic and agrees to work with you to develop it and to advise your project throughout your Senior year. Typically you will already have taken courses with this professor and are proposing a topic within that professor's field of specialization.

By the spring term of your Junior year you should have a general idea about your thesis topic and you should have arranged to work with a faculty advisor. You may begin researching and refining your topic during the summer. If you need funding for summer or fall research, you should also begin to examine funding options with Undergraduate Research (UGAR), the Rockefeller Center, and the Leslie Center during the spring and/or summer. Typically you will return to campus in the fall term with a much clearer understanding of the subject of your research, the questions your research will answer and what these answers are likely to be. Your first task in the Fall will be to finalize a much more detailed research proposal for your project, including a full bibliography of primary and secondary sources and specific research questions.

You will enroll in HIST 98: Honors Seminar with the permission of the instructor. HIST 98 meets at least once a week and counts for one course credit toward the degree requirement. Please note that History 98 can count as one of the two seminars required for the History major, but it may not do so alongside HIST 96.34 (FSP research in London) – you must do at least one regular HIST 96 seminar taught on campus for the History major. The focus of the seminar is historiographic and methodological; it emphasizes the skills you need to research and write a thesis in history. You will also complete the bulk of your research for your thesis and begin its organization. HIST 98 will hone your research skills and introduce you to History's reference librarian, Wendel Cox, an important source of information.

It is important to begin writing as soon as possible. Typically as part of the requirements of HIST 98 you will write a draft of at least one chapter of the thesis and also a historiographic essay that will form part of your eventual introduction. You will also meet regularly with your thesis advisor who may request a draft of another chapter or chapters. An Honors Thesis always requires rewriting and careful editing and this process always takes longer than one expects. Getting an early start prevents you from running out of time and producing a hastily written thesis that does not do justice to its subject or your abilities.

A special event connected to the Honors Program is the annual Allabough lecture. Each fall a distinguished historian visits Dartmouth to give a major public lecture. Afterwards, the speaker meets over dinner with the History Honors students to discuss historical research and writing. Past Allabough lecturers include: Professors Daniel T. Rodgers (Princeton University), "Age of Fracture: Social Ideas and Arguments at the End of the 20th Century"; Leonard Smith (Oberlin College), "Paris 1919: Rethinking Sovereignty at the Peace Conference"; Sir John Elliott (Oxford), "Contrasting Empires: Britain and Spain in America"; Benjamin Elman (Princeton), "Culture and Science in an East Asian Context, 1650-1800"; Martha Howell (Columbia), "The Dangers of Dress: The Clothing Laws of Western Europe, ca. 1300-1700"; Maya Jasanoff (Harvard), "Globalization at Sea: Writing History with Joseph Conrad"; and Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU), "The Long War of Italian Prisoners of War, 1940-1950: What We Learn from Studying Defeat," among others.

Continuation in the Honors Program after the fall term will depend on you obtaining a grade of at least B+ in History 98. In addition, your thesis advisor must be satisfied with your progress and recommend your continued participation. At the end of the fall term, you and your advisor will decide whether to continue with the thesis.

You will enroll in HIST 99.01, Honors Thesis, with the permission of the Honors Director. HIST 99.01 is the first course in a two-term sequence (HIST 99.01 and HIST 99.02) and carries one course credit toward the degree requirement, but it does not count toward the ten courses required for the major. In the past, History theses have ranged between 70 and 200 pages in length. Your thesis should present an original argument based upon your research in primary sources.

During this term you will meet regularly with your thesis advisor, complete your research and surge forward with drafting your thesis. You and your advisor will establish a schedule for when chapter drafts will be due. At the end of the winter term, you and your advisor will once again decide whether to continue with the thesis. If you do not continue, HIST 99.01 will be converted into HIST 97, Independent Study, and your advisor will grade you on your work for the term. If you continue your thesis work, typically you will receive a grade of "ON" for the winter term. After you complete your thesis in the spring, your advisor will assign a letter grade for HIST 99.01 and HIST 99.02.

The push is on: this is the term that you must complete your thesis by enrolling in HIST 99.02, Honors Thesis, a course that carries one credit towards the degree but does not count towards the ten courses required for the major. We recommend that you arrive at the beginning of spring term with your entire thesis drafted so that you may use most of the term to incorporate your advisor's comments, fill any holes in your argument with additional research, and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.

In mid-April, you will present your thesis to an audience of History faculty, students and any guests that you invite. This is not a thesis defense but a public presentation followed by questions. It is not an adversarial proceeding but rather one that, at this point in your thesis project, requires that you step back from the details of your argument to assess and articulate its overall interest, importance and point. This is often helpful for revising the introduction and writing the conclusion. If you are considering writing an honors thesis in history, we encourage you to attend some of these presentations. They will help you to understand the extent of thesis work, but also the extraordinary intellectual enjoyment of undertaking a thesis project.

May will be consumed with final revisions and the finishing process known as preparing your manuscript. This involves checking references, careful proofreading, assembling illustrations, tables, graphs or other non-text material, creating the bibliography, etc. We direct you to the Chicago Manual of Style or, for a more user-friendly version, to Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations, 9th edition (University of Chicago Press). And finally, this month involves having your thesis copied and bound.