Programs

We offer both the Master of Arts and the Doctor of Philosophy degrees.

There are two paths to the M.A.: On-campus and online. Students who enroll in the online M.A. program must meet substantially the same requirements as other M.A. students. Online M.A. students will take all of their course work online. We offer fewer courses online than on campus. On-campus M.A. students may supplement in-class courses with online courses.

Thesis option for the M.A.: We strongly urge students planning to pursue the Ph.D. later in their careers to choose the thesis option. Normally the thesis option is not possible for online M.A. students; however, an online M.A. student may write a thesis if the student can demonstrate sufficient access to necessary primary and secondary materials and can convince a professor to agree to serve as thesis advisor.

We offer Ph.D. dissertation fields in United States before 1877, United States after 1877, African American History, Ancient World (Ancient Egyptian History only), Global History, Women and Gender History, and Modern Europe, with minor fields in (in addition to the above) Medieval-Renaissance Europe, Early Modern Europe, Latin America, Africa, China and Japan, Russia, and the Near East. We do not offer an online Ph.D.

Egyptology is a concentration area within both the M.A. and Ph.D. programs, requires the permission of Egyptology professors to enter, and has requirements over and above the general requirements for the two degrees. This concentration is not available to online M.A. students.

There are special programs that do not themselves convey degrees. Graduate history students may participate in the interdisciplinary certificate program in Museum Studies or in an Egyptology program in cooperation with the Department of Art History (between the two departments there are six Egyptologists at The University of Memphis; only one other institution in the United States — the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago — has as many).