Master of Arts in History (Ethnohistory and Local History)

The MA History program seeks to advance the History discipline in the College of Social Sciences through graduate-level instruction and curriculum innovation. The MA History program equips the students with theoretical and methodological foundations in the discipline of history and provides them with relevant exposure and training on ethnohistory and local history. Barber and Berdan (1998) define ethnohistory as “an interdisciplinary field that studies past human behavior and is characterized by a primary reliance on documents, the use of input from other sources when available, a methodology that incorporates historiography and cultural relativism, and a focus on cultural interaction.” The crux of ethnohistory as a field of study is change in a culture – its nature and causes. On the other hand Local History is a field of study with focus on a defined spatial unit, e.g., region, province, town, or locality.