Honors Program

(eleven courses, 44 units)
[HIST major plus HIST 492, “Honors Thesis” (4 units)]

Selecting the Honors Track:

We encourage students with the requisite qualifications to begin thinking about the honors program as early as their fourth or fifth semesters. This will enable them to plan their upper division coursework and develop their concentrations through their 400-level seminars. Ideally, one’s concentration will relate to the choice of thesis topic, and it is imperative that some 400-level seminar work is completed prior to enrolling in HIST 492, the honors seminar.

Prerequisites:

Candidates for the honors program are expected to:

• maintain a GPA of 3.5 minimum in all USC history coursework (a USC honors requirement)
• earn a grade of B+ or better in HIST 300
• have completed at least one 400-level seminar in their area of concentration
• be nominated by faculty from whom they have taken coursework

Administration:

Application forms can be obtained in the History Office, SOS 153. After completing the form, return it to the Honors Advisor, Brett Sheehan, SOS 153 (mailbox) or to Ms. La Verne Hughes, the undergraduate secretary in SOS 153. The Honors Advisor, a faculty member in charge of honors on the Undergraduate Studies Committee, will supervise the selection process and track students in the program from the point that they express interest through completion. In addition, each student will have a faculty member as thesis director.

The Coursework:

An honors student would begin developing his/her thesis project in an approved 400-level seminar taken with a faculty member who has agreed to direct the work. It is incumbent on both the faculty member and student to establish a track that will not only fulfill the requirements of the seminar and lay all of the necessary methodological and historiographical groundwork for the thesis, but also to allow the student to produce a first draft of a significant piece of the thesis. If an appropriate 400-level seminar is not available, the student may arrange to take a HIST 490 (“Directed Research”) honors tutorial with his/her thesis director to meet these ends.

During the spring semester of the senior year, the student will complete HIST 492, Honors Thesis seminar, with other honors students. This seminar will be devoted entirely to the last stages of research, the writing, and the discussion/critique of each part of the student’s thesis as the work evolves, to meet once a week for three hours.

Honors Thesis:

The completion of an honors thesis is the core focus and requirement of this program.
We envisage a thesis that may focus in research in original sources or in extensive analysis of a methodological problem or a historiographical development. Thesis directors and the HIST 492 instructor will keep honors students on tight schedule in terms of producing partial and full drafts. The final draft must be ready by mid-April to allow time for consideration by readers—the student’ director, the HIST 492 instructor, and an outside reader from the History Department or an area institution.