Programmes
The Department of History offers courses leading to M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees in History. It also offers 10 courses in History for the first three years of IMA (5-year Integrated Masters) programme in the Social Sciences, facilitating students interested in pursuing their Masters in History. All the courses of the undergraduate and graduate programmes are designed to meet the demands of the contemporary emphasis on Outcome Based Education (OBE). Its teaching programmes are geared to equip students with reasoning powers, analytical skills, good articulation and enhanced abilities of communication. Students can locate themselves and their disciplinary orientation within larger global concerns, as there are courses on the histories of science and technology, on the environment, on marginalized castes and underprivileged ethnic communities (tribes), on gender and women’s studies, law, popular culture, and contemporary history, along with the standardized courses on the histories of State formations, of Institutions, of communities and sects social structures and social change, cultural worlds of ideas and mentalities, colonialism and imperialism, economic histories and trade routes, maritime histories, histories of agricultural communities and peasant movements, the history of India’s Freedom Struggle and of communalism.
There are separate courses on people’s collective dissent against state power – revolutionary Europe and Russian Revolution are given pride of place because of their global reach (including their impact on the Indian political imagination) in the realm of the spread of ideas and universal values of freedom, equality, political entitlements, thus superseding culture-specific socio-political hierarchies that have traditionally enforced structural inequalities. The Department has also been active in retrieving data on North- Eastern India, through its research programmes, and supervision of a substantive community of students from all the north-eastern states.
MA (History)
The M.A. course is a two year programme consisting of 16 courses spread over four semesters, with four courses per semester. The main thrust of the first two semesters is to equip students in certain core compulsory courses in both Indian and non-Indian history. These are designed to be comprehensive and to introduce students into the various interpretative dimensions of understanding the history of human civilization with a focus on India. During semesters III and IV a wide range of special courses as optional are offered and thus providing an opportunity for students to specialize in specific areas of Indian history. Students also have an opportunity to do at least two courses outside the Department during their third and fourth semesters with the aim to encourage inter-disciplinary studies. The Students securing an overall CGPA of 7.5 in the first two semester would be allowed to do a dissertation of 12000 words in IV semester. Dissertation is purely optional and will be in lieu of a standard 4 credit course.
Ph.D (History)
This research programme is a four year long programme, extendable to one more year. Those students admitted directly without M.Phil degree from the Department of History, University of Hyderabad, are required to do the course work and pass the examinations in the first two semesters in order to continue their Ph.D. Students undertake research on an approved topic under the guidance of a faculty member. The research progress of the students are closely monitored by the Doctoral Research Committee (DRC) and the students are promoted to next semester on securing a satisfactory report from the DRC every time. They will be required to present and defend their research proposal by end of third semester in a colloquium organised by the Department. Students are also encouraged to make work-in-presentation in the department at least once during their study. Apart from these they are required to defend their theses in a pre-submission seminar and in the post-submission viva-voce examination.