Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative History

The PhD in Comparative History offers doctoral education matching the highest international standards for prospective scholars and teachers. A particular - indeed unique - feature of the program is that it focuses on the comparison, interconnectedness, and entanglements of distinct geo-cultural regions: Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Mediterranean, in close relation to the history of other historical regions, most notably with Western Europe and the Middle East.

Comparative history is often preached and seldom practised in advanced historical studies. When it finds its way onto the agenda of PhD programs, the emphasis falls mainly on distinctive regional-national fields with no connecting tissue. This PhD program seeks to root the comparative dimension in the historical experience of the four distinct geo-cultural regions of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Mediterranean area. We acknowledge that these regions are themselves constructions representing symbolic as well as physical and human geographies. But we endeavour to find the loci of these representations in both intra-regional and extra-regional perceptions. We seek to avoid the dual methodological trap of seeing the region only from the outside as something "other" than the higher cultural level and material development of the West or only from the inside as a unique and therefore incomparable expression of indigenous factors. In this way, the comparative program will come to grips with one of the abiding intellectual and methodological problems of writing the history of these regions: namely, the tension between "Westerners" or externals and nativists or internals, between the conflicting metaphors of orientalism and nationalism.

A comparative study of the four regions poses several methodological problems for historians. The political domination of the region by multi-cultural empires employing hegemonic languages (German, Russian and Ottoman Turkish) facilitates cross-cultural comparisons, particularly of institutional structures and treatments of subaltern ethnic groups. The rise of nation-states, first in southeastern Europe in the nineteenth century, then in Central Europe in the twentieth century and finally in Eastern Europe after 1991 increases the complexity of the comparisons. Currently, comparative perspectives for the modern period offered in the department focus on theories of fascism and communism, methodological approaches adapted from modernization and development theories, and cross-disciplinary approaches from anthropology and sociology that allow for innovative approaches to the problems and legacies of the communist era in the region.

In sum, the goals of the program are to build upon a unique approach to comparative history, multidisciplinary methods, an ideal geographical location, a highly diverse student body, an international faculty, and up-to-date facilities and resources to provide new ways of investigating the historical problems of these key regions in world history. The research being undertaken by our current PhD students and the successful dissertations already defended give the best idea of what is possible in the CEU History doctoral program.

Program Accreditation/Registration

• The program was approved and registered by the New York State Education Department.
• Program accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation Austria (AQ-Austria)