At the moment, I’m in the process of determining my PhD exam fields for a degree in world history. The “world” part is important: it means that my exams and my dissertation will have a global focus. One of the requirements is a world-history-focused field. For my world history field, I’ve chosen to do Atlantic World, since that seems most relevant to a study of the American navy.
I came up with my list based on this seminar website, as well as other books I’ve heard of, plus a few that my professor suggested. This semester I’ll be doing a directed reading of about 1/3 of the books on my list, and the rest will be for me to read before exam time.
I’ve often lamented that more graduate students don’t put their reading lists up for others to be inspired by. So it would be remiss of me not to put my own up. I’ve added it to the menu bar of this website, but here’s a link as well.