Which country/region should I focus on?

In terms of history which nation/region of the world should I focus my attention on in terms of historical study? Which one would best fit in with my current interests or would interest me more?

Edited by Kevin - 14-Mar-2009 at 21:02

What really interest you?? Where are the jobs?? I think if I had done the Native American program at EWU I would have had a better chance of getting a job working in history instead of teaching ESL/EFL. I like teaching though.

Edited by eaglecap - 14-Mar-2009 at 22:40

I think Parnell put it best.

Well, I agree it is your choice to make. That being said, here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

- Do you want to research or just teach? If it is research you are interested in, the choice is wide open (sort of), if it is teaching that attracts you the most, then I can only advise you to focus on the political contemporary history of your country.

- What skills do you have/aspire to acquire? Basically if you are not ready to learn German, Greek, Latin and several Egyptian languages, Ancient Egypt is not for you. Basically, the leaziest you feel the closer to home and the most recent you should opt for.

- What universities do you want to/can go to? Basically no point saying you want to study Chinese history if there is no specialist in your uni. I can only strongly recommend you to visit their faculty website and read some of the papers published by the professors there.

- Other than history, what interests you? Studies can be a bit wearing, if you can supplement your research with some real-life interest it would be excellent.

- Are you sure you want to stay in history all your life. Basically, if you focus on Ancient Rome material culture, it is unlikely that you'll find work elsewhere than in academia after graduation (forget about the edition business). Me for instance, I was lucky to understand it soon enough, now if I want I can teach statistics or work in almost any company or organization in the world since I'm specializing in financial history.

Now there is a piece of advice: avoid the hype, do not go for 'cultural studies' the whole feminist- afro-american-, latino-, whatever-else-studies. It will fade away, well it is fading away and you may find yourself with little work at the end. On the other hand I'd say whatever touches China, India and to a lesser extend SE Asia, the Arab world and S America is bound to become hot sooner or later. Well China is already all the rage (more professors of early modern Chinese history at the LSE than professors of early modern Europe).

One last thing (slightly in contradiction with the above) think "sources". You can't study history without sources, if it is not avaible in archives say within 1000 km and it is not possible for you to get a scholarship to go wherever these archives are, you should consider something else. Basically, pre-colonial Africa has little archives anyway so maybe not a good choice, Ottoman history is interesting but if you can't go to Istanbul, it is maybe better to study something else.

Good luck, may the great spirit be with you