About GHS
The Graduate History Society, an official University of Iowa student organization, represents all graduate students in the history department. It provides students with professional development activities, a supportive community, and a voice in departmental and university governance.
GHS Activities
- Faculty meeting representatives
- GHS sends two reps, one studying U.S. history and one a non-U.S. field, to monthly faculty meetings. The reps send a report on each meeting to members by e-mail.
- Graduate Student Senate representatives
- Currently the GHS has three senators (the number is based on department enrollment), one from a U.S. field, one from a non-U.S. one, and one at-large.
- Representatives to faculty search committees
- All hiring search committees include one graduate student.
- GHS Colloquium
- Each semester the GHS holds a number of workshops; recent ones have included “Preparing for Comps to Writing the Prospectus,” “Grants and Fellowships: Finding Funding for Research,” and “Advanced Discussion Leading for Teachers.”
- Student Forum
- The Forum provides students an opportunity to present their current research and get feedback from fellow grad students. Forums have featured practice conference papers or job-talks, dissertation chapters, and truncated versions of master’s theses. In most cases copies of the paper are available ahead of time so the audience comes prepared with questions and comments.
- Lecture series
- Once a year, usually during spring semester, the GHS brings a prominent historian to campus to give a presentation and meet with graduate students.
- Meetings
- The GHS holds about four meetings a year to conduct business and discuss issues of concern to members.
- Directory
- Each fall the GHS secretary-treasurer produces and distributes a graduate student directory.
- Picnics
- Early in the fall and late in the spring GHS members get together to barbecue burgers, brats, and veggie-burgers and fiercely compete in high-stakes softball and soccer games (we gave up touch football after several injuries to aging, decrepit, four-eyed historians).
- GHS t-shirts, sweatshirts, and mugs
- Cool stuff is available during our annual fall fund-raising sale.
- E-mail lists
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GHS maintains two lists, GHS Official and GHS Discussion. You may subscribe to either or both. GHS Official (as the name suggests) is used for official messages from the department, like notification of available grants and fellowships or various deadlines, and from GHS, like announcements of meetings, elections, and events. In addition to student subscribers, messages posted on GHS Official are sent to the department chair and the director of graduate studies.
GHS Discussion is a less formal venue where subscribers may post random thoughts, carry on philosophical discussions, forward items of general interest, complain, and so forth. Only students receive these postings. To sign up for either or both, contact owner-ghs-official@list.uiowa.edu