• Cert Degree Requirements
• Curriculum

The Joint Graduate Program in Comparative and Historical Social Science (CHSS) is an interdisciplinary initiative co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science and the Department of Sociology. The program supports graduate training among students interested in comparative and historical research by providing: a) a common coursework structure integrated with students’ departmental curricula, b) resources for student research, including travel abroad, c) interdisciplinary venues to present work in progress and to receive feedback from faculty and fellow students, and d) opportunities for collaborative research. The program features a core group of faculty internationally renowned for comparative and historical research.

Comparative and historical social science adopts a distinctive set of methodological and theoretical tools for studying the political and social world. These include the following:

• Temporally-oriented analysis in which researchers study historical sequences and examine the unfolding of processes over time. The “historical” component of CHSS is not defined by the study of past events; rather, it refers to the use of historical approaches to time and sequence to interpret and explain events in the world.
• Theoretically-grounded analysis in which researchers formulate and assess concepts, hypotheses, and interpretations in light of fine-grained evidence from cases. In CHSS, theory development is typically carried out in close relation to particular empirical problems.
• Comparative analysis in which researchers systematically juxtapose multiple features of cases to identify the key similarities and differences relevant to their research goals. Close comparison is essential to many of the specific methods of descriptive and causal analysis pursued in the field.
• Case-oriented analysis in which researchers develop expertise in one or more countries, areas, or regions in order to solve particular theoretical or empirical problems. Such expertise may be achieved through archival research, in-depth historical reading, and/or field and ethnographic research.

Both the political science and sociology departments offer some classes relevant to these kinds of research, and together they are able to give students essential training in theory, methods, and substantive knowledge in a way unusual for U.S. universities, even those with nationally recognized programs in CHSS. As such, the Certificate Program enables Northwestern University and two of its leading departments to offer a superior graduate program in a genuinely interdisciplinary field.

Admissions
Students apply directly to their chosen department, and they are admitted to their chosen department based on the general procedures used by that department. They then are invited to apply to the Certificate Program. In the personal statement of the application, CHSS students may indicate their interest in the program though this is not required. Students may also apply to the Certificate Program at later points, provided they can still complete all of the requirements of the program. Unless exceptional circumstances apply, we do not envision admitting students to the program after the start of their second year. Students will be admitted on a rolling basis. Should fellows choose to leave the CHSS program, they continue to be students in the department to which they were admitted, provided of course they remain in good standing. The committee of core CHSS faculty will meet to decide upon all admissions to the Certificate Program.

Advising
All CHSS fellows are assigned two advisors: one from their department upon admission and another CHSS advisor from outside their department (also appointed shortly after admission into the program). Students will construct their program in consultation with both advisors. Students include an external faculty member from CHSS as an advisor for the required second year paper and the dissertation committee (different external advisors may be used for the second year paper and the dissertation).

Resources for Students

• Current Resources: Travel and Fellowships. Admitted students typically receive as a baseline the standard multi-year package offered to all Ph.D. students in political science and sociology. In addition, applicants may also be considered for competitive awards to attend interdisciplinary and international meetings, including the Consortium on Qualitative Research Methods held each January at the Arizona State University, the annual student retreat of the Comparative Research Association, and the annual conference of the ISA Research Committee 19 (on poverty, social policy and social policy). As CICS fellows students will receive priority funding to cover airfare for domestic or international travel for summer field research during their first two summers in the Ph.D. program.
• Future Resources: RAs and Third Year Seminar. In the future, we hope to expand the program to offer funds to support graduate and undergraduate research assistants. In addition, we will seek funds to support a third year seminar co-taught by faculty from political science and sociology. This third year seminar would focus on dissertation proposal preparation and complement existing offerings in the departments.

Relationship to the Center for Comparative and Historical Analysis
The Certificate Program is affiliated with the Center for Comparative and Historical Analysis (CCHA), which was developed in 2002 to bring together scholars in the social sciences and history to discuss analytical and substantive questions arising from comparative-historical research, and is currently supported by Sociology, Political Science, CICS and WCAS. The group is methodologically pluralist, but united in a concern for causal analysis, an emphasis on processes over time, and the use of systematic and contextualized comparison. The community that has formed around these issues has resulted in a rich forum for new ideas and debates, as well as providing important intellectual and methodological training for graduate students, who have extensive opportunities to plan and to participate in events and to meet with the scholars invited to our events.

The CCHA promotes its goals by sponsoring workshops, conferences and panels involving Northwestern faculty and graduate students and invited guests from other universities. In particular, the CCHSS has provided fora for examining new ways to understand relations of power and politics across a range of issues, including social policy, markets and economic growth, and the political construction of race and gender as social categories. Past conferences have included “Prospects for Women’s Equality in a Changing Global Economy,” “How Many Varieties of Capitalism?,” and “Retheorizing Welfare States: Restructuring States, Restructuring Analysis.” We have welcomed many leading comparativists and historically-inclined social scientists to our workshop, including John Padgett (Political Science, Chicago); Margaret Somers (Sociology, Michigan); David Soskice (Political Science, Duke and Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung, Berlin); Richard Lachmann (Sociology, SUNY-Albany); John Campbell (Sociology, Dartmouth and Political Economy, Copenhagen Business School); and Mounira Charrad (Sociology, Texas).