History programs with researchers/journals pertaining to the Ancient Celts

College Search & Lists
1

Hi all, newcomer to the forum here.

I’m looking for some colleges that have a noticeable amount of resources pertaining to the Ancient Celts up till the end of the BC era.

I want to be a history teacher teaching a survey course from the Neolithic to 1600 or so in elementary, high school, or the undergraduate level, in Vermont.

I’ve decided that since I want to do my part to improve history education in this country, I should choose an alternative private school like a Waldorf school or some other similar institution to teach at. This would allow me to make the curriculum complex and engaging and allow me to fill in the gaps in history education.

One of the civilizations I’d like to include in detail in my lessons is the Celts, and also since they’re my favorite civilization, I’d like some ideas on colleges that have access to great resources, professors, journals, courses, etc., that deal with the Ancient Celts. Who knows, if I take the undergraduate professor path I might end up doing some research on them as well as teaching.

From what I’ve seen so far of them, though, I’m not entirely convinced “Celtic studies” programs are what I’m looking for. A lot of them involve a ton of courses on the modern Celtic nations, cultural immersion programs in Celtic-speaking areas of Wales and Ireland, etc. Anyone knowledgeable about these programs is welcome to harshly correct me, of course, but it seems that plain old history programs that have a good deal of emphasis on the archeology of antiquity would be a better fit.

I don’t want to solely get a degree in the Celts though, just to study them a lot more than other people getting degrees in the Pre-Modern Old World would.

But here’s the difficult part: I think that I’ll be far more motivated in online courses, since I’ve failed out of the community college I was in due to social anxiety, not being able to discuss things with the professors, go to office hours, etc. So any places I apply to would have to have the full degree entirely or mostly online, which I’m realizing is quite rare.

I’m in America, so I suppose I’m mostly looking for American schools, but since research on the Celts is so concentrated in Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, etc. if there are any schools in other countries that fit my bill better than any American school, you can include those as well. The courses have to be in English though.

Thanks to all who read this huge wall of text, have a nice day (:

2

" I’ve failed out of the community college I was in due to social anxiety, not being able to discuss things with the professors, go to office hours, etc. So any places I apply to would have to have the full degree entirely or mostly online, which I’m realizing is quite rare."

There are two big problems here:

  1. Failing out of your previous CC. How many credits have you attempted, and how many have you failed? That will determine whether or not you have any chance of being admitted to any place other than an open-admission community college or 4-year institution.

  2. Your social anxiety. If your social anxiety issue is not under control so that you are able to attend classes and communicate with professors during office hours, how do you plan to get through a teacher certification program and how do you expect to be able to deal with a classroom of students of your own, with your fellow teachers, the school administration, and the parents? What efforts are you currently taking to get this under control?

Two long-standing distance ed programs that might have something that could work for you at least to get your gen eds out of the way:
http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/
http://umuc.edu/

You also should check your own CC, other CCs in the state where you live, and the various public universities in that state. They may have courses that could work for you.

3

I think you may want to reconsider your career goals. I don’t think many elementary schools or even high schools have courses on the Neolithic to 1600. If a high school does have such a course it would probably just be a semester elective. They aren’t going to hire a history teacher to just teach that. For elementary school you would have to teach all subjects since teachers generally don’t specialize by subject at the level. For middle or high school you could be a history teacher but your responsibilities would most likely include American history and world history as those are part of the general curriculum that is covered. I understand that you may want to change the way history is taught but school systems have budgets and can’t hire someone who doesn’t want to teach the basics. There may be an alternative school like you describe, but even they would expect you to teach a full course load, not just the one type of course that you are most interested in.

4

If you teach at a Montessori school, chances are you would have kids interested in it. Teaching only this? Not even i teaching grad students. Become a librarian ( like me) and you’ll get to help kids research this at some point.

5

I’m pretty sure 6th grade history, as well as either 9th or 10th grade at my school in NY fell into that category of focusing on mostly pre-industrial Old World stuff. I could be remembering things wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it was, and looking at the curriculum page for NY bears it out. I Obviously, I would have to touch on US stuff in getting the degree, unless I went for something more specific than just “history”, like “Ancient and Medieval History”, or something like that.

But as far as I can tell the curriculum from 4th to 12th grade went like this: NY history, then US history, then Eastern Hemisphere to the Rennaisance, then early US history in 7th grade, then the rest of US history, then Eastern Hemisphere to the Rennaisance again, probably with some Native American stuff thrown in, then the rest of Global History, then more US history, and finally 12th grade was Government and Economics.

But regardless, I should just focus on finding on a college with a lot of Ancient Celts resources, before I worry about finding a school who’s curriculum I can adapt my interests to.

6

Maybe look for a smaller college that has a professor that specializes in that area

7

There are very few colleges in the US with any resources devoted to Ancient Celts. The overwhelming majority of the schools are in the UK. However there are some professors who have focused on them in the US although I don’t know of any US school which you would be competitive for, which has even two faculty researching the Celts.

As of now, Luther College has [Philip Freeman](http://www.luther.edu/freeph01/) who is set to publish on Celtic mythology. Bryan Carella of Assumption College also specialized in the field and still publishes relevant and semi-relevant papers. You may wish to check the table of contents of the various [Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium](Temporarily Unavailable | Harvard University Press) to find out which universities the authors are affiliated with. Then there is the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee which does host people who study pre 1600s Celtic culture although I know you said you looked into such institutes.

What exposure do you have to Celtic studies? Have you read papers or academic books about them?

8

I’ll definitely put the University of Wisconsin system on my list, that keeps cropping up in my research. The Harvard Colloquium also has a lot of people at public universities that are within reach, but I’m not sure if I’d want to go to a certain school just for that one professor who’s published a couple of Celtic articles. Penn State looks interesting, what with their wide variety of courses on various things.

And yeah, I’ve read plenty of academic books and papers on the Celts, Barry Cunliffe comes to mind right now, as well as papers on the current controversy over whether the Celts invaded Ireland, and papers on the Gaulish language.

What are some British or other European schools that have online degrees that I could look into?

9

British universities don’t tend to offer online undergraduate degrees.

There are various Celtic studies/Civilisation degrees around, but you would need to do them in-person. What are your finances like? You would almost certainly have to pay full international fees.

One possibility: Glasgow: http://www.gla.ac.uk/undergraduate/degrees/celticstudies/

In Ireland you could look at University College Dublin:

https://myucd.ucd.ie/course.do?courseID=119

Barry Cunliffe was an archaeologist, so you might think of looking at archaeology courses as well, but it might be too broad for you.

10

This would be an appropriate concentration on the graduate level, although you might have a difficult time finding a professor position with it. However, at the undergrad level, it’s just far too specific. Undergraduate degrees (in all fields) are intended to build a foundation of breadth in a specific area, not depth. That’s why majors are in “history” or “sociology,” not “African history” or “sociology of education” and especially not “pre-modern Ancient Celtic history”. I strongly doubt that you will find any undergraduate history major that has a concentration that narrow. You may be able to find a department that has one professor (one) who has an interest in ancient Celtic history.

You would have to more than “touch” on American history to get a history degree and teach. History in the United States has a decided focus on American history for obvious reasons. In the tenth grade in my state I took world history, but “world history” usually means “world history as it relates to the shaping of the Western world and, ultimately, the U.S.” Thus you learn about ancient Greece and Rome, the Byzantine empire, medieval times, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Native American histories (both ones native to the U.S. and the Aztec and Inca empires native to South America). If you’re really lucky/have a great history teacher you MIGHT get some Middle Eastern history and/or some Chinese history in there, since those are other great civilizations that have an impact on the U.S., but not very much.

There will be little if any focus on ancient Celtic history. I also don’t know anywhere in the U.S. where you’d teach a survey course on the Neolithic era to 1600. Way, way way too broad. Also, potentially different fields. Most historians teach recorded history. Going back into antiquity is bordering on classics, which is a related but somewhat different area. Prehistory is usually covered by anthropologists.

If you wanted to teach college and graduate students, you’d have a lot more success - but “a lot” is relative. History is a very oversupplied field and competition is stiff. Specialists in ancient Celtic history are not in huge demand, and also that area is probably too narrow.

Either way, the best you could probably do is a place that has a center for Celtic studies, or a secondary major or something. The best places to do that seem to be Harvard, Berkeley, and UW-Madison. I can’t really find any comparable programs in the U.S. There’s also St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto; they have a Celtic studies program. St. Francis Xavier University in Canada has a Celtic studies major; they are the only university in North America that offers 4 years of Scottish Gaelic. They also offer coursework in Irish Gaelic and Welsh (not much Welsh, though).

Another alternative is to look at Irish studies programs that maybe have some emphasis or exploration of Celtic studies. Notre Dame, Boston College, NYU, Manhattanville College, and Villanova University. None of those places is likely to have an online option.

Another option might be to go to schools with classics majors that also have an emphasis on Celtic or Irish studies. They are more likely to have pre-modern foci. Harvard and Berkeley, again, emerge as places that have classics and Celtic studies.

A final option is to get your undergraduate major in history, and then get an MA in Celtic studies or Celtic history later.

11

Just as a one-off, you might be interested in this online course with Oxford Dept of Continuing Education, at first year undergrad level: https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/details.php?course_subject=Archaeology&id=V400-531&coursetype=100

12

Yeah, I want to get a regular History degree, not a Celtic studies degree. I just want to go to a place that has a good deal of resources regarding the ancient Celts so that I can take courses in that as part of my History degree, then once I get a job with my regular History degree, I can include more information on the Celts in the courses that I teach, than I otherwise would be able to do if I went to any old school that didn’t have a lot of resources on the Celts.

And also, if I go down the path of teaching at a college instead of younger kids, I’d probably be asked to contribute to research as well as teaching my survey course, so it would be useful to have a particular area of history that I know a lot about that I can contribute to the field with.

But the majority of my ideal job, either in a university or teaching younger kids, would be dedicated towards a survey course of ancient and medieval history,

So all of your recommendations for UW, Boston College, Villanova, St. Francis Xavier, etc., are appreciated,

13

I still don’t understand why people are saying there’s no place where there are Neolithic to 1600 courses, though. Like I said, 6th and 9th grade for me basically covered basically that period. There are also undergraduate Western Civilization 101 courses that cover that time period, of Europe and the Middle East (East Asia is generally another course though). Yes, I would have to learn the parts of history that I don’t plan to actually teach in order to get the degree, but that’s not what I’m concerned about, I’m fine with learning all sorts of different history as long as I end up teaching the parts that I’m interested in.

I just want to go to a place that has resources relating to the particular part of history that I’m interested in, so that getting my general History degree is more enjoyable for me, even though it’ll still be a generalized degree and not a Celtic Studies degree. Then, when I get the teaching job (probably at an alternative school, or a community college), I can spice up the lessons with more detailed information on stuff that I’m interested in, as a result of my being exposed to Celtic scholars.

14

Have you conquered your social anxiety issues? If not, I don’t see how you could handle the student teaching aspect of qualifying to teach high school, much less actually handling a teaching job, even if you were able to take all the necessary pre-requisites online (which I suspect is unlikely). As for teaching at the undergrad level, that would require a PhD, a level of academic achievement that can’t be acquired online or without extensive in-person contacts with professors. Your poor performance at community college will also limit what programs would accept you at this point. And even if you manage to achieve your goals, the likelihood that you can introduce your own areas of interest into a classroom is small, given the prescribed curriculum you’ll be required to teach in any school and the current emphasis on prep for standardized tests–there just isn’t enough time in the day for digression into areas of personal interest. At the end of the day, you may need to select a more realistic career path and save the interest in Celtic history as a hobby that you pursue on your own time–a perfectly reasonable alternative.