United States: Introduction
American History has been one of the central fields within Chicago's graduate History program ever since Hermann von Holst, author of one of the earliest scholarly histories of American slavery, was recruited from Germany to establish a History Department for the new university in 1892. His broad cosmopolitanism, interdisciplinarity, and commitment to engaged, field-defining research remain hallmarks of our American history program today.
The Department's nine current Americanists range widely in research and teaching interests, spanning time periods from the 18th through the late 20th century and encompassing approaches ranging from cultural and intellectual to political, legal, and social history. Faculty and student interests have converged in recent years on a number of particular themes, such as gender and sexuality, race, immigration, and ethnicity, African American history, urban life, the culture of the market, law and the American state, and western and rural development. But our seminars and colloquia, faculty research, and student dissertation projects are gauges of the wide-ranging inquiry supported by our program.