Professors Freidrich Katz and John Coatsworth are known for their part in establishing a “Chicago school” of Latin American history Read More
Katzworth Years Conference Celebrates the Legacy of Two Eminent Professors of Mexican History
Fifth-year PhD student's research on agriculture in the British Empire will take her to Britain, Australia, and South Africa during 2013-2014 Read More
Capps Wins SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship
Professors Ken Pomeranz and Jan Goldstein serving back-to-back terms as leader of the primary professional organization for historians Read More
UC History Department Home to Two Consecutive AHA Presidents
Graduate student conference highlighted emerging research on a transformative decade Read More
Refiguring the 1970s: New Narratives in U.S. and International History
The University of Chicago won more Fulbright-Hays grants than any other university in this year's competition Read More
Five History Graduate Students Win Fulbright-Hays DDRA
Welcome to the Department of History!
We are a community of scholars engaged in cutting-edge historical research. Our expertise spans many centuries and continents: from Africa to Asia, Europe, and the Americas; from Ancient Greece and Rome to Byzantium to modern nation-states around the globe. We bring different approaches, methodologies, and analytical paradigms to these various places and eras, but we share a firm belief that rigorous historical analysis can give us a better understanding of our place in time.
As a foundational discipline in the humanities and social sciences, history offers a testing ground for assumptions and propositions about human actions, beliefs, and ideas. To study history offers a means both to explore our shared humanity and to learn about the particularities of the human experience.
We invite you to peruse our website and learn more about our department: the subject matters that we study, the students with whom we work, the courses that we teach, and the engaging intellectual community that we have built and share here at the University of Chicago.
Latest News and Announcements
Nirenberg in the Chronicle of Higher Education
In its January edition, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an essay Professor David Nirenberg (Medieval History and Social Thought) entitled "Anti-Judaism as a Critical Theory." The essay, in which Nirenberg discusses modes of approaching the history of ideas about Judaism, can be read in full on the Chronicle's website.
Weicksel Accepted to NEH Summer Institute
Graduate student Sarah Weicksel (US History) was recently accepted to this year's National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute "American Material Culture: Nineteenth Century New York", which will take place in New York City at the Bard College Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. NEH Institutes select up to two graduate student per year and last for for weeks. To learn more about the NEH's summer programs visit http://www.neh.gov/divisions/education/summer-programs.
Miller-Davenport on JAH Podcast
Graduate Student Sarah Miller-Davenport was recently interviewed by Ed Linenthal the Journal of American History podcast about her article “Their blood shall not be shed in vain”: American Evangelical Missionaries and the Search for God and Country in Post–World War II Asia. The article was published in the March 2013 issue of the JAH. Listen to the podcast here.
AHA Interview with Alum Douglas Kanter
As part of their "Member Spotlight" series, the AHA recently published a short interview with department alum Douglas Kanter, now an associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. Kanter received his PhD in 2006, specializing in modern British and Irish history. To read the interview, published January 23rd, visit the AHA blog at http://blog.historians.org/.
Kenneth Pomeranz in the Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an interview with 2013 AHA President and new faculty member Kenneth Pomeranz (East Asia). In the article, Pomeranz explains the directions in which he would like to see the AHA go in the near future. For one thing, he notes his desire to see historians more frequently enter the the public conversation on important issues.
Jan Goldstein Elected 2014 AHA President
In a November vote, Jan Goldstein (Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History) was elected president of the American Historical Association for 2014. She will serve a one year term, succeeding fellow faculty member Kenneth Pomeranz. Goldstein has been involved in the AHA since the 1970s, while she was a graduate student at Columbia University. She has previously served on the association's nominating committee, which suggests candidates for AHA offices, as well as on two book prize committees.
Five History Graduate Students Win Fulbright-Hays DDRA
This year, five graduate students in the Department of History won the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship, a grant provided by the U.S. Department of Education to fund up to one year of dissertation research in a non-Western country. The University of Chicago won more Fulbright-Hays grants than any other university in this year's competition by a wide margin, with half of those going to students in the history department. The grant-winning students and their dissertation topics are:
Fitzpatrick Receives AHA Award for Scholarly Distiction
Sheila Fitzpatrick has been selected to receive the AHA Award for Scholarly Distinction at the 127th Annual meeting in New Orleans this coming January. The Council created this award back in 1984 with the intent that it should become one of the highest honors that a historian in the United States can receive.
Zahra Awarded AHA's 2012 Beer Prize
The AHA has awarded Tara Zahra the 2012 Beer Book Prize. The George Louis Beer Prize is offered in recognition of outstanding historical writing on any phase of European international history since 1895. Awarded annually since its inception in 1923, this prize was established in accordance with the terms of a bequest by George Louis Beer (1872 - 1920), a historian of the British colonial system before 1765.
Zahra Wins Radomir Luza Book Prize
The American Friends of the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance has named Tara Zahra's book The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe´s Families after World War II as co-winner of this year´s Radomir Luza prize. The official announcement will be made during the Austrian Cultural Forum reception of the German Studies Association Conference on Saturday, October 6, 2012. Professor Zahra is the first winner of the newly created annual prize.
Fitzpatrick Wins Award for Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Professor Emerita Sheila Fitzpatrick has received the 2012 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. The award honors senior scholars who have played a significant role in advancing the field through scholarship, training, and service to the profession. The presentation of the award will take place on November 17th during the ASEEES annual convention in New Orleans.
Jim and Jap Crow: A Cultural History of 1940s Interracial America
BookTV (CSPAN2) recently recorded and aired a conversation between Princeton scholar Cornel West and the Department's Matthew M. Briones regarding Matt's newly released book, Jim and Jap Crow: A Cultural History of 1940s Interracial America (Princeton UP, 2012). The event took place at the historic Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem in May 2012.
William Koren, Jr. Prize
Thomas Dodman (Ph.D. Summer 2011) has been awarded the William Koren, Jr. prize for best article by the Society for French Historical Studies for his article “Un pays pour la colonie: Mourir de nostalgie en Algérie française, 1830-1880,” published in Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales no. 3 (Sept. 2011): 743-84. The Koren Prize is is awarded to the outstanding journal article published on any era of French history by a North American scholar in an American, European, or Canadian journal during 2008.
Pitting Child Safety Against the Family Farm, New York Times Op-Ed
"Pitting Child Safety Against the Family Farm" a New York Times Op-Ed published May 7, 2012 was written by Marjorie Elizabeth Wood (Ph.D. Summer 2012). It draws heavily from her dissertation, "Emancipating the Child Laborer: Children, Freedom, and the Moral Boundaries of the Market in the United States, 1853 - 1938." Her committee was: Thomas C. Holt (chair), Julie Saville, Tara Zahra, and Catherine Brekus.
Uncommon Episodes
Click on a date to learn more about the unexpected insights the scholarly analysis of the past can provide
1572 |
St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre |
1914 |
Soldadera during the Mexican Revolution |
1915 |
Greek and Armenian orphans play in the sea near Marathon, Greece |
1940 |
Homesteader with his wife and youngest child during the Great Depression |
c.1960 |
Tokyo children watching a performance of “picture drama” (kamishibai) |
1961 |
A UN delegation from Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) listening to an address by Léopold Senghor, president of Senegal |
1982 |
Youth activists protest a military parade in West Berlin, Germany |