Welcome from the Department of History Chair

As the Chair of the Department of History, I am pleased to be able to welcome you to our web pages. I hope that will prove informative about the many possibilities offered by our department.

The Department takes pride in our teacher-scholars who combine outstanding instruction in the classroom with cutting-edge research. As a group, they bring their passion for history into the classroom, engaging students in the excitement of historical analysis and research. Our thirty-two faculty members cover the globe through their geographical specialties and span the centuries in their historical interests. In fact, along with nationally recognized and prize-winning American and European historians, we have more specialists in the non-western world than any department on campus. Due to our broad range of interests, the Department is associated with many of the outstanding interdisciplinary programs on campus including Women's Studies, East Asian Studies, African Studies, Latin American Studies, Continental European Studies, Black American Studies, Jewish Studies, and International Relations.

The Department currently has about 450 undergraduate majors and 220 undergraduate minors. Our students can choose to be generalists in history or concentrate in a specific area such as Global History, European History or American History. Others elect to follow combined majors in History/Foreign Languages or History/Classics. We also offer a highly acclaimed History Education program that trains future middle and school teachers and has been selected by national accrediting agencies as a model for Universities throughout the country.

The History Graduate Program is one of the largest in the College of Arts and Sciences. About 85 graduate students are currently pursuing either the M.A. or the Ph.D. in history. In addition to nationally recognized strengths in American and European history, the Department hosts the distinguished UD-Hagley Graduate Program in the history of technology and industrialization and the American Civilization Program which is an important locus for material culture studies.

So, whether you have a specific vocational goal, or wish to gain skills in writing, research and analytical thinking that will provide the foundation for careers in many fields, we are sure that you will discover that the Department of History is a wonderful place both to explore the past and to shape your future.

John Hurt
Chair