Department of History

Department of History
Understanding history — the record of what people have thought, said, and done — is essential in understanding the world of today. Undergraduate and graduate students explore not only events of the past, but their meaning and implications for our own lives.
For undergraduates, the department focuses on the broad relevance of history to a variety of careers — given the discipline’s emphasis on research, writing, and critical thinking. All students complete an original research project, either through the required senior research seminar or the BA with Distinction. Our active chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, plans field trips and hosts graduate school and career workshops. Undergraduate majors have gone on to careers in law, politics, education, journalism, business, and medicine.
Our graduate program is characterized by close intellectual and working relationships between students and faculty. Recent graduates have received appointments on college and university faculties, in libraries and archives, and in federal and state government agencies.
The department includes 25 current and 11 emeritus faculty members, and many have received national and international recognition for their work. The faculty includes historians of the United States, Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and the Ancient World. In addition to geographic and chronological focuses, our colleagues teach in fields such as political, social, military, and cultural history, with particular interest in political violence, empire, religion, law, women, gender and sexuality, labor, race and ethnicity, and intellectual history.
The History Department is one of the oldest departments in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, having granted its first Ph.D. in 1883.

History News

Khalil's new book explores US foreign relations with China and Iran
The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs is proud to announce the publication of United States Relations with China and Iran: Toward the Asian Century, edited by Osamah F. Khalil, associate professor of history, and with contributions by a number of Maxwell faculty, graduate students, and alumni from various departments.

Faulkner quoted in The Nation piece on origins of the American boycott
Carol Faulkner was interviewed for The Nation article "The Boycott’s Abolitionist Roots." The author explores Lucretia Mott and the Free Produce Movement, a boycott of goods produced by slave labor led by Quakers in the decades leading up to the Civil War. For Lucretia, Free Produce "was about moral purity, and not engaging in contradictory behaviors," says Faulkner.

Thompson quoted in NY Times article about nuns and slavery
"A lot of communities now are very committed to dealing with issues of racism, but the fact is their own history is problematic," says Margaret Susan Thompson."They’re beginning to confront their own racism, and their own complicity in the racism of the past," she says, "but it’s a very long road." Thompson was interviewed for the New York Times article "The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings."

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Department of History

History News