• 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

    McCormick discusses the violence in Mexico with CNN, Washington Post

    "A whole series of sort of mid-tier and lower level and smaller kind of up-and-coming, wannabe cartels are trying to set up shop in this terrain," Gladys McCormick told CNN. "They're striking deals with each other, with the big players. What I do think is that this (massacre) had nothing to do with drugs per se. I think it had to do with extortion and kidnapping."

     

    McCormick speaks with BH, Bloomberg about cartel violence in Mexico

    On Monday, nine members of a Mormon family, all US citizens, were killed in northern Mexico in an apparent attack by drug cartels. "The level of violence is brutal," Gladys McCormick told the Boston Herald. "The zone where the attacks took place is also up for grabs. One of the big demon cartels is responsible." McCormick spoke with several media outlets about the recent cartel violence in Mexico.

     

    Professor Susan Branson, Scientific Americans: Invention, Innovation, and Nationalism in the 1st Am. Century

    This is the second installment of Orange History Hub, the Syracuse University History Department podcast. Our second episode features Dr. Susan Branson, Professor of History in the Maxwell School. Professor Branson focuses on early American women, early American society and culture, and Science in American society in her research.