Department of History and Philosophy
The Department of History and Philosophy is home to a dynamic community of scholars whose research advances knowledge across diverse historical periods, philosophical traditions, and geographic regions. This page showcases faculty research interests and areas of expertise, highlights the regions they study, and features recent publications that reflect the breadth and impact of their scholarship.
SOCIAL & CULTURAL
Social history is the study of ordinary people and everyday life (e.g., classes, families, communities, work, and social relations) rather than elites and high politics.
Cultural history is the study of the beliefs, values, symbols, rituals, and shared mental worlds of a society, or how people made meaning and understood their experience.
| Subject | Definition | Faculty |
|---|---|---|
| DIASPORA STUDIES | Diaspora studies examines populations that have been dispersed from an original homeland and the relationships they maintain—real or imagined—with that homeland and with the societies they settle in. The recurring concerns are identity, displacement, belonging, collective memory, and the transnational ties that link scattered communities across borders and generations. |
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| WOMEN'S HISTORY | Women's history is the study of women's experiences, roles, and contributions in the past – recovering lives, work, activism, and perspectives that traditional history, focused on male elites, largely left out. |
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| MUSIC & MEDIA |
Music history is the study of music of the past—composers, works, genres, styles, and performance practices, along with the changing place of music in societies over time. Media history is the study of the means of communication and their development over time –the press and print, photography, film, radio, television, and digital and networked media—and the social, cultural, and political effects of each. |
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| FOLK TRADITION |
Folk tradition history is the study of the traditional customs, beliefs, stories, songs, crafts, and rituals of ordinary people—the culture passed down largely by word of mouth and informal practice rather than through official institutions—and how these traditions formed, spread, and changed over time. |
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| URBAN STUDIES |
Urban history is the study of cities and towns over time—how they emerged, grew, were built and governed, and how people lived in them. It examines both the physical city (its architecture, infrastructure, planning, and spatial layout) and the social city (the communities, classes, work, and daily life that urban environments shaped and were shaped by). |
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POLITICAL
Political history is the study of power, government, and the state – rulers, institutions, political movements, elections, and the exercise and contest of authority.
The history of nationalism is the study of how nations and nationalism came into being, how they developed, and how they reshaped the modern world. It examines national identity, nation-building, the rise of nation-states, and nationalist movements.
FACULTY EXPERTS
Legal history is the study of law and legal systems over time—how laws, doctrines, courts, legal institutions, and the legal profession developed and changed, and how law has interacted with the surrounding society, politics, and economy.
Public policy history is the study of how governments have addressed social and economic problems over time—how particular policies were formulated, implemented, contested, and revised, and what effects they had.
FACULTY EXPERTS
ECONOMIC
Economic history is the study of how economies and economic activity have developed over time: production, trade, consumption, labor, money, markets, growth, and the material conditions of life across societies.
Business history is the study of business enterprises, entrepreneurs, management, and industries—how firms were founded, financed, organized, and managed, how industries developed, and how businesses both shaped and were shaped by their economic and social environments.
FACULTY EXPERTS
Labor history is the study of working people, work, and the labor movement over time—workers and their conditions, the experience of working life, trade unions, strikes, labor politics, and the relations between workers, employers, and the state.
FACULTY EXPERTS
DIPLOMATIC
Diplomatic history is the study of relations between states – treaties, negotiations, alliances, and the conduct of foreign policy.
The history of foreign relations is the study of how states and other actors have interacted across borders over time—diplomacy, war, alliances, trade, and the making and conduct of foreign policy.
FACULTY EXPERTS
The history of terrorism is the study of the use of violence for political ends—chiefly by non-state actors, though states practice terror too—and how it has developed as a tactic, a concept, and a phenomenon over time, along with the responses it provokes.
FACULTY EXPERTS
International conflict analysis and management concerns how international conflicts arise, escalate, and can be contained, resolved, or managed, and historically it examines the development of the tools and institutions built for that purpose: diplomacy and mediation, arbitration and international law, arms control, and peacekeeping.
FACULTY EXPERTS
INTELLECTUAL
Intellectual history is the study of ideas and the thinkers who produce them, traced through time and understood in their contexts. It asks how people thought, what concepts they used, and why certain ideas emerged, spread, changed, or faded when they did.
FACULTY EXPERTS
History of memory is the study of how the past is remembered, commemorated, and represented—how societies and groups construct, transmit, and contest collective memory, rather than what "actually" happened.
FACULTY EXPERTS
The history of information is the study of how information has been created, recorded, stored, organized, transmitted, and used across human history—and of how the systems and technologies for handling information have shaped societies.
FACULTY EXPERTS
SCIENCE & MEDICINE
The history of science is the study of how scientific knowledge, practice, and institutions developed over time—how people have understood the natural world, how scientific ideas and methods emerged and changed, and how science relates to its social, cultural, and intellectual surroundings.
The history of medicine is the study of medicine, health, disease, healing, and the body over time—medical theory and practice, the medical profession, hospitals and other institutions, public health, and the experience of being ill.
FACULTY EXPERTS
AGRICULTURE & ENVIRONMENT
Agricultural history is the study of farming over time—crops and livestock, land use, farming techniques and technology, agricultural systems, productivity, and the social and economic organization of working the land.
Environmental history is the study of the changing relationship between human societies and the natural world—how people have shaped, used, and imagined their physical environment, and how that environment has in turn shaped them.
FACULTY EXPERTS
PUBLIC HISTORY
Public history is the practice of history produced for and, ideally, with general audiences, in museums, archives, historic sites, national parks, government agencies, documentary media, and communities.
FACULTY EXPERTS
EDUCATION
The history of education is the study of how education has developed over time—schooling and teaching, learning, educational institutions, curricula, and educational ideas—and how all of this relates to the surrounding society, politics, economy, and culture.
FACULTY EXPERTS
FEMINIST & EPISTEMOLOGY
Feminist philosophy uses the tools of philosophy to examine gender, and especially to understand and challenge the ways women have been subordinated and the ways philosophy itself has been shaped by male assumptions.
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It asks what knowledge is, what we can know, and what makes a belief justified or rational.
FACULTY EXPERTS
UNITED STATES
EUROPE
ASIA
AFRICA
BOOKS & EDITED VOLUMES
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2024
2023
2022
2021
BOOK CHAPTERS
2025
2024
2023
2022
JOURNAL ARTICLES
2025
2024
2023
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