Catherine Patterson, Department Chair

Our department is a community of scholars and students who believe deeply in the importance of the study of the past and how it affects our present and future. Through rigorous research and scholarship, excellent teaching, and a commitment to the community, our diverse and productive faculty shows why history matters. 

Our faculty covers the globe in our teaching and research, with expertise in the histories of Africa, East and South Asia, Europe, Latin America, Mexico and Borderlands, the Middle East, and the United States.  We also range across time—from ancient to early modern to modern eras—and across themes that include family and gender, environment, medicine and health, politics and political economy, public history, and race and ethnicity.  Our faculty have published dozens of books just in the last ten years and launched major Digital Humanities research projects. Many are award-winning teachers, as well.

We are committed to sharing our knowledge and excitement for studying the past to our students.  In our undergraduate classes, students learn that everything has a history, and that events and experiences of the past are situated in complex contexts of culture, socio-economic circumstance, and environment. We teach thousands of students from across the university every semester in our Core US History and other introductory courses, as well as hundreds of History majors and minors in our varied upper-division course offerings. In history courses, students gain vital skills in critical thinking, information literacy, and effective communication that they can put to work throughout their careers and their lives.

In our graduate program, we offer both the MA and PhD in History in a variety of fields, spanning Global to US history. We prepare our graduates to be excellent historians in the academic setting of universities and colleges, as well as outside the academy.  Our Public History MA is specially designed to train students for work in public institutions like museums and archives.   Graduate students in our program have been awarded many national fellowships such as the Fulbright. We have placed recent PhD graduates at places like Texas A&M University, Vassar College, the University of St. Thomas, and the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and our graduates serve as faculty at many community colleges around the region.

Rooted in the diverse, dynamic city in which we live, we also remain an active part of the community, working with African American Studies, Mexican American Studies, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Center for Public History in collaborative and outreach programs. Take a look at our website and learn more about our faculty, our publications, our students, our classes and our accomplishments. We invite you to visit us, contact us, or even make a contribution to help fund student scholarships. Join us in our mission to enrich the knowledge of our shared past and play an active part in our city’s life.