About Us

Our history—it’s our compass to the future. How we use it will determine where we go.

When we take up the mantle as custodians of our country’s heritage, will we see the study and preservation of our history as a way to inform what we do today? Will we engage in a kind of “time travel”—grounded in rich scholarship and guided by well-honed critical acumen—that allows us to understand the past as no less complex than the present? Will we use our history not only to transmit our ideals but to enlarge our ideas about who we are and what we can become?
For more than half a century, the Department of History at the University of Maryland has invested in the study of the past in order to move forward—a vision as dynamic and enriching as the study of history itself. Through a rich mix of teaching, scholarship, and outreach, the Department of History, along with the Nathan and Jeanette Center for Historical Studies, promotes the importance of historical knowledge in the education of citizens, underscores the significance of universities in producing and disseminating new ways of exploring the world, and generates excitement about the process of intellectual inquiry, exchange, and debate.

A Department on the Move

The history of progress cannot be drawn by a straight line from Point A to B to C. We round a curve in history to find ourselves in a place we never could have imagined—and to find ourselves enriched in undreamed of ways. Each year hundreds of students at the University of Maryland, from undergraduates to graduate students, majors to non-majors, take that journey through history. The Department of History’s winning formula—a long-standing commitment to teaching at all levels and an equally firm commitment to top-notch research and its dissemination—ensures that tomorrow’s historians receive the best possible training and that hundreds of undergraduate students receive the best possible history education whatever their future pursuits.

Recent Milestones
The high caliber of students enrolled in history courses reflects not only the University of Maryland’s high reputation but the national standing of the Department of History. The department catapulted to “competitive” status among top graduate students after a tremendous period of growth from 1995 to 2000. An influx of resources included the hiring of 14 new faculty members, senior faculty among them. The addition of small seminars and other attractive features of undergraduate education boosted enrollment by one-third in one year alone—pushing the number of majors from under 400 to well over 600, a rate maintained today.
The department’s long-standing strongest area of emphasis, American history, is complemented by a top-rated national program in Latin American history and a rising program in Central and Eastern European history. Leading journals in these areas—including Hispanic American Historical Review and Kritika—soon found an inviting intellectual home at the university.  The department also mapped out a program in Atlantic history that links Africa with the Americas - capitalizing on the department’s expertise in African American and Latin American history and its close association with the David Driskell Center - to explore an increasingly important area of study. 
This phenomenal growth has brought us to where we are today—an entire department on the move.

Students on the Move
The department’s emphasis on critical thinking, reading, and writing skills offers top-notch preparation for students pursuing careers both inside and outside the academy. Graduates have served as history professors and historians of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, while others have pursued careers in business, communications, secondary education, sociology, entertainment, and law.
Each year about 200 graduate students, 600 majors, and scores of non-majors can be found enrolled in history classes or engaged in independent research projects under the guidance of faculty members. Top undergraduate majors are invited to participate in a rigorous, two-year Undergraduate Honors Program in History, which culminates in the research and writing of a substantial thesis. The department is a leading place for graduate study in African American history, women’s history and gender studies, and twentieth-century history.

Faculty on the Move 
Harlan Louis’ 1984 Pulitizer Prize for a biography of Booker T. Washington is just the beginning of faculty accolades. The department’s rich tradition of scholarship is reflected in the wide variety of publications, awards, and honors of today’s faculty members, almost 50 strong. You’ll find Fulbright, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Ford, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellows on the faculty. And you’ll find the faculty seeks to make their scholarship accessible in engaging ways. Even senior faculty routinely teach undergraduate survey courses. Faculty members at all levels can be found mentoring undergraduate as well as graduate students. Faculty can also be found working with teachers in local schools.
It’s about bringing knowledge and expertise into the classroom and beyond. Faculty hold leadership positions in key professional organizations, such as the Organization of American Historians. Faculty serve on the editorial boards of leading journals in history, lecture widely, edit and write textbooks, act as consultants for popular historical documentaries such as Ken Burns’ “The Civil War,” and are widely reviewed in major media outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post.

Scholarship on the Move
The department takes, as its canvas, all of human history—from antiquity to modern times in all regions of the world. Particular areas of strength include American, African American, European, and, more recently, Latin American and Jewish history. Given the department’s inclusive study of history, you’ll find traditional areas of study—political, diplomatic, intellectual, legal and constitutional, and military history—well represented. You’ll also find social history and engaging explorations of business, science, and technology, gender, race, and nationalism. In addition, while deepening its strong national and international outlook, the department has maintained its traditional role as a source of expertise in Maryland history. The department looks to its past not as an end point but as inspiration to move forward.

A Location on the Move
An added bonus for serious students of history and top faculty researchers is the university’s proximity to Washington, D.C., offering access to some of the world’s best resources for historical research, including the Library of Congress and the National Archives. It’s a boon for budding scholars and top researchers alike to live and work near the nation’s capital, where so much history is made.

At the Center of It All

The passion—and need—for history exists well beyond the constraints of grades, classes, and curriculum requirements. The Nathan and Jeannette Miller Center for Historical Studies was founded in 1999 to support the study of history—for top faculty and aspiring academicians, for K-12 teachers and the general public.
Taking its cue from the Department of History, where it is housed, the center embraces the study of all of human history and seeks cross-fertilization of ideas across areas of specialization.
Here is where history comes alive, often with support from the Department of History and other university departments and programs. A thematic seminar series—The Histories of Globalization in 2005-2006, Religion in History on 2006-2007 and Facing Difficult Pasts: History and Memory for 2007-2008—attracts top-name historians and key public figures as presenters. The faculty-works-in-progress series offers students and faculty the chance to work elbow to elbow in a democratic forum where collegiality and spirited exchanges reign. Students see first-hand how knowledge is created—through debate and inquiry, revision and testing. The center enriches students’ academic experience by increasing their exposure to research by their professors and outside scholars and by involving them in a lively community of intellectual exploration and debate beyond the classroom.
Conferences such as National Identities in the Americas draw leading scholars. The Richard T. Farrell Research Paper Prize and Dissertation Award honors outstanding graduate student work. The Walter Rundell Lecture in American History and the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Distinguished Lecture in History and Public Affairs invite top scholars at other institutions to campus. Outreach projects in public schools aim to strengthen secondary education in history.
With the center’s rising national reputation as an exciting forum for history, it’s no wonder that the center has fast become “the heartbeat of the department.”  The center preserves the study of history and generates excitement about the possibilities history offers tomorrow.