Fields & Programs

Below are the specialty fields and programs within the history department.

• Early Modern World

  Faculty associated with this focus reflect the newly expansive scholarship on the period between the late 15th and the late 18th centuries. No longer a geographically- bounded term, “Early Modern” refers to a conceptual and historiographical framework for understanding large, interconnected processes that function simultaneously at local, translocal, and global levels.

• Latin American History

  Four historians of Latin America offer opportunities for study in a variety of fields of Latin American history, both colonial and modern, with fields of specialization that include Spanish South America, Brazil, and Mexico, intellectual, legal, social, gender, and environmental history. Other faculty research fields include the history of slavery and the slave trade and the history of political violence. Graduate students take a variety of classes and directed readings with professors in Latin American history, but are also encouraged to take advantage of courses in other regions, including Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States. In addition, students are encouraged to take courses offered by an extensive Latin Americanist faculty in other departments.

Graduate Special and Interdisciplinary Programs

Programs offering interdisciplinary graduate degrees or specialties within the history Ph.D. program.

• Ancient History Graduate Program

  The Graduate Program in Ancient History offers a Ph.D. in European History with a specialization in Ancient (Greek and Roman) History.

• Committee on the History of Environment and Technology

  A group of scholars at the University of Virginia who are exploring the intersections of environmental history, history of technology, and other fields. Members of the committee come from across the university, including the Schools of Arts and Sciences (primarily History), Engineering, Law, and Architecture. The committee advises graduate students, oversees Graduate and Postdoctoral fellowships, organizes courses, and arranges seminars.

• East Asian Center

  The East Asia Center is an interdisciplinary forum for faculty and student interest in East and Southeast Asia and an organizer of extra-curricular lectures and activities. The University offers an M.A. or M.A./M.B.A in East Asian Studies.

• Jewish Studies

  The Jewish Studies Program allows students to focus on the history, languages, and literature of the Jewish people; the beliefs and practices of Judaism; and the enduring contributions of Jewish wisdom to human civilization.

• Legal and Constitutional History Program

  The Program on Leagal and Constitutional History is a joint-degree opportunity that allows students currently enrolled in the University Virginia School of Law to obtain a J. D. and an M. A. in history in three years.

• Medieval Studies

  Provides an interdisciplinary and transhistorical framework for the study, teaching, and learning of premodern world civilizations, from the first centuries of the Common Era through the fifteenth century.

• Religious Studies

  The Department of Religious Studies is engaged in the analysis and interpretation of those dimensions of human experience and expressions of human culture commonly called "religious."

• South Asian Studies

  The Center for South Asian Studies is an interdisciplinary center that coordinates and promotes the study of South Asia- its diverse peoples, languages, cultures, religions and history.

• Southern History Graduate Program

  The Graduate Program in Southern History is specialty within the history department that focuses on the history of the American South.

Undergraduate Special and Interdisciplinary Programs

History-related programs offering undergraduate majors or minors.

• American Studies

  An interdisciplinary approach to understanding American society and culture under the umbrella of the English department.

• Asian Pacific American Studies

  Housed in the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia, the minor in Asian Pacific American Studies is an interdisciplinary program that familiarizes students with the cultural and political contours of Asian Pacific America.

• Distinguished Majors Program

  The History Distinguished Majors program offers students of demonstrated ability opportunities for independent study, directed research, and professional training beyond those available in the regular history curriculum.

• East Asian Center

  The East Asia Center is an interdisciplinary forum for faculty and student interest in East and Southeast Asia and an organizer of extra-curricular lectures and activities.

• Jewish Studies

  The Jewish Studies Program allows students to focus on the history, languages, and literature of the Jewish people; the beliefs and practices of Judaism; and the enduring contributions of Jewish wisdom to human civilization.

• Latin American Studies

  This major seeks the study of Latin America under many different perspectives and approaches. Students take classes in at least four departments guaranteeing a more diversified and comprehensive study.

• Media Studies

  The Media Studies Program is focused on the forms and effects of media (books, radio, film, television, photography, print, digital and electronic media) with a significant emphasis on digital media through approaches to its history, theory, and technology and their impact upon contemporary life.

• Medieval Studies

  Provides an interdisciplinary and transhistorical framework for the study, teaching, and learning of premodern world civilizations, from the first centuries of the Common Era through the fifteenth century.

• Middle East Studies

  An interdisciplinary program that coordinates and organizes events relating primarily to the Arab world, Israel, Iran and Turkey.

• Religious Studies

  The Department of Religious Studies is engaged in the analysis and interpretation of those dimensions of human experience and expressions of human culture commonly called "religious."

• Studies in Women and Gender

  An interdisciplinary program that seeks to study history and culture from women's perspectives and to deepen methods of academic pursuit by acknowledging the critical places of gender. It is open to all undergraduates as a concentration or major.

• Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies

  The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies is an interdisciplinary teaching and research center drawing the majority of its faculty and students from the humanities and social sciences.

History Related Institutes at UVa

History-related institutes that do not offer degrees or minors, but may offer courses, fellowships, internships or special projects of interest to historians.

• Center for Russian and East European Studies

  The Center for Russian and East European Studies serves as a resource for research and scholarship in the field of Russian and East European Studies.

• Governing American in a Global Era (GAGE) Program

  The Governing America in a Global Era (GAGE) program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs offers resources including colloquiums, special projects, book reviews, job listings, and electronic forums for those interested in American political history, broadly defined.

• Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture

  An interdisciplinary research center at the University of Virginia. Its research focuses on understanding the deep cultural changes taking place in the world today.

• Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities

  IATH supports projects that develop the use of computers and information technology for research and teaching in the humanities. It hosts a dozens of projects that are of interest to historians from Rome Reborn to The Circus in America: 1793-1940.

• Institute for Public History

  The Institute for Public History exists to help organize students, scholars, public history organizations, and the general public in their divergent efforts to obtain a richly textured historical knowledge. It also has a goal of developing specific projects which illustrate multiple perspectives about the past that often go unacknowledged, particularly projects which expand beyond the use of written documents to include material culture and oral history.

• International Center for Jefferson Studies

  The International Center for Jefferson Studies is a project by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private, nonprofit corporation that owns and operates Monticello, in cooperation with the University of Virginia to foster study and education on Thomas Jefferson's life and works.

• Papers of George Washington

  The Papers of George Washington project publishes comprehensive digital and print editions of Washington's correspondence as well as indexes, articles, and other educational resources related to the papers.

• Papers of James Madison

  The Papers of James Madison project publishes annotated volumes of the correspondence and writings of James Madison, the Virginia statesman most often remembered for his public service as "Father of the Constitution" and as fourth president of the United States.

• Virginia Center for Digital History

  The Virginia Center for Digital History promotes the teaching and learning of history, particularly that of Virginia, using digital technologies.

• Workshop on Muslim Societies

  The Workshop on Muslim Societies encourages interdisciplinary linkages among faculty and students who study Muslim communities in the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Africa, as well as in Europe and North America.

Graduate Seminars and Workshops

• Colloquium for Medieval and Early Modern European History

  The Colloquium for Medieval and Early Modern European History is a forum for graduate students to circulate dissertation chapters, conference papers, or seminar essays to their colleagues and receive feedback at informal gatherings.

• Early American Seminar

  The Early American Seminar is a graduate student forum that meets occasionally throughout the year to discuss dissertation chapters, articles, conference papers, and other work by graduate students studying the history of the Colonial and Early National United States.

• Environmental History Caucus

  The Environmental History Caucus is forum for graduate students and professors to receive feedback on working ideas, potential articles, conference presentations, and dissertation chapters related to Environmental History.

• Southern Seminar

  The Southern Seminar is part of the department's Graduate Program in Southern History. This informal seminar offers a forum for graduate students and visiting scholars to present dissertation chapters, book excerpts, conference papers, and other work related to the history of the American South.

Electronic Projects and Publications

Online historical publications hosted at or published by the University of Virginia.

• American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology

  Bruce Fort's American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology project contains narratives, photographs, and sound recordings from the WPA interviews with former slaves.

• Building Mr. Jefferson's Academical Village

  Frank Grizzard's Building Mr. Jefferson's Academical Village project includes a large number of rare documents from the University of Virginia Special Collections such as architectural drawings and searchable documents relating to the construction of the University of Virginia.

• Electronic Text Center

  A division of the University of Virginia Library, Etext includes a vast collection of searchable on-line materials in various languages.

• Essays in History

  Back issues of the digital version of Essays in History, a journal published by the University of Virginia History Department from 1958 to 2000.

• Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities

  IATH supports projects that develop the use of computers and information technology for research and teaching in the humanities. It hosts a dozens of projects that are of interest to historians from Rome Reborn to The Circus in America: 1793-1940.

• Virginia Center for Digital History

  The Virginia Center for Digital History promotes the teaching and learning of history using digital technologies.

Conferences and Lecture Series

• Governing America in a Global Era Colloquia Series

  The Governing America in a Global Era Colloquia Series at the Miller Center of Public Affairs provides an open forum for scholars to share their work-in-progress and exchange ideas in contemporary debates in politics, history and current affairs.

• Miller Center Forum

  The Miller Center Forum presents more than 60 speakers each year, drawn from high-ranking public officials and others involved in shaping public policy, from the academy, and from journalists covering national and international events.

• Page-Barbour and Richard Lectures

  Past Page-Barbour Lecturers include President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft; poets T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden; philosophers Walter Lippman and John Dewey; and psychologists B.F. Skinner and Robert Coles. Recent Page-Barbour Lectures include philosopher Richard Rorty, physicist Freeman Dyson, and anthropologist Maurice Godelier. Past James W. Richard Lecturers include theologians and philosophers Etienne Gilson, Paul Tillich, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Thomas Torrance, Nicholas Lash, and Langdon Gilkey; and historians Jaroslav Pelikan, Jacob Neusner, and Edmund Morgan. Recent James W. Richard Lecturers include philosopher Stephen Mulhall, political theorist Quentin Skinner, historian Lynn Hunt, and religious studies scholar David Schulman.

UVa Resources for Historians

• Robertson Media Center

  Located on the third floor of Clemons Library, the RMC opened in September 1999, supported by a generous grant by Timothy Robertson. The Digital Media Lab, now part of the Robertson Media Center, existed in many previous incarnations: the Digital Image Center, the Digital Media and Music Center, the Digital Media Center, and the New Media Center of ITC.

• University Press of Virginia

  An online guide to the services and publications of the University Press, including links to electronic publications.

• University of Virginia Library Guide to History Databases

  The library maintains a regularly updated this list of links to materials in all fields of history.

History Resources on the Web

• Center for Research Libraries

  A consortium of research libraries which provides cumulative search capabilities for dozens of university libraries (including UVa).

• Copac

  The Copac library catalogue gives free access to the merged online catalogues of major University and National Libraries in the UK and Ireland, including the British Library.

• Edicta: Early Dictionaries

  Serves as a link to research projects and peer-reviewed research on early dictionaries at the University of Toronto and elsewhere.

• Folger Shakespeare Library

  The Folger Shakespeare Library, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, is a world-class research center on Shakespeare and on the early modern age in the West. It is home to the world’s largest and finest collection of Shakespeare materials and to major collections of other rare Renaissance books, manuscripts, and works of art.

• H-grad Email List

  An email list for History graduate students, h-grad is one of the many H-Net history discussion groups.

• New York Public Library Research Collections

  The NYPL houses a large collection of archives, manuscripts and images. The web site provides searching capabilities and access to hundreds of thousands of digital images.

• Scholar's Guide to the Web

  A collection of links useful to humanities scholars.

• United States Library of Congress

  The world's largest library is only a few hours drive from UVa. The LoC Catalog provides not only listings of books, but thousands of images and multimedia items. National Union Catalog of Manuscripts Collections (NUCMC) is a catalog of the LoC's manuscript holdings.

• United States National Archives

  Preserves the most important documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government.

Professional Organizations and Journals

• American Historical Association

  The AHA was founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 to serve the broad field of history. It encompasses every historical period and geographical area and serves professional historians in all areas of employment. AHA publications include Perspectives and the American Historical Review.

• History of Economics Society

  HES is now an internationalcommunity of scholars which sponsors an annual conference and recognizes distinguished work in the field. The Society currently publishes the Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

• Organization of American Historians

  The OAH is the largest learned society devoted to the study of American history. The OAH links page lists hundreds of organizations, institutes, employment resources, and teaching resources of interest to scholars of American history.