How to apply
- Religious History
Graduate students will find the History Department an intellectually stimulating environment for studying the role of religious ideas, behaviors, people, and institutions of the past. The department offers a wide variety of courses in religious history, and students can work on religious history topics in many subfields, including Southern history, Early and Modern American history, and Medieval and Early Modern European history.
- European History
The department has a longstanding history of excellence in areas of German, Central European, and Russian history, French history, English history, Medieval history, and Early Modern and Modern history. Faculty specializations range across political, diplomatic, social, cultural, gender, intellectual, religious, imperial, and economic history, as well as the history of science and medicine.
- Junior Molly Buffington Researches Lutheran Liturgies
Molly Buffington, a History major in her junior year at UA, is writing an honor’s thesis on Lutheran liturgies, and the ways that theology about the sacrament was communicated to the congregation through these songs.
- History of Race
Students in this field investigate how racial identities have been constructed and contested over time, shaping social interactions and setting the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in various regions of the world. Faculty strengths lie in early modern understandings of difference, slavery in the Americas, Native American history, free people of color in the United States and Latin America, and the role of race in shaping the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras in the United States.
- Adams and Martinson Receive the College of Arts & Science’s Outstanding Sophomore Award
Please join the Department of History in congratulating History Majors Emily Adams and Clay Martinson, both 2018 recipients of the College of Arts & Science’s Outstanding Sophomore Award!
- Military and Naval History
Students in military history study the full range of conflict, from the ancient world to contemporary problems. Graduate study of military history at UA is especially strong in colonial and Civil War America and Early Modern and Modern Europe, with a strong emphasis on naval history, diplomacy, international relations, and the home front.
- Latin American History
Stretching from the early Atlantic world to modern and contemporary Mexico, UA has great strengths in South American, Central American, and Caribbean history. Issues of cross-cultural relations, race and ethnicity, national and regional identity, and popular and political culture are widely investigated. Latin American History also benefits from the Alabama-Cuba Initiative, which gives faculty and students opportunities to study in Cuba.
- United States History
UA promotes robust inquiry in all periods of American history. Our strength in social, cultural, and political history is complemented by specializations in African American history, Native American history, military and diplomatic history, constitutional history, intellectual history, religious history, economic and business history, and gender history.
- Five Undergraduates Present at UA’s Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity Conference
Emma Pepperman, Molly Buffington, Rhiannon Hein, Lauren Tucker, and Bradley Beasley recently presented their research to attendees at The University of Alabama’s Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity Conference.
- Our New Department Newsletter, Historically Speaking, Now Available!
We are please to announce that issue number one of Historically Speaking is now in print and on its way to faculty, students, alumni, and friends of the Department of History at The University of Alabama.
- Howard Jones’s My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness Explores Infamous Vietnam Massacre
This June, Professor Emeritus Howard Jones published My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness, a look into one of the most infamous incidents in the Vietnam War.
- History Department Alumna Briana Royster Pursues PhD at New York University
Briana Royster is a Tuscaloosa native who earned her BA in History in 2012, as well as MA’s in History (2014) and Women’s Studies (2015). Though she entered undergrad as an engineering student, after returning to school following a break in her studies, she decided to switch to History.
- Southern History
The history of the U.S. South is an area of particular strength, as the department boasts seven specialists in the field. Course offerings and faculty research investigate all areas of southern history, from politics and labor relations to the history of race, gender, religion, and the environment. UA is also conveniently located near many important archival resources for the study of the South.
- Department Holds Preview Day to Welcome Prospective Graduate Students
The History Department hosted a group of prospective graduate students on February 23, 2018. The prospective students were first welcomed by Dr. Daniel Riches, Director of Graduate Studies. “We were delighted to welcome seventeen accepted students who traveled from across the country to visit our department,” says Dr. Riches.
- UA Students tell the stories of Tuscaloosa County lynching victims.
Fifteen UA students enrolled in HY 300/AAST 395 Southern Memory: Lynching in the South collectively spent more than 1,000 hours documenting the lives and circumstances surrounding the deaths of 10 Tuscaloosa County residents who were lynched between 1884 and 1933.
- Gender and Women’s History
Women’s and gender history is an active field of study at UA. Faculty teach courses in a variety of geographic locations and time periods, enabling students to gain transnational and comparative perspectives on the diversity of gender roles and on how a gendered analysis changes our understanding of historical problems.
- Professor Joshua Rothman Part of Team that Receives $300,000 NEH Grant
Dr. Joshua Rothman is a part of a team that received a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of their current project, “Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitive from North American Slavery.” The project, which Rothman co-directs and has been working on alongside colleagues at Cornell University and the University of New Orleans, aims to digitize every advertisement for a runaway slave in North American newspapers.
- Dr Green’s Students Open Art Exhibit: “Mecca”
On March 2nd, our own Dr. Sharony Green opened an art exhibit curated by students in her “Gender, Race, and Urban Space” graduate course. The exhibit, entitled “Mecca: Atlanta, Harlem, Miami, and Beyond” reflect the students’ interrogation of these cities as cultural “Meccas” for certain groups, in particular people of African descent.
- Undergraduate Matt Culver Creates WWI Exhibit at Warner Transportation Museum
Undergraduate Matt Culver’s exhibit “Lafayette, We Are Here! America Enters the First World War” is currently on display at the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum in Tuscaloosa. Matt Culver is a senior History/Computer Science double major, and has been involved with a group of students working on two World War I exhibits on campus in remembrance of the war’s centennial.
Affiliates
Faculty
The History Faculty
What's Happening
2018 Honors Day Awards Review
Each April, the Department of History salutes the achievements of its students, recognizing... more»US Army Chief of Military History & Chair of War Studies Department at USMC Command Staff College Visit Department
On March 29, The University of Alabama Department of History hosted a pair of events lead by two... more»Five Undergraduates Present at UA’s Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity Conference
Emma Pepperman, “Where Legends Were Forgotten: Enslaved Workers at the University of... more»Dr Green’s Students Open Art Exhibit: “Mecca”
On March 2nd, our own Dr. Sharony Green opened an art exhibit curated by students in her “Gender,... more»Dr. Victoria Bynum Visits UA
The History Department was honored to host noted Civil War historian, Dr. Victoria Bynum, for a... more»
Giving
Support the Department
