Fields of Study
The Department of History is approved to offer supervision in several geographic, chronological, and thematic fields of study. These fields represent the breadth, depth, and richness of the Department – with almost 80 faculty and more than 150 graduate students – and our commitment to historical training and scholarly research that is both vigorously trans-national and rigorously rooted in time and place.
FIELDS BY TIME/GEOGRAPHY
African History
Human history began in Africa only a few thousand generations ago, and yet Africa is the last continent to have been effectively colonised; the history of Africa challenges Western notions of geographical boundaries, concepts of modernity, ideas of difference, and questions of centre and periphery. It presents fascinating surprises about the depth and variety of pasts in Africa, disturbing realisations about how Africa has been portrayed by outsiders, and stimulating paradoxes about the significance and relevance of African history. The Department has considerable strength, depth, and breadth in African history, and new hires and cross appointments give it one of the largest faculty complements among major North American research universities. The approach to the field is thoroughly interdisciplinary, employing the methodological and theoretical insights of cognate disciplines, such as Anthropology, Religion, Politics, Film, and Literature (Swahili, English and French most particularly at the University of Toronto). Graduate students are familiarized with important questions about historical knowledge (epistemology), analytical tools (theory: gender; sexuality; biopolitics; economy; etc.) and the difference between academic and cultural representations of the past.
Faculty: Sean Hawkins, Julie MacArthur, Nakanyike Musisi, Steven Rockel, Katherine Blouin, Michael Gervers, Jens Hanssen, Eric Jennings, Shafique Varani.
American History
The University of Toronto offers students a large concentration of U.S. historians. Collectively, scholars working in this area of research contribute to a two-fold effort: on the one hand, intensive study of the distinctive features of the U.S. national experience; on the other hand, the ongoing project of considering the U.S. in a transnational frame, working with colleagues to de-provincialize the study of the U.S. by conceptualizing its history across national borders. Research and teaching of our faculty cohort include the history of immigration and multiculturalism; histories of U.S. capitalism in a global frame; fashion and material culture; food history; history of science and technology; Cold War foreign relations history; U.S.-East Asia relations; early U.S. cinema and Hollywood; histories of mass and popular culture; U.S. political history; working class and labour history; histories of racial formation and racial science; and histories of gender and sexuality in the U.S. The History Department enjoys a close working relationship with the Centre for the Study of the United States and the American Studies Program at the University of Toronto.
Faculty: Dan Bender, Elspeth Brown, Carol Chin, Donna Gabaccia, Rick Halpern, Adrienne Hood, Russ Kazal, Michelle Murphy, Ron Pruessen.
Atlantic World History
A large and dynamic community of faculty and students engages in the study of the Atlantic World from the early modern through the modern periods. This crucial region and its linkages shaped the emergence of the centralized state, the development of the modern capitalist economy, intense cultural encounters and exchanges, continuing internal and external migrations, and the construction of far-flung colonial and industrial empires whose inter-relations shaped and continue to shape the world. Department faculty pursue cutting-edge comparative research and teaching in a set of core areas of strength and experiment with a variety of methodologies, ranging from historical anthropology and microhistory to semiotics. Their transnational and comparative studies cover a wide array of socio-cultural domains, including gender, migration, race, economy, law, and statecraft.
Faculty: Laurie Bertram, Paul Cohen, Donna Gabaccia, Paula Hastings, Adrienne Hood, Franca Iacovetta, William Nelson, Melanie Newton, Jan Noel, David Wilson.
British and Irish History
With some of the best library and archival collections in North America, faculty who conduct teaching and research from the medieval to the modern period, and with a dynamic Celtic Studies Program, the University of Toronto is exceptionally well placed for the study of British and Irish history. Our particular strengths lie in the middle ages, the eighteenth century, Victorian Britain, Ireland from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and the global Irish diaspora, and encompass political, cultural, diplomatic, consumer and gender history. We conduct innovative research in the history of medicine, history of science, intellectual history, material culture, popular culture, and migration. Through collaboration with specialists in the histories of Africa, South Asia and the Atlantic world, we also study the early modern and modern British empires, and our doctoral students have recently written dissertations that take comparative approaches to the histories of Britain, Ireland, Spain, France, Japan, Canada, and the United States. Generous funding is available for Ph.D. research in British history.
Faculty: Michael Gervers, Paula Hastings, Lori Loeb, Margaret McMillan, Mark McGowan, Jennifer Mori, Denis Smyth, David Wilson.
Canadian History
The University of Toronto has long been a premier institution committed to the study of Canada’s past. Drawing on the immense human and material resources of the university and nearby institutions, Canadian historians explore questions of empire, colonialism, postcolonialism, migrations, internationalism, culture, politics, gender, and race. Students at the University of Toronto work with a dynamic group of transnationally focussed scholars at the forefront of addressing the most vital questions currently facing the profession: How has Canada’s history been entangled with the histories of other societies and cultures? How do these entanglements influence the frameworks within which Canadian history should be understood? How have Canada’s diverse populations – including First Nations, colonists, elites, and migrants – shaped and been shaped by the transnational circulation of ideas, culture, and people? To answer these questions, we engage with academic colleagues across fields and specialisations and, through an array of public history initiatives, with educators, curators, journalists, film-makers, women’s organisations, First Nations, heritage organisations, immigrant communities, and others.
Faculty: Laurie Bertram, Heidi Bohaker, Robert Bothwell, Brian Gettler, Paula Hastings, Franca Iacovetta, Lisa Mar, Mark McGowan, Sean Mills, Jan Noel, Steve Penfold, Ian Radforth, David Wilson.
European History
Historians of Europe at the University of Toronto interrogate the history of Europe from every angle – geographically, chronologically, and conceptually. We have particular strengths in political, social, cultural, gender, and intellectual histories. Our approaches range from regional to transnational, and our emphases include colonialism, formal and informal empires, and the inter- and multi-national processes of migration, dislocation, language and state-formation, war, genocide, memory, and justice. We range from the medieval and early modern periods into the present, and have particular strengths in Spanish, Italian, British, French, German, and Eastern European history. We explore Europe as a dynamic construct, rooted in specific places yet reaching far beyond them in complex and often surprising ways. We are also part of a vibrant, interdisciplinary, and global network, and enjoy close tied to U of T’s many regional and thematic research Centres for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES), Medieval Studies (CMS), Study of France and the Francophone World (CEFMF), Jewish Studies (CJS), Diaspora and Transnational Studies (CDTS), and the university’s outstanding departments of modern European languages and literatures – all supported and enhanced by our established relations with international organizations and a rich array of visiting scholars.
Faculty: Kenneth Bartlett, Doris Bergen, Isabelle Cochelin, Paul Cohen, Nicholas Everett, Juri Kivimae, Jennifer Jenkins, Eric Jennings, Paul Magocsi, Mark Meyerson, William Nelson, James Retallack, Natalie Rothman, Nicholas Terpstra, Rebecca Wittman, Piotr Wrobel.
East Asian History
A vibrant group of scholars pursues interdisciplinary and transnational research and teaching in cultural history, empire, and science and technology. We have hired four new faculty in this area across the tri-campus program since 2003, making U of T’s History complement in East Asian History one of the largest among North American universities. Our faculty offer graduate courses that engage the connected histories of the countries within Asia and beyond. Areas of geographic strength include the History of China, Japan, and Korea. Along with a world-class East Asia Library, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are actively engaged in the Asian Institute, the Dr. David Chu Program for Asia Pacific Studies, the Collaborative Master’s Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, and the Centre for the Study of Korea. These offer opportunities for language and cultural study and international experience in Asia, as well as vibrant speakers’ series. Graduate students will find an intellectual environment that encourages them to draw on the strengths of colleagues in complementary departments, including Anthropology, Art History, East Asian Studies, and Religion.
Faculty: Tong Lam, Li Chen, Tak Fujitani, Yvon Wang.
Latin American and Caribbean History
Made up of several independent nations and overseas dependencies, the Latin American and Caribbean region is both the product of a tumultuous past and a site of constant reinvention. Once the home of hundreds of distinct languages and cultures, this fascinating region has witnessed centuries of dramatic changes: from the Iberian invasions of its indigenous heartlands to the Haitian Revolution, from the struggles to build independent nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to more recent efforts in Venezuela to rebel against an overbearing United States. Students of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Toronto find faculty whose geographic, thematic, and methodological expertise reflects this historical complexity. We offer a variety of graduate seminars, drawing on our particular strengths in the study of the religious transformations, societies, and cultures of colonial Latin America; the Revolutionary Atlantic; the Caribbean; slavery and emancipation; gender; indigeneity; modern Latin America; U.S.-Latin American relations; Central America; and visual culture and anthropological history. Through the programmes in Latin American Studies and Caribbean Studies, and with affiliated faculty and students across the Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Toronto offers students and researchers a wealth of intellectual resources for studying this important region and its relationship with the rest of the world.
Faculty: Melanie Newton, Kevin Coleman, Lucho van Isschot, Jeffrey Pilcher.
Medieval History
The History Department at the University of Toronto offers the best resources and academic environment in North America to pursue medieval studies at the graduate level. Faculty and students of the Middle Ages enjoy automatic access to the resources of the Centre for Medieval Studies and Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, providing the largest community of active researchers on medieval studies in the world. The specialist libraries of these institutions, as well as those of individual colleges, complement the incomparable resources of the University’s Robarts library, the largest in Canada and one of the most comprehensive in North America, to facilitate first class research on all aspects of medieval history and culture, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, from the Mediterranean world to northern Europe. The History Department promotes collaboration, comparison and dialogue with historical studies of other periods, yet retains renowned standards of traditional medieval disciplines such as philology, paleography, codicology, Latin and Old English. The Department’s commitment to teaching infuses its active programme of research to produce first-rate scholarship and outstanding future teachers of the Middle Ages.
Faculty: Isabelle Cochelin, Nicholas Everett, Michael Gervers, Joseph Goering, Mark Meyerson, Giulio Silano.
Mediterranean and Middle Eastern History
The integrated study of history from Muslim Spain to contemporary Iran and Arabia has become one of the strengths of our graduate programme and an area of considerable student demand both for comprehensive field preparations and for dissertation research. This field overcomes the heuristic pre-modern/modern divide by involving faculty with shared thematic research interests, including conversion, social and political violence, migration, historical consciousness, and discursive formations of alterity and difference. The field stands on its own but also informs the critical study of metropolitan-centred area studies like European, British, or American history. Furthermore, the Mediterranean nexus corresponds intellectually with our faculty expertise in Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean histories.
Faculty: Nick Everett, Michael Gervers, Jens Hanssen, Eric Jennings, Mark Myerson, Derek Penslar, Natalie Rothman, Mohammad Tavakoli, Nicholas Terpstra, Jennifer Jenkins, Guliano Silano, Shafique Virani.
Russian History
The study of Russian history stresses at once the unique and the universal aspects of social, political, economic and cultural developments within Russia and its empire. Some scholars have explored these developments as peculiarly Russian, while others have attempted to contextualise Russian development within more comparative paradigms such as modernity, empire, modernisation, and totalitarianism. Russia’s experience as an imperial power—often in dialogue with other imperial histories—has increasingly been a focus of attention for scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, while its status as the totalitarian comparison to Nazi Germany has perpetually been a source of inquiry for scholars of the twentieth century. From studies of culinary cultures, to explorations of individuals and their memories, to discussions of the perpetrators of the Soviet state, the research of faculty at the University of Toronto is both historically specific, and influenced by and illuminative of larger historical issues. Teaching at the University of Toronto draws on the research expertise of the faculty to explore many of these themes, as well, from a broadly comparative examination of Russia’s imperial and environmental history, through general surveys of periods of Russian history, to more specific explorations of individual problems in Russian and comparative history.
Faculty: Lynn Viola, Thomas Lahusen, Alison Smith.
South Asian History
South Asian history involves the study of a region – the Indian subcontinent, constituted by India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal and Sri Lanka – with impact on the future of the globe. With a quarter of the world’s population and unparalleled linguistic and ethnic diversity, South Asia raises pressing questions about economy, authoritarianism and democracy, the making of ethnic subjects, environment, media and visual culture, and gender politics, among many others. The study of South Asia is at the heart of the history of colonialism, pluralism, the rule of law, capitalism, feminism, early empires and global trade, and all the great religions. South Asian historiography is renowned for ground-breaking approaches that challenge the very categories by which we understand and narrate history and society. The South Asian historians at U of T ask questions about what counts as politics, as a national “border,” as archive, as language and as literature, as “public” and as “private,” as secular and sacred, as modern and as postcolonial? With rich resources at the University’s Centre for South Asian Studies, our courses in South Asian history call us to imagine other worlds, both distant pasts and challenging presents, and are active channels for interdisciplinary conversations and research clusters across the University.
Faculty: Ritu Birla, Malavika Katsuri, Bhavani Raman, Jayeeta Sharma.
Southeast Asian History
With four new faculty members in this area across the tri-campus program since 2003, U of T’s History complement in Southeast Asian History one of the largest among North American universities. Faculty expertise spans both Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, with particular strengths in Assamese (Burma), Indonesian, and Vietnamese History. Research strength from the early modern through the colonial and modern periods provides deep temporal coverage, with emphasis on the histories of commercialization, gender, race, and religion. Links to several thematic fields in the department and collaborations with more than a dozen southeast Asia experts in other departments university-wide (Anthropology, Art History, Religion and others) make the department an ideal place to pursue graduate studies. The Centre for Southeast Asian Studies provides an intellectual space for interdisciplinary regional collaborations between graduate students and faculty and serves as host to the world’s top experts in the field.
Faculty: Hui Kian Kwee, Nhung Tran, Yvon Wang, Dan Bender, Eric Jennings.
THEMATIC FIELDS
History of Conflict, Violence, and Genocide
This field covers histories of group conflict (ethnic, religious, racial, socio-economic) and the worst manifestations of such conflict – genocide – in the pre-modern and modern world, both within states and across state boundaries. It includes histories of coexistence and cooperation between groups in order to achieve a fuller understanding of the generation of conflict and genocidal violence. It also addresses the problems and challenges resulting from conflict and genocide: refugee crises, the foundation of diasporic communities, societal reconstruction in the wake of violence, transitional justice, trauma and memory. A considerable number of faculty members in pre-modern and modern history focus research on this field, and many graduate students write their dissertations on subjects in the area.
Faculty: Doris Bergen, Heidi Bohaker, Sean Hawkins, Jennifer Jenkins, Thomas Lahusen, Mark Meyerson, Nakanyike Musisi, William Nelson, Melanie Newton, Derek Penslar, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Nicholas Terpstra, Nhung Tran, Lynne Viola, Rebecca Wittmann, Piotr Wróbel, Lucho van Isschot.
Cultural and Intellectual History
Cultural and intellectual historians study ideas in circulation, the meanings embedded within cultural forms, and the relationship of both to social, political, and economic formations. How are human practices–whether seventeenth-century crowd actions, a nineteenth century treastise, or twenty-first century photographs–sites of political, intellectual, and social contestation that can provide meaningful insights about past and present societies? Cultural and intellectual historians in the Department integrate a range of scholarly approaches and methods, including historical anthropology, visual culture, cultural studies, semiotics, critical race theory, film studies, queer theory, and (post)colonial studies. Our faculty cover a broad chronology, from late antiquity to the very recent past, and reach out across space as well – to Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. In particular, we emphasise transcultural phenomena: the mobility of people, objects, texts, films, and signifying practices, and their impact on our understanding of power relations. The department has particular depth in clusters like Material Culture, Visual Culture, and Intellectual History, and has built fruitful connections to local museums and to departments like Art and Cinema Studies.
Faculty: Ken Bartlett, Dan Bender, Laurie Bertram, Ritu Birla, Elspeth Brown, Li Chen, Kevin Coleman, Donna Gabaccia, Joseph Goering, Jens Hanssen, Adrienne Hood, Jennifer Jenkins, Malavika Katsuri, Charlie Keil, Juri Kimavae, Thomas Lahusen, Lori Loeb, Julie MacArthur, Steve Penfold, Jeffrey Pilcher, Ian Radforth, Bhavani Raman, Jayeeta Sharma, Alison Smith, Nicholas Terpstra Yvon Wang, Natalie Rothman.
History of Economy, Technology, and Society
The acceleration and intensification of “globalization” and the rise of neo-liberalism have raised new questions about the deep history of economic phenomenon and technological links. Scholars in this field examine a variety of economic practices and formations, including capitalism, labour, business, regulation, markets, commodities, finance, infrastructures, and technological systems. These diverse research agendas necessarily examine different scales (from the global to the local) and multiple sites and locations (North America, Europe, Asia, and other regions). Faculty and graduate students engage with diverse methods and intellectual traditions, from histories and theories of political economy, labour history, Marxism, environmental justice, and business practice. Within these diverse approaches and geographies, faculty in the Economy, Technology, and Society field share a broad intellectual commitment to understanding markets, systems, commodities, and other economic phenomenon in terms of cultural and social practices, critical theory, global and comparative frames, and intensely human histories.
Faculty: Dan Bender, Ritu Birla, Elspeth Brown, Donna Gabaccia, Brian Gettler, Rick Halpern, Adrienne Hood, Franca Iacovetta, Hui Kian Kwee, Tong Lam, Lori Loeb, Michelle Murphy, Steve Penfold, Derek Penslar, Jeffrey Pilcher, Ian Radforth, Steven Rockel, Lucho van Isschot.
History of Empire, Colonialism, and Indigeneity
Empire is an elusive and complicated phenomenon, yet it has been at the heart of the political, cultural, and economic history of most regions of the world at one time or another. Empires of vastly varying organisational types (geographically contiguous, maritime or overseas, religious, political, economic, formal and informal) seem to be ineluctable moments in almost all of human history. Where there have never been empires, one often finds societies that have actively resisted such incorporation through use of geographical advantage, military tactics, or alternative forms of accommodation in order to maintain their sovereignty. For the rest of the world, most societies have found their sovereignty stolen, co-opted, or relinquished and incorporated into imperial networks that amalgamated several or many former sovereign societies, states or nations into a single entity. As inescapable as empires might seem they are also fragile, unstable, and, ultimately, unmanageable entities—rise has always been followed by decline, decay, dissolution, and dispersal. Our faculty study the complicated categories of empires and colonies across space, time and regions, from a variety of different analytical standpoints. Our research and teaching on these themes address core issues from the locus of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and the Caribbean, and have generated broader conversations and collaborations within and across various centres, disciplines and departments at the University, including Anthropology, Religion, Geography and Political Science.
Faculty: Dan Bender, Ritu Birla, Heidi Bohaker, Li Chen, Nick Everett, Tak Fujitani, Jens Hanssen, Paula Hastings, Jennifer Jenkins, Eric Jennings, Madhavi Kale, Malavika Katsuri, Tong Lam, Lisa Mar, Margaret MacMillan, Sean Mills, William Nelson, Jan Noel, Bhavani Raman, Steven Rockel, Natalie Rothman, Jayeeta Sharma, Alison Smith, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Lucho van Isschot.
Food History
Just as a well-cooked meal can draw people together for stimulating conversation, so can the study of food history create valuable connections between diverse areas of scholarly inquiry. Food is an important nexus between the material life of the senses, human health, labour, technology, and business, on the one hand, and symbolic worlds of religion, politics, culture, and social distinction, on the other. Historical scholarship on food also holds important opportunities for interdisciplinary research across the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. With more than a dozen faculty members who have published significant scholarly works or teach classes on food, the University of Toronto is uniquely positioned to offer a dedicated graduate field in food history. The Department is also the editorial home of the only discipline-specific journal in the field, Global Food History. Students who come to study food history at Toronto will find potential advisors with national and chronological expertise from around the world and throughout history.
Faculty: Dan Bender, Paul Cohen, Kevin Coleman, Nick Everett, Donna Gabaccia, Rick Halpern, Franca Iacovetta, Steve Penfold, Jeffrey Pilcher, Jayeeta Sharma, Alison Smith, Nhung Tran.
History of Gender, Sex, and Sexualities
Research in the department challenges national categories, methodological “traditions,” and narrative frameworks. Our faculty offer epistemological and analytical grounding in theories of gender and sexualities, and address a wide range of subjects from the inner cities of North America to the elite salons of East Africa, the cosmopolitan cultures of South Asia, the villages of early modern Europe, and immigrant communities throughout the world, Research strengths include the study of colonialism, gender, and the law; transnational feminist histories of radical exiles; histories of queer and trans subject formations; religion and spirituality; entanglements of sex, race, and gender in commercial cultures and economic practices as well as in socio-religious spaces, sites, and ideologies; histories of biopolitics, medicine, and reproduction; the meanings and politics of family and kinship, from biological to fictive; childhood, race and empire; intersections of gender and international relations; violence; and post-colonial theory. Graduate students may choose from comparative courses that interrogate historicist assumptions about modernity, sexed and raced embodiment, or the universality of gendered and sexed identities, as well as regional-specific classes that go deep into the work of gender and sex into a historical site, thereby challenging assumptions about students’ place in the world.
Faculty: Laurie Bertram, Ritu Birla, Elspeth Brown, Carol Chin, Donna Gabaccia, Franca Iacovetta, Malavika Katsuri, Lisa Mar, Cecilia Morgan, Michelle Murphy, Nakanyike Musisi, Melanie Newton, Jan Noel, Nicholas Terpstra, Nhung Tran, Yvon Wang.
International Relations
Since humans first began living in groups they have been practicing the art of interacting with other societies. Relations of trade, politics, cooperation and competition; structures of empire, state, nation and would-be nation; trends of colonisation and decolonisation, globalisation and retrenchment: the scope of research in the history of international relations is global. International history builds on a solid technique grounded in archival research and broad theoretical insight to explore issues that are limited only by the imagination. Aside from the core value of such endeavours to the Department of History’s own curriculum, the work of International History faculty contributes powerfully to such on-campus centres as the Munk School of Global Affairs. Faculty and students in turn draw on the broadest range of expertise from across the university, including economics, political science and law, specific knowledge of all the world’s regions and many of its languages and cultures, to develop projects that cast new light on some of the oldest questions to interest historians: why, as Handel’s famous oratorio put it, do the nations so furiously rage together?
Faculty: Bob Bothwell, Li Chen, Carol Chin, Ron Pruessen, Jens Hanssen, Denis Smyth.
History of Medicine
Research and teaching in the History of Medicine spans all eras and regions, from the origins of the healing arts to the latest scientific breakthroughs. Scholarship involving historical approaches to medicine is based in several centres at the university, including the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science (IHPST) http://www.hps.utoronto.ca and the History of Medicine Program in the Faculty of
Medicine as well as in the Department of History. Although most of these scholars focus on the modern era (eighteenth century to the present) their areas of specialisation are otherwise diverse, including representations/perceptions of the body and self; National and colonial histories of medicine and public health; issues involving gender and sexuality, race, eugenics and genetics; psychosomatic medicine, psychiatry and psychopharmacology.
Faculty: Nick Everett, Edward Shorter, Michelle Murphy.
History of Migration/Diaspora
Once practiced mainly as the writing of national histories of immigration to modern plural nations the scholarly field of migration/diaspora has expanded in new directions as it responded to the spatial and interdisciplinary turns and to the development of longue durée world and global histories in the 1990s. Some historians remain interested in immigration, ethnicity, and race in particular modern nations, and deal with analysis of race and ethnicity that is central to understanding policy, inclusion, and exclusion. Others work as global and transnational historians, framing their research and writing around transnational human movements, migrations and diasporas. Our department engages in both, while also pursuing research into the ways circuits of human mobility overlap or diverge from other kinds of circulations (media, commodities, capital, ideas) to organize the world geopolitically, culturally, economically and temporally.
Faculty: Laurie Bertram, Tak Fujitani, Donna Gabaccia, Paula Hastings, Franca Iacovetta, Russ Kazal, Hui Kian Kwee, Mark McGowan, Lisa Mar, Sean Mills, Derek Penslar, Jeffrey Pilcher, Ian Radforth, Natalie Rothman, Jayeeta Sharma, Nicholas Terpstra, David Wilson.
History of Religion and Society
Social and cultural development is closely connected to religious aspirations and repertoires of knowledge. Despite claims to secularism, the foundations of most pre-modern and many modern cultures lie in the religious experiences of the first one and half millennia or more of the common era. Religion has long shaped the daily lives of people across the world, inseparable from politics, culture and economic matters. This field allows exploration of the interconnectedness of religion, culture, politics, economics and society, and examines questions about the nature of belief, the role of ritual and practice, and the importance of faith to the construction and re-creation of fundamental forms of consciousness and living. Our strengths in the study of religion and religiosities in Medieval and Early Modern European history open out to faculty and students attending to a wider Early Modern and Modern World, from Peru to Vietnam, and from Canada to Iran.
Faculty: Doris Bergen, Carol Chin, Isabelle Cochelin, Michael Gervers, Joe Goering, Malavika Katsuri, Hui Kian Kwee, Mark McGowan, Mark Meyerson, Jan Noel, G. Silano, Nicholas Terpstra, Nhung Tran, Shafique Virani.
Social History
Social history approaches the past through the lens of personal networks, life cycles, and kin relations, and works to recreate the structures that shaped daily life. The department’s social historians are active in all geographic and chronological fields. Their research draws heavily on social science methodologies, and historical sociology and anthropology in particular, in order to analyze those structures as social constructed and malleable rather than given or fixed. The social historians in the department collaborate in a range of other thematic fields, including chiefly conflict, economy, gender, migration, and religion. Their work deals with a wide range of social groups (women, indigenous people, workers, merchants, entrepreneurs, farmers), sites (institutions, prisons, cities), and themes (social control, violence, moral control).
Faculty: Heidi Bohaker, Elspeth Brown, Laurie Bertram, Isabelle Cochelin, Paul Cohen, Donna Gabaccia, Michael Gervers, Rick Halpern, Paula Hastings, Adrienne Hood, Sean Hawkins, Franca Iacovetta, Juri Kimavae, Lori Loeb, Mark McGowan, Nakanyike Musisi, Melanie Newton, Ian Radforth, Jim Retallack, Natalie Rothman, Ed Shorter, Alison Smith, Nicholas Terpstra, David Wilson.
History of State, Politics, and Law
Ronald Hutton defined political history as the “study of the organization and operation of power in past societies,” but the field – like the politics it studies – is plural, contested, and complex. Our faculty bring diverse approaches and research agendas to the history of politics broadly conceived. Research agendas include work on government institutions, governmentality, sovereignty, political parties and elections, political economy, public spheres, social movements and radical politics, legal history, and human rights, all within local, national, and trans-national frames and diverse historical periods from the early modern to the modern. The field also puts these categories themselves into question, taking the state seriously without making it the sole object of study. This is an area of both traditional strength and recent vibrancy in the department.
Faculty: Ritu Birla, Heidi Bohaker, Bob Bothwell, Li Chen, Tak Fujitani, Paula Hastings, Malavika Katsuri, Russ Kazal, Sean Mills, Jennifer Mori, Steve Penfold, Jim Retallack, Nicholas Terpstra, Nhung Tran, Lucho van Ischot, Lynne Viola, David Wilson, Rebecca Wittman, Piotr Wrobel.