Interdepartmental Strengths

Graduate students in history at Northwestern draw on clusters of faculty strength that extend well beyond the limits of the history department. The examples that follow are indicative rather than exhaustive.

African Studies

In addition to specialists in the history department, Northwestern enjoys one of the greatest concentrations of strength in African studies on this continent. Among these Africanists are Sandra Richards (African American Studies and Theater); Richard Lepine (African and Asian languages - Swahili); Caroline Beldsoe, Karen Tranberg Hansen, and Robert Launay (Anthropology); Will Reno (Political Science); and Margaret Drewal (Performance Studies). The Program of African Studies and several institutes housed within it offer additional opportunities to graduate students in African Studies. These include the Institute of Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities and the Program on International Cooperation in Africa, which focuses on border regions. For information about these programs, write:

 

Program of African Studies
Northwestern University
620 Library Place
Evanston, Illinois 60208-4110.

Economic History

Members of the history department whose scholarly activity includes research in economic history and who help provide comparative perspectives for each other's students are Henry Binford, Regina Grafe, Peter Hayes and Laura Hein. In addition, one of America's most prominent economic historians, Joel Mokyr, who specializes in the economic and technological development of modern Europe, holds a joint appointment in the history and economics departments. The economics department itself includes Joseph Ferrie, a specialist in the history of immigration. Sociologists Bruce G. Carruthers and Carol A. Heimer provide other valuable contexts. The economics department sponsors a lively program of seminars and guest speakers in economic history and meets jointly several times each year with economic historians from the Chicago area to hear distinguished outside speakers.

Gender, Sexuality and Women's History

Students interested in the history of gender and sexuality have an exceptionally strong cluster of faculty with whom to work at Northwestern. The core group includes, in European history, Tessie Liu and Alexandra Owen, and in U.S. history, Michael Sherry. Among the other History faculty who have taught or published in this area are Peter Carroll, Laura Hein, Melissa Macauley, Sarah Maza, Carl Petry, and Ji-Yeon Yuh. Students who choose this area as a specialization field or minor field can avail themselves of regularly offered theory courses along with their field specific classes, and of resources beyond the department, including the graduate certification in Gender Studies program. Just a few of the many non-History Northwestern faculty members whose work explores these issues are Nicola Beisel (Sociology); Micaela di Leonardo (Anthropology); Hollis Clayson (Art History); Christine Froula (English); Bonnie Honig (Political Science); Laura Kipnis (Radio/TV/Film); Ann Orloff (Sociology); Julia Stern (English); Mimi White (Radio/TV/Film).

History of Science and Technology

Graduate students interested in the history of science, technology, or medicine can work in the history department with Ken Alder and Alexandra Owen, as well as with other faculty members in related areas, such as Joel Mokyr. The program in Science and Human Culture offers annual fellowships to graduate students interested in this field, and also brings in annual postdoctoral fellows and sponsors a weekly faculty-student seminar with speakers of international reputation. The emphasis in the program is on teaching students how to use the history of science, technology, and medicine to answer broader historical questions.

Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Northwestern has one of the most eminent groups of scholars working in medieval and early modern European thought, culture, and art in North America. One of the special strengths of faculty research is in the history of religion, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but they also have pursued important work in many aspects of intellectual, cultural, and social history. Within the history department, students may work with the medievalists Dyan Elliott, Richard Kieckhefer, and Carl Petry. For the Renaissance and Early Modern period graduate students study with Sarah Maza, William Monter, and Edward Muir. Prominent scholars in other departments include the Art Historian Claudia Swan; English literary scholars Martin Mueller, Barbara Newman, Regina Schwartz, and Wendy Wall; Romance language literary scholar Dario Fernandez-Morera. Several interdepartmental study groups meet on a regular basis, both independently and under the auspices of the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities. For information on the Graduate School's cluster in medieval studies, please visit this link.

Modern Europe

The department's Modern Europeanists span a wide range of area and methodologies, clustering around two main specialties, economic/business history and intellectual/cultural history. Peter Hayes in German history and Joel Mokyr in Economic history are interested in, respectively, the history of business institutions and the history of technology, while Benjamin Frommer works on legal institutions. Tessie Liu has applied innovative methods drawn from women's and gender history to labor history in Modern France and Ken Alder, a historian of science, has published extensively on the history of technology in Revolutionary France. The department's Modern European historians with an interest in intellectual history include Alexandra Owen in Modern British history. Modern Europeanists interested in social and cultural history include John Bushnell for twentieth-century Russia, Deborah Cohen for Modern Britain, Tessie Liu for gender and race in nineteenth-century France, and Benjamin Frommer for East-Central Europe. The department's economic and business historians are actively involved with Northwestern's Center for International and Comparative Studies, while many of our intellectual and cultural historians have held fellowships in the interdisciplinary Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities.