Graduate application deadline extended to July 1 for Fall 2022.
Examining the Past to Understand the future
Studying history through today's lens
Who We Are
With an unparalleled location in the nation's capital, award-winning faculty and access to some of the most important research repositories in the world, the GW Department of History offers an ideal platform from which to explore our past. Undergraduate and graduate students are exposed to a diversity of topics, from the Africa diaspora to the Cold War, from imperialism to urbanization, from the founding of Islam to Jewish history, from race relations to labor, law and politics. Students graduate with the knowledge and analytical tools necessary for success in a wide range of careers.
Where We Are
The Washington, D.C., area offers a front-row seat to history. Students are immersed in their surroundings through trips to museums, battlefields and historical sites including the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Jamestown Settlement, the Gettysburg Battlefield, the Society of the Cincinnati and George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate.
Through the department's collaborative relationships with institutions throughout the region, students also have extraordinary access to historical documents at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Security Archive and the Smithsonian Institution.
Upcoming Events
See our News and Events page for more.
Farah Al-Nakib, BA '01
Author, Kuwait Transformed: Oil and Urban Life
"[Senior year] was the first time I ever studied Kuwait's history. ... Being able to unearth unused documents about the subject I was researching was really thrilling. I didn't quite know it back then, but that experience officially turned me into a historian."
History by the Numbers
Our Highlights
Department Headlines
Africa's Impact on the African American Experience
How does Africa figure in “real and imagined ways” to the African American experience? Professor of History and International Affairs Nemata Blyden spoke with CCAS Dean Paul Wahlbeck about the customs and traditions—from religion and food to language and music—that carried over from the African continent centuries ago and can still be seen today.
Failing Grade: Are Americans Flunking History?
History professor Christopher Brick has a lesson plan to raise our humanities IQ.
Commemorating History’s Dark Chapter
PhD student Ashley Valanzola is researching the stories of six extraordinary Jewish women—Holocaust survivors who worked to honor the memory of lives lost.
