Quito J. Swan Brings Global Links to Africana Studies
As the new director of the CCAS Africana Studies Program, Swan strives to make connections—across disciplines, movements and oceans.
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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collaborative relationships with institutions throughout the region, students also have extraordinary access to historical documents at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Security Archive and the Smithsonian Institution.
"Thanks to the History Department, I was able to learn fascinating subjects, conduct important research, conference with knowledgeable and attentive professors, and graduate feeling prepared for the future as a historian."
Max Skidelsky
BA '20
History by the Numbers
Our Highlights
Department Headlines
History Restored: The Untold Story of Black Civil War Soldiers
History Ph.D. candidate and Marine veteran A.J. Cade was inspired by a forgotten Civil War regiment of all-Black soldiers and officers. Now, he’s bringing their legacy to life.
Artificial Intelligence Is Here to Stay, so We Should Think more about It
Professor Katrin Schultheiss has taken the lead at GW in thinking about the implications of artificial intelligence for the college classroom.
Backlash: Inside Florida’s African American Studies Ban
To history professor Erin D. Chapman, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ restrictions on the AP curriculum is a dangerous precedent—for educators and a divided country.
Faculty Books
The Tarikh-i Ḥamidi: A Late-Qing Uyghur History
The Tarikh-i Ḥamidi is an epic and tragic history from the region of Xinjiang in northwest China, the homeland of the Muslim-majority Uyghur people.
To Trust the People with Arms: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment
To Trust the People with Arms explores the remarkable and complex legal history of how the right to bear arms was widely accepted during the nation's founding, was near extinction in the late...
The Multiracial Promise: Harold Washington's Chicago and the Democratic Struggle in Reagan's America
Drawing on a rich array of archives and oral history interviews, Gordon K. Mantler offers a bold reexamination of the Harold Washington movement and moment.
History's Joel Blecher co-edited the first English translation of the preeminent meditation on plagues and pandemics from the Islamic medieval world.