Examining the Past to Understand the future
Studying history through today's lens
Graduate Virtual Open House: October 18–28
Registration is open for the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS) Graduate Virtual Open House! The online event includes program-specific information sessions and opportunities to engage with current graduate students, faculty and our admissions team.
The History Department is hosting an information session for prospective graduate students on Wednesday, October 20 at 11 a.m. EDT.
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collaborative relationships with institutions throughout the region, students also have extraordinary access to historical documents at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Security Archive and the Smithsonian Institution.
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
Failing Grade: Are Americans Flunking History?
History professor Christopher Brick has a lesson plan to raise our humanities IQ.
Class Notes, Fall 2021
Mohammed Ali, BA ’03, BA ’04, appeared on the game show Jeopardy.
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.
