As MLK Jr. Day celebrates its 30th anniversary as a national day of service, History Professor Eric Arnesen explained how the holiday has shaped the civil rights leader’s legacy.
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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.
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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collaborative relationships with institutions throughout the region, students also have extraordinary access to historical documents at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Security Archive and the Smithsonian Institution.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
Professors cry ‘huzzah,’ savor scientific sweets at department holiday parties
From historical homages to scientific sweets, the history department is one of many departments across GW that celebrates the end of the fall semester and the start of the holiday season with...
History's Timothy Shenk weighs in on how the Democratic Party can win the presidency this November.
New Endowment Memorializes Beloved Professor’s Impact
History and Classics’ Professor Diane Harris Cline was remembered as a devoted educator. A gift honoring her legacy will aid students.
Faculty Books
Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative
In Weapons in Space, Aaron Bateman draws from recently declassified American, European, and Soviet documents to give an insightful account of the SDI.
Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York
Acclaimed historian Tyler Anbinder presents for the first time the Famine generation’s individual and collective tales of struggle, perseverance, and triumph.
Mungo Park's Ghost: The Haunted Hubris of British Explorers in Nineteenth-Century Africa
Telling the full story of two failed British expeditions for the first time, Dane Kennedy argues that they provide fresh insight into British ambitions in Africa.
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.