History at Hamilton

The study of history at Hamilton provides a perspective on other cultures, times and places. As a history major, you will learn research, writing and speaking skills that are valuable in many areas of life and work. Concentrators go on to a variety of careers thoroughly trained to read critically, think rigorously and write cogently and persuasively.

Concentration and Minor

A history concentration requires ten courses from among any three of the following geographical areas: Africa, East Asia (China and Japan), Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia and the United States.

Students are encouraged to enroll in a 100-level course during their first year. These 100-level courses vary significantly in geographic and chronological focus, but any one of them serves as a prerequisite for all 200-level courses.

A minor in history consists of five courses (one 100-level and at least one 300-level course). You might also consider a double concentration in history and another discipline in the social sciences, humanities, languages or even math or the sciences.

Student Research

All Hamilton history courses stress reading textsÑ both primary sources and secondary books and articles - and writing critical papers. Advanced work at the 300-level builds on these skills in research projects on topics of the students' choosing. Some particularly interesting research papers written by history concentrators include the following:

Motoori Norinagi Rocks 18th-Century Japan: Examination of the Kokugaku Movement in Early Tokugawa

The Ideal of Womanhood among the Sans-Culottes of the French Revolution

The Rhineland Jews: Murdered or Martyred?

Holy War Ideology in The Song of Roland and The Song of Aspremont

Insult and Invective in the Crusading Chronicles

Senior Project

The capstone of the history concentraton is the seminar paper or honor's thesis - a semester-long research project for which the student engages in in-depth research on a specific problem. Recent seminar paper titles include:

The British Partition of India: A Struggle between Cultures and Conceptions of Nationalism

The Unity of the Iroquois: The Peoples of the Longhouse in the American Revolutionary Period

Burakumin: Victims of Continued Discrimination in Modern Japanese Society

French Foreign Policy Toward Germany after World War I: A Study of France's Reaction to the Rhineland Crisis of 1936

The Shift of Intellectual Paradigms in China from 1860 to 1930 and the Role of Marxism

Male Witchcraft in 16th and 17th-Century Europe

The AIDS Epidemic in America: A Disappointing Response

Special Opportunities

Guest speakers: The Department of History regularly invites distinguished historians and scholars to campus. In recent years, Prasenjit Duara of the University of Chicago spoke on nationalism, imperialism and transnationalism in Modern China; Leo Ou-fan Lee of Harvard University spoke on cultural cross-currents in the Chinese diaspora.

Study abroad: The department encourages study in rigorous programs abroad. Many history concentrators study in such foreign countries as Spain, France, Italy, England, Austria, China and Japan for at least one semester.

Awards and prizes: The department awards four prizes at the College's annual Class and Charter Day, all for high academic achievement in history. The Edgar Baldwin Graves Prize in History is awarded to the top senior in the department; the Darling Prize in American History is awarded to the senior with the most distinguished record in American history; the Putnam Prize in American History awards a gift of books for the senior with the second-most distinguished record in American history; and the Edwin B. Lee, Jr. Prize in Asian History/Asian Studies is awarded to a senior who has excelled in the study of Asian history or in Asian studies.

Honor society: Hamilton has a fully accredited chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national honor society in history. Students have delivered papers at regional and national meetings, and published papers in the society's journal. Phi Alpha Theta is one of the oldest and most respected national honor societies.

Selected Courses in History

100-level courses: Atlantic World in the Era of the Slave Trade; Trade, Travel and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 500-1500; Introduction to East Asian Cultures; The Emergence of Modern Western Europe; The Civilization of Greece and the Near East; Women in Modern Europe; Europe since 1815; Roman Civilization; America in the World Arena, 1890-1990; The Rise of the Modern Presidency; The Silk Road: Crossroads of Cultures; Ireland: Myth and History; U.S. Women's History; The American West

200-level courses: Introduction to American Studies; African-American History; Medieval Europe; Europe in the Twentieth Century; Early Russian History; Modern Russian History; Modern European Intellectual History; The Family in Modern History; American Colonial History; The Old South; American Women and Work Through 1865; African Dimensions in Latin America; The Rise and Fall of International Communism; 19th-Century America; Recent American History; Latin America; Cultural and Political Traditions of Japan; Modern Japan; Conservative Thought in the United States; Cultural and Political Traditions of China; Modern China; Renaissance and Reformation Europe

300-level courses: The Philosophy of History; Black Reconstruction; The French Revolution; African-American Women's History; Nazi Germany; Seminar in European Intellectual History; Chinese Intellectual History; Studies in American Colonial History; Seminar: Revolutionary America; Studies in Women's History; Studies in Russian History; Slavery and the Civil War; Women and the American Social Reform Tradition; Seminar on the Sixties; Studies in American Progressivism; The Crusades; Topics in American Biography; Seminar in American Studies

400-level courses: Research Seminars in American History, European History and East Asian History Senior Thesis

Faculty

All members of the department are active scholars, having earned numerous prizes for their books - including a Pulitzer nomination - and grants from such institutions as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Among their research and teaching interests are the following:

Douglas Ambrose (Ph.D., State University of New York at Binghamton) - Early American history; Old South

Kevin P. Grant (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley) - England and its empires

Maurice Isserman (Ph.D., University of Rochester) - 20th-century American history; political history; labor policies

Esther S. Kanipe (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) - European social history; modern France; women and family

Shoshana Keller (Ph.D., Indiana University) - Modern Russian history; Central Asia; religion

Alfred H. Kelly (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) - Modern German history; European intellectual and cultural history; science

Maureen C. Miller (Ph.D., Harvard University) - Medieval, Renaissance and Reformation history

Robert L. Paquette (Ph.D., University of Rochester) - Old South; slavery; Atlantic world

Marcy S. Sacks (Ph.D. candidate, University of California at Berkeley) - U.S. history history

Eugene M. Tobin (Ph.D., Brandeis University) - 20th-century American history (president of the College)

Lisa N. Trivedi (Ph.D. candidate, University of California at Davis) - modern South Asian history

Thomas A. Wilson (Ph.D., University of Chicago) - East Asian history; historiography

Alumni

History majors go on to careers in business, communication, education, government and a variety of other fields. Others enter graduate programs in medicine, law and business. Examples include:

History majors go on to careers in business, communication, education, government and a variety of other fields. Others enter graduate programs in medicine, law and business. Examples include:

New York State Supreme Court Justice

History of Religion Professor, Harvard University

Executive Vice President, National Newspaper Association

Director of Glaucoma Surgery, The Center for Sight (N.Y.)

Principal, Port Orange (Fla.) High School

Major General, U.S. Army

Director, American Museum of Natural History

Scientist, University of Minnesota School of Public Health

Art History Professor, Dartmouth University

Vice President, Citibank, N.A.

Senior Specialist, Library of Congress

President, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Executive Director, Chinese-American Voters Education Committee