Welcome to Georgetown History

The History Department is committed to upholding Georgetown’s ideals as a student-centered research university through our productive scholarship, our international and global orientation, and our commitment to hands-on graduate and undergraduate teaching. We believe that teaching and research only reach distinction when they are integrated by a faculty devoted to excellence in both.

With more than 40 full-time faculty members, the Department combines geographical breadth with chronological depth. We offer nine fields of study, and are nationally and internationally recognized leaders in transregional, global, and comparative history, with particular strengths in World, Atlantic World, Pacific World, international diplomacy, inter-societal relations, and global environmental history. Faculty scholarship and course offerings engage with a rich variety of themes, including gender; labor, radicalism, and social movements; African American history; slavery; ethnic politics and nationalism; the history of violence and imperialism; migration and borderlands; consumer, food, and material culture; religion; science and medicine; historical linguistics; architecture and urban history; and military history, among others.

The Department offers two undergraduate History majors: History in Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences and International History in the School of Foreign Service. Students in the College of Arts & Sciences, the McDonough School of Business, and the School of Nursing and Health Studies can also minor in History. We have a Masters’ program in Masters in Global, International, and Comparative History, as well as a distinguished Ph.D. program.

History faculty also teach courses in the SFS Masters’ of Foreign Service program and in five regional Masters’ programs: the Master of Arts in German and European Studies, in Arab Studies, Russian and East European Studies, Asian Studies, and Latin American studies. We are active in an array of interdisciplinary programs such as American Studies, Medieval Studies, African Studies, Women and Gender Studies, African American Studies, the Center for Christian Muslim Understanding, and Science, Technology and International Affairs.

Our commitment to teaching has been rewarded multiple times. As of 2021, History faculty have won the Deans’ Excellence in Teaching Award more often than any other department in the College. Dorothy Brown, former Chair of History and first female Provost of Georgetown University, was one of the inaugural recipients in 1996. Current faculty members who have won the prize include Tommaso Astarita (2000), Osama Abi-Mershed (2009), Carol Benedict (2004), David Collins (2014), Amy Leonard (2007), Chandra Manning, (2020), Bryan McCann (2011), Meredith McKittrick (2010), and Kathy Olesko (2016).

As members of a collegial academic community, History faculty collaborate actively with one another across thematic and regional sub-fields in a variety of contexts, including our faculty seminar and in the workshops, conferences, and public lectures organized by the Georgetown Institute for Global History. These events provide opportunities for presentation of cutting-edge historical research, which students at all levels are encouraged to attend and in which they regularly take part.

We invite you to browse our website to learn more about the opportunities provided by our department and the many accomplishments of our faculty, students, and alumni.