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Welcome

Welcome to the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Over forty historians in the standing faculty with a broad range of research specialties advance our understanding of the past. Penn's graduate program trains the next generation of scholars and teachers. The Department's strong commitment to undergraduate education can be seen in the prominence of the history major, one of the largest on campus, in the numerous teaching awards earned by both standing faculty and graduate students, and history's strong presence in general education. History faculty direct and participate in many interdisciplinary centers on the Penn campus, and edit a number of scholarly journals.

 

Events

Not Even Past: New Perspectives on American History

January 28, 2009

KATHLEEN BROWN in conversation with Kathy Peiss (video)
Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America

February 18, 2009

THOMAS SUGRUE in conversation with Sarah Barringer Gordon (video)
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North

March 18, 2009

STEVEN HAHN and BARBARA SAVAGE (video)
Rethinking African American Politics and Religion

April 15, 2009

THOMAS CHILDERS in conversation with Bruce Kuklick (video)
Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation’s Troubled Homecoming from World War II

More »

View a complete list of This Week's Events

 

Location

College HallThe Department of History is located in College Hall, one of Penn's most distinctive historic buildings. Built in 1872, College Hall was the first building on the University's new campus in West Philadelphia. Designed by Thomas Webb Richards, a professor of drawing and architecture, the building originally housed almost all college functions. College Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and forms part of the University of Pennsylvania Historic District.

News

Commencement 2009

Undergraduate Award Winners »

Look back at all the Department News from the 2007-08 Academic Year »

Faculty

Jessica Goldberg has been selected for membership in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for 2009-10.... More »

Phoebe Kropp has received an ACLS/Oscar Handlin Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for 2009-10.... More »

Walter McDougall has been awarded the Athenaeum Literary Award for the best book by a Philadelphia author, forThroes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877 (to be awarded May 6th).

Kristen Stromberg Childers was awarded the Gold Family Research Fellowship at the National Humanities Center.

Graduate Students

Juan Ponce has received a John Carter Brown Research Fellowship.

Chase Richards has been awarded a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst Graduate Scholarship to do his research in Germany next year.

Sarah van Beurden has received an in-residence research and writing fellowship from the Institute for Historical Studies at UTexas Austin for Spring 2010.

Read a complete list of all award winners and job placement successes from the 2008-09 Academic Year.