History at Notre Dame
At Notre Dame, the Department of History continues to grow into one of the nation's leading centers for historical study. Home to a faculty that has a doubled in size over the past 15 years, the Department offers an array of historical methods and subjects that go far beyond its widely known strengths in religious and intellectual history.
In the last three years alone, Department faculty have won several American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, along with major grants from the Hoover Institution, the Spencer Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. Books written with such support have garnered a number of awards during the past five years, including the Bancroft prize in American history, and the American Historical Association's James A. Rawley prize in Atlantic History, The John E. Fagg prize, the Dunning prize and the John K. Fairbanks prize.
Graduate students capitalize on the Department's diversity, writing dissertations in and across the fields of American history, medieval history, early modern and modern European history, and Latin American history. Recent Ph.D. recipients have accepted tenure-track positions at institutions such as the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, and Haverford College.
350 undergraduates benefit from a recently redesigned major program and an innovative honors program. Supported by departmental and Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program funds, undergraduates pursue archival research in the United States and abroad. The best students write theses that compare favorably with publications by professional historians. With analytic and communication skills honed in their historical studies, history majors go on to succeed in business, law, journalism, and academia.
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