Transforming our Understanding of the Past

The faculty of the Department of History and Art History produce scholarship at the cutting edge of their disciplines. Our research spans the centuries from the Ancient World to the early 2000s and covers a vast geography, including the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. The impact of our work has been recognized with book prizes from the American Historical Association, the German Studies Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and the American Academy of Religion. 

Our impressive level of external research support makes us a leader among history departments across the nation. We have won grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Gallery of Art, and many, many others. Between 2008 and 2018, only 12 US universities won more funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities than GMU’s History and Art History faculty did—a stellar record for a single department and one we have continued since then.

Our scholarship comes in a wide range of forms. In addition to books and articles, our faculty curate exhibits in the fields of art and public history. Our department’s digital history center, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, pioneered this field when it was created. Thirty years later, it continues to lead the way in applying digital methods to historical questions, analyzing data to uncover hidden patterns of social and cultural history. Finally, one of the nation’s leading scholarly journals in history, the Journal of Social History, is housed in the department.