History

Return to: USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences  

The Department of History offers courses in ancient, medieval and modern European history, including Russian history; in both North and Latin American history; in the history of East Asia; and in world history. Some of the department’s courses are chronological, some national or regional and some are thematic, with special strengths in gender, race and ethnicity, popular culture, medicine and urban history. The faculty is committed to continuous review and revision of the department curriculum, as student needs and professional emphases shift. Many departmental courses meet general education requirements, and various programs for majors and non-majors are available. The department offers an honors program for qualified seniors. Honors programs are individually arranged through consultation with the honors director, and completion of an honors thesis is required. The Department of History offers the BA, a minor, the MA and PhD in History; the BA in Law, History, and Culture; the BA in History and Social Science Education; and the minor in Resistance to Genocide; and, the minor in the History and Culture of Business.

Social Science Building 153
(213) 740-1657
FAX: (213) 740-6999
Email: history@dornsife.usc.edu
dornsife.usc.edu/hist
Chair: Philip J. Ethington, PhD

Faculty

University Professor: Kevin Starr, PhD

University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature and Professor of English and History: Leo Braudy, PhD (English)

Barbara Streisand Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies and Professor of History and Gender Studies: Alice Echols, PhD*

Gordon L. MacDonald Chair in History and Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures: Joan Piggott, PhD

Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History: Wolf Gruner, PhD

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the Early Modern Studies Institute and Professor of History and Anthropology: Peter C. Mancall, PhD

Turpanjian Early Career Chair in Contemporary Armenian Studies and Assistant Professor of History: Richard Antaramian, PhD

Professors: Elinor A. Accampo, PhD; Lisa Bitel, PhD; William Deverell, PhD*; Philip J. Ethington, PhD; Richard W. Fox, PhD; Ariela Gross, PhD (Law); Karen Halttunen, PhD; Deborah Harkness, PhD*; Kyung Moon Hwang, PhD; Daniel Klerman, PhD (Law); Carolyn Malone, PhD (Art History); Paul Lerner, PhD*; John Pollini, PhD (Art History); Azade-Ayse Rorlich, PhD*; Steven J. Ross, PhD*; George J. Sanchez, PhD* (American Studies and Ethnicity); Mary Sarotte, PhD (International Relations); Vanessa Schwartz, PhD; Nayan Shah (American Studies and Ethnicity); Brett Sheehan, PhD*; David Sloane, PhD (Public Policy); Jacob Soll, PhD

Associate Professors: Marjorie R. Becker, PhD; Bettine Birge, PhD (East Asian Languages and Cultures); Daniela Bleichmar, PhD (Art History); Jason Glenn, PhD; Joshua Goldstein, PhD; Sarah Gualtieri, PhD*; Lon Kurashige, PhD; Ramzi Rouighi, PhD; Francile Wilson, PhD (American Studies and Ethnicity)

Assistant Professors: Gerard Clinton Rainier Godart, PhD; Edgardo Perez Morales, PhD; Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, PhD; Diana Williams, PhD

Assistant Professor (Research): Peter Westwick, PhD

Assistant Professor (Teaching): Lindsay O’Neill, PhD

Adjunct Professor: Richard Hovannisian, PhD

Professor Emerita of History and John R. Hubbard Chair in British History Emerita: Judith Bennett, PhD*

Professor Emerita of History and John R. Hubbard Chair in British History Emerita: Cynthia Herrup, PhD

Professor Emerita and John R. Hubbard Chair Emerita in History: Carole Shammas, PhD

Emeritus Professors: Lois W. Banner, PhD*; Gordon M. Berger, PhD; Roger Dingman, PhD; Charlotte Furth, PhD; Paul W. Knoll, PhD; Franklin D. Mitchell, PhD; D. Brendan Nagle, PhD; Edwin J. Perkins, PhD; John E. Wills, PhD

Associate Professor Emeritus: Terry L. Seip, PhD*

*Recipient of university-wide or college teaching award.

Undergraduate Degrees

Advisement

The Department of History has one full-time staff adviser available to provide academic advisement, assist in the navigation of Department and University requirements, review progress and future plans. Students interested in a major or minor in the Department should contact the adviser to schedule a meeting. Faculty Advisers are also available to offer guidance on pursuing the field of history both within and beyond USC. 

Honors Program for History (BA)

The department offers a two-semester honors program, in which qualified students spend their first semester in an honors track in an upper-division seminar or take HIST 490x Directed Research  in their concentration. During the second semester, all honors students are required to take HIST 492 Honors Thesis  in which each completes a thesis project on a topic of his or her choosing under faculty direction. Contact the department honors director for further information. To graduate with honors, department majors must have a minimum GPA of 3.5 in their major course work.

Honors Program for History and Social Science Education (BA)

The department offers a two-semester honors program, in which qualified students spend their first semester in an honors track in an upper-division seminar on HIST 490x Directed Research  in their concentration. During the second semester, all honors students are required to take HIST 492 Honors Thesis  in which each completes a thesis project on a topic of his or her choosing under faculty direction. Contact the department honors director for further information. To graduate with honors, department majors must have a minimum GPA of 3.5 in their major course work. 

Honor Society

The department sponsors its own local chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society. Phi Alpha Theta provides opportunities for students to take their interest in history beyond the classroom and to cultivate their intellectual pursuits in a community setting.

Membership is open to history majors and other interested students with a 3.33 GPA in history courses and a 3.0 overall GPA. For more information contact the honors director.

Teaching Credential Requirements

Credential requirements in California and elsewhere are complex and changeable. Students interested in preparing for public school teaching should contact the Credentials Office, Rossier School of Education, and the undergraduate adviser, Department of History, for up-to-date information.

Interdisciplinary Minor in Early Modern Studies

This minor brings together the resources of the departments of English, History and Art History to study the literatures and cultures of Europe and the Americas from the late medieval period to 1800. For a complete listing of requirements, see Department of English .

Interdisciplinary Middle East Studies Minor

See the Department of Middle East Studies .

Interdisciplinary Race, Ethnicity and Politics Minor

See Department of Political Science .

Interdisciplinary Russian Area Studies Minor

See Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures .

Interdisciplinary Law and Society Minor

See Department of Political Science .

Graduate Degrees

The graduate program in History offers a rigorous course of study that balances depth in particular fields with a broad, transnational, and interdisciplinary perspective. We train our students in historical methods, research, critical analysis of written and visual sources, historical writing, and historical pedagogy through intensive reading courses, seminars, and tutorials. This training culminates in the PhD dissertation, a significant scholarly and historiographical contribution to the study of a field. 

Admission Requirements

Prerequisites

An applicant should have an undergraduate degree or an MA degree in history or a related discipline. Promising students trained in other fields will also be considered.

Criteria

All applicants must take the general test of the Graduate Record Examinations. The subject test in history is not required. In addition, applicants must submit at least three letters of recommendation from college-level instructors and a sample of written work from a college-level history, social science or humanities course. This material should be submitted to the director of the graduate program for the Department of History.

Procedure

For complete information on the doctoral program, prospective applicants should address inquiries to Graduate Admission, Department of History, SOS 153, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0034. Information on the programs is also available online at usc.edu/schools/college/history/programs/graduate.

Degree Requirements

These degrees are under the jurisdiction of the Graduate School. Refer to the Requirements for Graduation  section and The Graduate School  section of this catalogue for general regulations. All courses applied toward the degrees must be courses accepted by the Graduate School.

Advisement

Students should seek advice on their program of studies from the Director of Graduate Studies, a professor in their major field of study and other members of their qualifying exam committee.

Programs

Bachelor’s Degree

• •  History (BA)
• •  History and Social Science Education (BA)

Combined Major

• •  Law, History, and Culture (BA)

Minor

• •  History and Culture of Business Minor
• •  History Minor

Interdisciplinary Minors

• •  Resistance to Genocide Interdisciplinary Minor

Master’s Degree

• •  History (MA)

Doctoral Degree

• •  History (PhD)

Courses

History

• •  HIST 385 Anglo-American Law before the 18th Century
• •  HIST 386 American Legal History
• •  HIST 387 From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Mediterranean in an Age of Expansion
• •  HIST 388 Women and Gender in North American History through 1920
• •  HIST 389 Modern Iran
• •  HIST 390 Special Problems
• •  HIST 393g Quantitative Historical Analysis
• •  HIST 394p The Great Muslim Empires of the Near East and India
• •  HIST 395 Sex and the City: Constructing Gender in London, 1700-1900
• •  HIST 401 The Roman World
• •  HIST 402 Cultural Heritage, Religion, and Politics in the Middle East
• •  HIST 403 Carolingian Europe
• •  HIST 404 Seminar in Korean History
• •  HIST 406 Special Periods in Medieval History
• •  HIST 407 Europe in the 10th Century
• •  HIST 410 The Age of Humanism and Reformation
• •  HIST 413 The Age of Revolution
• •  HIST 414 Contemporary Europe
• •  HIST 415 Medieval and Early Modern Russia
• •  HIST 416 History of Imperial Russia: 1689–1917
• •  HIST 417 History of Soviet Russia: 1917–1991
• •  HIST 420 European Intellectual and Cultural History: The 19th Century, 1790–1870
• •  HIST 421 European Intellectual and Cultural History: The Turn of the Century 1880–1920
• •  HIST 422 European Intellectual and Cultural History: The 20th Century, 1920 to the Present
• •  HIST 424 Family, Work, and Leisure in Russian History
• •  HIST 425 The Era of the First World War
• •  HIST 426 Gender, Family, and Society in Europe and the United States, 1500–Present
• •  HIST 427 The German Question: Nation and Identity in Modern Central Europe
• •  HIST 428 Life and Death in Nazi Germany
• •  HIST 429 Street Life: Urban Culture in Modern Europe
• •  HIST 432 Britain in the 18th Century
• •  HIST 437 Seminar in Modern Chinese History
• •  HIST 438 Seminar in Pre-Modern Japanese History
• •  HIST 440 Early Modern World History
• •  HIST 441 Modern World History
• •  HIST 442 The Ethics of Financial and Political Accountability
• •  HIST 443 Race and Religious Riots in Modern World History
• •  HIST 444 Mass Violence and Comparative Genocide in Modern World History
• •  HIST 446 Resistance to Genocide
• •  HIST 451 The Mexican Revolution
• •  HIST 452 Beauty and the Body in Historical Perspective
• •  HIST 453 The Age of Emancipation
• •  HIST 454 The World Pirates Made: Piracy and Privateering, 1500–1815
• •  HIST 455 Advanced Topics in African-American History
• •  HIST 456 Race, Slavery, and the Making of the Atlantic World
• •  HIST 457 The American West
• •  HIST 458 History of California
• •  HIST 461 19th Century American Thought
• •  HIST 462 20th Century American Thought
• •  HIST 463 The Constitutional History of the United States
• •  HIST 464 Culture, Money, and Power: Japanese-American Relations since 1853
• •  HIST 465 America in the Cold War World, 1945–1991
• •  HIST 470 The Spanish Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World
• •  HIST 473 Colonial Latin America Seminar
• •  HIST 474 Sex, Gender, and Colonialism in Latin America, 1492 to 1820
• •  HIST 478 The United States, 1789–1850
• •  HIST 480 Seminar in Middle East History
• •  HIST 481 Producing Film Histories
• •  HIST 482 Jesus in American History and Culture
• •  HIST 484 The United States, 1919–1939
• •  HIST 487 The United States since 1939
• •  HIST 488 Teaching History in the Secondary Schools
• •  HIST 490x Directed Research
• •  HIST 492 Honors Thesis
• •  HIST 494 Seminar in New Historical Writing
• •  HIST 495 American Lives: Biography and Autobiography in the United States Past
• •  HIST 496 Internship in Public History
• •  HIST 497 Senior Seminar in Early Modern Studies
• •  HIST 498 Seminar on Selected Historical Topics
• •  HIST 499 Special Topics
• •  HIST 500 Introduction to Graduate Historical Studies
• •  HIST 505 Studies in Early Medieval History
• •  HIST 506 Studies in Later Medieval History
• •  HIST 508 Studies in the Renaissance
• •  HIST 509 Studies in the Reformation
• •  HIST 510 Studies in Early Modern European History
• •  HIST 511 Studies in Early Modern British History
• •  HIST 514 Studies in Modern European History, 1789–1914
• •  HIST 515 Studies in Modern European History: Europe’s 20th Century
• •  HIST 517 Studies in Russian History
• •  HIST 520 Modernity and Its Visual Cultures
• •  HIST 525 Studies in British History
• •  HIST 534 Studies in Modern Japanese History
• •  HIST 535 Studies in Japanese History
• •  HIST 536 Studies in Chinese History
• •  HIST 540 Studies in Modern East Asian History
• •  HIST 544 Feminist Theory for Historians
• •  HIST 546 Comparative History of Women and Gender in the West to 1800
• •  HIST 550 Studies in the History of Women, Gender and Sexuality
• •  HIST 554 Readings in Chicano/Latino History
• •  HIST 555 Studies in the American West
• •  HIST 560 Transpacific History
• •  HIST 561 Historiography of Colonial Mexico
• •  HIST 565 Studies in American International History
• •  HIST 566 Historical Scholarship on North America to 1800
• •  HIST 567 Historical Scholarship on 19th Century America
• •  HIST 568 Historical Scholarship on 20th and 21st Century America
• •  HIST 575 Studies in 19th Century United States History
• •  HIST 583 Studies in Urban History
• •  HIST 584 Seminar in American Social History