Department of History
Located in the heart of Washington, D.C., the George Washington University History department is an intellectual community of faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and many associates and friends. With more than 40 full-time faculty, varied both in specialization and research methods, GW is an ideal place to study fields as diverse as modern Africa, early modern Europe, the history of colonialism and imperialism, modern America, and the Cold War.
Home to some of the most important research repositories and archives in the world, Washington is a unique and exciting place to study history. Studying history at GW provides students with the knowledge and analytical tools necessary for success in a wide range of careers and professions.
The George Washington University History Department invites you to
A Conversation with Patricia Brady
411 Phillips Hall, Monday, April 8, 2:30 to 4:00 pm
Patricia Brady is an acclaimed historian of First Ladies and the biographer of Martha Washington and Rachel Jackson. She is a frequent discussant on historical programs and documentaries, most recently C-SPAN’s First Ladies: Influence & Image. Brady will talk about First Ladies, the art of writing biography, and more.
Meet the Chair
Professor William H. Becker teaches and writes about business history, business-government relations, and the institutions of the international economy. His latest book, Eisenhower and the Cold War Economy, co-written with William M. McClenanan Jr., was published in 2011 by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Prof. Dane Kennedy's new history of African and Australian exploration -- The Last Blank Spaces -- has been published.
For a British Empire that stretched across much of the globe at the start of the nineteenth century, the interiors of Africa and Australia remained intriguing mysteries. The challenge of opening these continents to imperial influence fell to a proto-professional coterie of determined explorers. They found, however, that their survival and success depended less on this system of universal knowledge than it did on the local knowledge possessed by native peoples.
Dane Kennedy is the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs