Welcome from the Chair, Pamela Radcliff
As Chair, I would like to welcome you to the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego. Comprised of a full-time faculty of nearly 40 scholars, we offer excellent undergraduate and graduate programs in a number of geographic and thematic areas. Our faculty have earned national and international recognition for their scholarship, and several have won prizes as classroom teachers.
At the undergraduate level, we emphasize the traditional humanistic skills of critical reading, good writing, and analysis of historical texts, and allow majors to take a broad range of courses across regional and temporal boundaries. For highly motivated majors, we have an honors program that allows students to research and write a thesis under the supervision of an adviser.
At the graduate level, our PhD students focus on one of our areas of specialization for their dissertation research, but also pick two “minor fields” that provide greater breadth to their training. We have a good placement record for our doctoral students, many of whom go on to full-time academic jobs, as well as positions in government, NGO’s and the private sector.
Major teaching and research fields include: the history of the United States, Europe, Africa, East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, the History of Science, and Judaic Studies, both ancient and modern. Across these geographic boundaries, we offer teaching and research strengths in thematic areas, such as the history of gender, sexuality, nationalism, race and ethnicity, among others.
We invite you to browse our Web-site and to contact us for further information about course offerings, degree programs, or areas of scholarly interest.