Graduate Program
Director of Graduate Studies
The University of North Carolina Graduate program in History strives to train historians to serve in a wide variety of areas: as teachers of the next generation of university students, as scholars struggling to make sense of the past, as public intellectuals working to explain how history matters to the present. Our Ph.D.s teach at major research universities, at liberal arts colleges, in military academies, at community colleges, and in K-12 schools. They work for the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Park Service, and a wide variety of both public agencies and private companies. This diversity reflects the rich variety of our subject fields, theoretical approaches, and thematic areas of historical investigation, as well as the flexibility of our MA and PhD degree requirements.
Our program is defined by a spirit of collaborative inquiry, a culture of faculty mentorship, and a tradition of mutual support. The work of the History Department at Chapel Hill is facilitated by an excellent library system (the combined resources of UNC and Duke place our library collections in the top ten nationally) and vibrant relationships with all the institutions of higher learning in the Triangle area. This broad sense of intellectual community helps to guide the innovative teaching and research of faculty and students alike.
We have a remarkable group of historians-in-training who contribute to the intellectual life of our university as scholars, teachers, and activists. Our students win fellowships and grants from prestigious organizations such the Fulbright-Hayes program, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Medieval Academy of America. They garner fellowships from the Graduate School and other units within the university. They present papers at major conferences, and they publish in leading journals such as History and Memory. Together they form a community that engages in common pursuit of excellence. They are also proud members of an enduring tradition of graduate studies in history at UNC. Since 1926 the History Department has conferred 887 PhD degrees. Our graduate students form the core of numerous intellectual gatherings, including many of the university’s Carolina Seminars, speakers’ series, and individual lectures. Our students help improve the program through their participation in our Town Hall Meetings. They have mobilized to help others, and to protest injustice and intolerance, during these uncertain times. Graduate students organize the department’s ongoing conferences and exchanges with the History Department at King’s College, London, and during the summers our graduate students participate in a variety of internships and in outreach programs with the National Humanities Center.
Please do contact me with questions about our program, sshields@email.unc.edu
Graduate Program News
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John “Rocky” Rhodes (PhD ’16) Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel
John “Rocky” Rhodes, who received his PhD from the Department of History in 2016, received his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel in a ceremony at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. In Rocky’s dissertation, “Agents of Empire: The Frontier U.S. Army and the Transition … Continued
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DTH Interview with Caroline Newhall on Black POWs in the Confederacy
PhD candidate Caroline Newhall was featured in a recent interview with the Daily Tar Heel ahead of her public “Tell about the South” talk next Wednesday, April 17, hosted by the Center for the Study of the American South. In the … Continued
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Mark Reeves receives 2019 SERSAS Graduate Student Paper Prize
Mark Reeves received the 2019 Graduate Student Paper Prize from the Southeastern Regional Seminar in African Studies (SERSAS), for his paper entitled “A Gilded Cage? Nnamdi Azikiwe’s Pan-Africanism as Governor-General of Nigeria, 1960-1963.” This prize recognizes the best paper from the recent … Continued
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Liz Lundeen Receives UNC Graduate School’s Impact Award
Liz Lundeen received the UNC Graduate School’s Impact Award, an annual honor for graduate students whose research “contribute to a better future for people and communities in North Carolina.” Congratulations, Liz! Read more about her research and the award here.