Welcome to History

Looking forward to the past since 1894

Letter from the Chair

Dear Friends of History at Illinois,

We begin the new academic year with a renewed sense of purpose about our twin missions: to equip undergraduate students with a keen and critical sense of the past and to train graduate students to be historians for the 21st century. We are especially pleased to be featuring a series of events around the theme of "Catastrophe" in the coming weeks and months. Even as the forces of global capital implode all around us, we remain convinced that humanists in general and historians in particular have much to tell us about how catastrophic events have unfolded in the past, how societies have dealt with them and, of course, what we in the present can and should learn from those experiences. In this respect, History at Illinois is carrying on a great tradition of civic humanism with a sense of urgency specific, if not unique, to these times. If you are interested in hearing more about this initiative or anything else we are doing, please don't hesitate to contact me. For information on events you can go directly to our department calendar. If you are ever in town and would like to stop by Gregory Hall, we would love to meet you and show you what we are doing.

All the best.

Antoinette Burton
Professor and Chair; Bastian Professor of Global and Transitional Studies

Upcoming Events

View: all events list / month grid

Recent Faculty Publications

  • Book cover Mark S. Micale
    Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness
    (Harvard Press)
  • Book cover Leslie Reagan
    Medicine's Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television
    (University of Rochester Press)
  • Book cover Maria Todorova
    Imagining the Balkans
    (Oxford University Press)
  • Book cover Eugene Avrutin
    Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky's Ethnographic Expeditions
    (Brandeis University Press)

View older publications from our faculty