Skip to main content

Undergraduate Program

Here in the Department of History, we LOVE doing history.
What does that mean?
We think critically about the world we live in through the lens of the past.
Come join us.

Our faculty has special strengths in African, East Asian, European, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Public/Digital, Transnational, and United States history, covering chronological periods from ancient days to contemporary times. We look to the past using many different approaches including intellectual, social, political, economic, legal, cultural, public, environmental, medical, and urban history. We use a variety of lenses such as gender, race, class, and location. We focus on the local, with specialists in Houston history, and we consider the global, with transnational scholars exploring expansive systems that shape our world. We use many tools in our practice, digging into archives or creating digital modes of historical storytelling. 

The History Department welcomes your interest in our undergraduate program and looks forward to helping you achieve your academic and career goals.

Our courses are big—surveys in history—and small—seminar-style courses emphasizing discussion. In a history class, it is not unusual to encounter guest speakers, or conduct class on location in an archive or museum. A signature feature of our courses is critical thinking, reading, and writing, which makes history courses exceptionally useful to hone your research and writing skills.

History majors are everywhere, with careers in education and government, law and medicine, journalism and the arts, business and science, libraries and museums. In academic year 2022/23, we also introduced professional tracks in history. Those pursuing BA in History can now additionally choose a concentration in one of the four areas (Energy and Environment; Law and Public Policy; Public History; Science, Medicine, and Technology) within the existing major requirements.

Reach out to our student advisor or our many nationally renowned professors to learn why being a history major is meaningful and why history matters. We look forward to helping you achieve your academic and career goals, and hope you get the history bug along the way.

For movies, lectures, and more, follow us on Instagram and Facebook!

why-study-history.png