Welcome to the Department of History
History faculty offer undergraduate and graduate courses that fulfill requirements for the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees for more than two hundred undergraduate and graduate students completing degrees in the field. Please use this site to acquaint yourself with the courses, faculty, student organizations, and activities of the History Department, and contact us if you have questions or would like further information. Students interested in particular areas of study are encouraged to contact faculty members in those fields.
About the Department
The Department of History is housed within the College of Arts and Sciences. Home to leading scholars in many fields, the department has earned a reputation for excellence in teaching, research and scholarship. History faculty at OSU have special strengths in a variety of fields, including American history—especially the history of the West, Native American history, and United States political history—and in African American, Ancient, East Asian, Latin American, Modern European, Medieval, and Middle Eastern history. Our department also has an established Public History program with particular strengths in historic preservation, museum studies, and a growing focus on digital history. Faculty pursue thematic specialties in political history (international relations, nationalism, regional and local politics) and cultural history (religion, medicine, gender, race and ethnicity, urban life, the environment). History faculty are active in the Honors Program and contribute to a wide range of interdisciplinary programs, including Area Studies programs such as American Studies, Central Asian Studies, European Studies, Russian and East European Studies. Individual history faculty members work closely with the American Studies and Women's Studies programs.
Oklahoma State University and its surrounding region offer excellent facilities for historical research. The Edmon Low Library, located on the OSU-Stillwater campus, has holdings of more than 3.9 million volumes and documents including over 1.3 million electronic books, including collections on state and regional history, government documents, and resources relating to the history of Oklahoma , the Southwest, and Native Americans. It also has over 40,000 journals and periodicals in electronic format in over 300 databases. The Library is a member of the Association of Research Libraries and the Greater Western Library Alliance, and participates in the OCLC system as a member of AMIGOS. The university is also located near manuscript collections housed at the Oklahoma Historical Society, the State Archives in Oklahoma City, and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa.
The History Department is dedicated to serving students. Two vibrant student organizations, the History Club and the Nu Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, offer students opportunities for academic and professional development as well as social interaction. Upper-division and graduate classes are limited to a small or moderate size, allowing for close faculty-student exchange. Students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels are encouraged to apply for the many scholarships that are awarded annually by the Department in recognition of scholarly accomplishment.
