History

students sitting on lawn in front of Schaeffer Hall studying

Centerpiece of a Humanities Education

With its global scope, history helps us to understand today’s crises as well as today’s success stories.

Share our enthusiasm for the study of past societies and cultures

History unlocks important insights into the world we inhabit. But we also find intellectual satisfaction, and wisdom, in understanding the past on its own terms. Because of the geographical breadth of our courses, history students develop a global consciousness as they develop key transferable skills such as critical thinking, communication, and empathy.

The World is Calling: History Majors

History is the centerpiece of a humanities education. It's about problem-solving, gathering evidence, and fitting that evidence together to understand what happened in past societies - and why those things happened.

Iowa Native Spaces

Native American history is complex and requires multiple perspectives—especially the Native perspective—to tell accurately. Until recently, however, Iowa Native history was not a big part of social studies curricula in Iowa’s public schools. That is changing, however, and the University of Iowa is helping drive the change.

Iowa Native Spaces

History Writing Center

The History Writing Center is available to any student in a history course needing assistance with a writing assignment.

History Writing Center

History Corps

History Corps is a graduate student-led, online digital and oral history project based out of the Department of History at the University of Iowa.

History Corps

News and announcements

History PhD Alum, John Eicher releases 10-part Lecture Series

Thursday, May 30, 2024

John P. R. Eicher (PhD, 2015), Associate Professor of European History at Penn State University and a 2023-24 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, has released a ten-part YouTube lecture series titled, "Western Civilization (1500-Present): From Dawn, to Decadence, to Disillusionment."

Associate Professor Alyssa Park Awarded NEH Grant

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Alyssa Park, associate professor in the Department of History, will use the funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities to travel to South Korea to conduct research for her upcoming book.

History Faculty and Staff win UI Awards

Monday, April 8, 2024

Heineman, Howard, Kelley and Warren honored

Upcoming events

Classics Colloquium: "The Queerness of the Iliad's Temporality"

Friday, October 18, 2024 4:30pm to 6:00pm

This lecture offers a new reckoning of time in Homer’s Iliad by drawing upon queer theorizations about temporality, which distinguish normative “straight time” that is structured by reproductive heterosexuality and looks towards a future associated with children from “queer time” that is shaped by different logics and either disallows the future altogether or imagines a radically unfamiliar future. It argues that the Iliad constructs a straight temporality of patrilineal continuity as a valued...

Cemetery Walk with Professor Brandon Dean

Saturday, October 19, 2024 1:45pm to 2:45pm

Learn how to “read” a cemetery, explore the porous boundaries between the living and the dead, meet the Black Angel, and more!

The Problems of Modernist Film Historiographies

Monday, October 21, 2024 5:00pm to 6:30pm

Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building

"The Problems of Modernist Film Historiographies." A Lecture by Chang-Min Yu (Taiwan National University)

The Hero You Don’t Know: Hubert Humphrey and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights

Thursday, October 24, 2024 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Virtual

To mark the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, award-winning author Samuel G. Freedman, professor of journalism at Columbia University, and Norman Sherman, who served as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary during Lyndon Johnson’s administration, will delve into a bit of history that bears remembrance this presidential election year. Together, Freedman and Sherman will examine Humphrey’s efforts to advance civil rights in the 1940s.