Department of History

Research Clusters

Strong clusters of faculty expertise drive research advances and facilitate collaborative mentoring and international network-building.

African Diaspora

Pitt is home to leading specialists in Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-American history, with emphases on issues of race, politics, labor, and migration. Read More »

Atlantic History

Atlantic History is a dynamic field of historical scholarship and teaching focused on the common, interactive history of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, especially the Caribbean, from the late fifteenth century to the present. Read more »

Central and Eastern Europe

Building on Pitt's traditional strength and international studies resources, our faculty boasts leading specialists in 19th and 20th century Central and Eastern Europe. Read More »

Early Modern World(s)

Pitt’s Department of History offers a rare cluster of dynamic junior and senior faculty specializing in the early modern British, North American, French, Iberian, Dutch, Baltic, and Scandinavian worlds. Read More »

Empires

Empires have played a formative role in history. Pitt's History Department is a privileged place for the study of empire from a comparative and global perspective. Read More »

Environment

Human societies shape their environment as much as they are shaped by their environment. Read More »

Gender and Sexuality

Historians at Pitt have studied the changing politics and practice of gender and sexuality in the modern world, in places ranging from Bolivia to Barbados to Bucharest to Pittsburgh, Pa. Read More »

Islam in World History

Societies across the globe have been shaped by Islam in vital ways; the Pitt History Department is engaging in a new initiative to explore these societies from a trans-regional and world-historical perspective. Read More »

Migration

The movement of people across borders is an urgent political and humanitarian issue in the world today: one for which historical context offers crucial perspective. Read More »

World History

World History has arisen as a logical yet exciting expansion of historical studies into wider relations in space, time, topics, and scale. Read More »