COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES

Welcome!

The Department of History is committed to providing a first-rate learning environment for our undergraduates and our graduate students, as you can discover by looking over our courses. We're also interested in expanding contacts with a wider community of alumni, Triad historians, and others. Find out more by exploring the components of our Web site. If you have questions, feel free to call, write, or email.

Charles Bolton, Head, History Department

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Congratulations to PhD Candidate James Findley for winning the Humanities section of the 2012 Graduate School Research Expo with his presentation yesterday! Dr. Phyllis Hunter is his advisor. The title and description of his presentation follows:

“The Failing and Fruitless Business: Colonial Ventures and Failure in the English North Atlantic”

"Traditionally, historians focus on the larger and successful colonies in the English North Atlantic due to their voluminous historical records and their ties to the Amer-ican political, economic, and religious traditions. However, when the collective historical and archaeological records of the lesser known and aborted colonies are looked at as a whole, links emerge between failed colonies and the organization, funding, defense, and administration of their successful counterparts in the English Atlantic world. These efforts were influenced by the experiences learned by planters, investors, and state planners from past failures. While not an economic history, the project refocuses the narrative on the commercial aspect of the founding of English colonies while not hiding the role of empire. I argue that institutional rather than on-the-ground problems caused most colonial failure, and these misadventures shaped and influenced policies guiding successful colonies."

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Our congratulations go to Dr. Susan Thomas, who won the UNCG 2012 Outstanding Dissertation Award! Dr. Thomas graduated in December 2011 and will be honored at the UNCG Honors Convocation on April 16, as well as the UNCG History Department Recognition Ceremony on May 3. Her dissertation is titled "Chain Gangs, Roads, and Reform in North Carolina, 1900-1935," and her advisor was Dr. Lisa Levenstein.

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Dr. Lisa Levenstein, associate professor of history, was on "The State of Things" May 10, 2012. Listen to the program: WUNC.org The Fall 2011 edition of our department newsletter, The Historian, is now online. Click HERE to see what our faculty, students, alumni, and staff were up to during the past year.