History

Related Student Organizations and University Programs

Career Paths

With a degree in one of the foundational areas of the liberal arts, history majors are prepared for many careers in a wide range of fields. Bucknell’s history alumni succeed in business, industry, government, education, law, health care and more. Recent alumni of the history program have secured the following positions:

Analyst: DemocarcyInAction & The Nielsen Company
Assistant, Foundation Center
Assistant Corporation Counsel, City of Newark
Associate, American Red Cross, Wounded Warrior Project
Associate, Carney, Sandoe & Associates in Faculty Recruitment
Associate District Sales Manager, ADP
Athletic Director, Tenn Acre Day Camp
Engineer, EPIC
Financial Analyst, Inland RealEstate-CB Richard Ellis
Inside Sales Account Manager, New Jersey Nets
Intern: United States House of Representatives & Edelman
Legislative Director, U.S. Government
Local Development Office, English Lacrosse Association
Manager, Gentle Giants Rescue & Adoption
Paralegal, McAloon & Friedman
Peace Corps Volunteer, The Peace Corps
Relationship Administrator, Bank of New York Mellon
Second Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps
Teacher: Lewisburg Area School District, Park School of Baltimore & Teach for America
Teacher: Kindergarten at the Greenwich Country Day School (GCDS)
Technical Writer, CSRware
Toxicologist, Broward County Medical Examiner's Office
Vice President, Teach for America

Grants/Awards

Bucknell’s history faculty members have recently received grants from the following organizations:

American Council of Learned Societies
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Fulbright Scholars Program
Kluge Center at the Library of Congress
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute (2009 & 2010)
National Institutes of Health
2008 Morris D. Forkosch Award, Journal of the History of Ideas
2009 John Topham and Susan Redd Butler Faculty Research Award, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies

Selected Faculty Publications

Bucknell’s history faculty members’ scholarship has recently appeared in the following publications:

Environmental History
Historical Reflections
International Journal of the History of Sport
Journal of African History
Journal of Family History
Labor History
Radical History Review
Sixteenth Century Studies

Books published:

Martha H. Verbrugge, Active Bodies: A History of Women's Physical Education in Twentieth-Century America
B. Ann Tlusty, Augsburg During the Reformation Era: An Anthology of Sources
B. Ann Tlusty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms
Beat Kümin and B. Ann Tlusty (translators and editors), Public Drinking in the Early Modern World: Voices from the Tavern, 1500-1800, Vols. 2 & 3, The Holy Roman Empire
John P. Enyeart,The Quest for “Just and Pure Law:” Rocky Mountain Workers and American Social Democracy, 1870-1924

Facilities and Resources

The history department is located, appropriately, in the Carnegie Building, formerly the Carnegie Library. It is one of the most historic buildings on campus.
The history department has a well-equipped and recently renovated computing lab with digital scanners and video editing equipment.

Study Abroad

At Bucknell, history majors often enhance their studies by spending a summer, semester or year abroad through one of Bucknell’s own “in” programs or through one of many approved programs around the world. Recently, history majors have studied in:

Accra
Brussels
Cairo
Cape Town
Dublin
Florence
London
Prague
Sydney

Graduate and Professional School

Bucknell’s history majors often go on to graduate programs at a range of universities as well as to professional schools in law, business and medicine. Recently, students have gone on to:

American University
Bloomsburg University
Carnegie Mellon University
Dickinson School of Law
Duke University
Harvard University
Temple Law School
University of British Columbia
University of Damascus
University of Oklahoma
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania Law School
University of Pittsburgh
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Villanova University
West Virginia University
William and Mary Law School

Program Details

Bucknell offers both a major and a minor in history.
History students at Bucknell can choose courses from seven elective fields or “clusters”: American history, European history, non-Western history, intellectual history, political, economic and labor history, social history, and science and medicine (includes environmental history).
History majors are encouraged to become proficient in languages appropriate to their studies and to seek out courses in other departments that complement their historical interests.
Bucknell history professors teach a common course, offering students an opportunity to study together and learn “the historians’ craft.”
Students are encouraged to select courses that reflect their particular interests, and they may design their own primary cluster.
Bucknell encourages an interdisciplinary approach. History professors have links to other departments, minors and programs, including: political science, classics, international relations, African American studies, African studies, and women’s and gender studies.

Faculty

Faculty members in the history department frequently work with motivated, academically focused students on independent studies and senior theses, and in arranging historically related internships and research opportunities, particularly for the summer.

David Del Testa
Ph.D. California at Davis
Scholarly interests: modern European political and economic history, modern Southeast Asian history, labor history

John Enyeart
Ph.D. Colorado
Scholarly interests: American labor history, 19th- and 20th-century American political and economic history, history of the American West

James Goodale
Ph.D. UCLA
Scholarly interests: Renaissance and Reformation Europe, especially Germany; early modern Russia; high- and late-medieval history

Leslie Patrick
Ph.D. California at Santa Cruz
Scholarly interests: African American history, American colonial and antebellum history, crime and punishment in America

William Michael Schmidli
Ph.D. Cornell
Scholarly interests: Modern Latin American and the United States in the World

Ann Tlusty
Ph.D. Maryland
Scholarly interests: Early modern European social and cultural history, Germany

Martha H. Verbrugge
Ph.D. Harvard
Scholarly interests: history of science, medicine, and technology; gender and health, especially U.S.

Richard D. Waller
Ph.D. Cambridge
Scholarly interests: Africa (especially East Africa) in the 19th and 20th centuries, imperialism and colonialism

Undergraduate Research

History majors at Bucknell collaborate closely with faculty mentors in their research, while at the same time shaping their own methodologies, foci, questions and answers. Selected students work on honors thesis which are sometimes published or recognized by national organizations. Examples of recent student research and scholarship include:

Defining ‘the Amicable Relations’: Class Formation, Conflict and Political Economy in 1870s Pittsburgh
Arminianism in 17th-century Britain
Use of Rhetoric During the French Revolution
A History of the U.S. Death Penalty
Memory, Material and War
National Archives in England, "Asante and the British"

Courses Offered

19th-century Europe
20th-century African American History: Eyes on the Prize
20th-century Afro-Caribbean and African American Thought
African Americans and the American Revolution
African American History
African History I, II and Seminar
American Civil War and Reconstruction
American Colonial History
American Immigrants
American Industrialization and Political Development
American Intellectual History I and II
American Labor History
American Social History
The American West
Antebellum America
China from Ancient Times to the 18th Century
China Since 1800
Chinese Diaspora
Contemporary Europe, 1890-1995
Contemporary Japanese History
European History
European Imperialism and Colonialism
European Intellectual History I and II
European State Systems
From Shinto to Shogun: Premodern Japan
Frontiers and Borderlands
Greek History
The Historians’ Craft
History and Film
History Capstone
History of Science I and II
History of Science and Medicine
History of Vietnam
Honors Thesis
Imperial Russia
Independent Study
Intellectual History
Intellectual Politics and Culture
Introduction to African American History I and II
Introduction to Modern Southeast Asian History and Culture
Introduction to Historical GIS
Introduction to the History of Medicine and Public Health
Introduction to the History of Science and Technology
Introduction to U.S. History I, II and III
Medicine in the U.S.
Medieval and Early Modern Russia
Medieval Heresies and Heretics
Modern Europe
Modern Japanese History
Modern Latin America
Non-western History Seminar
People’s Republic of China
Perspectives: The Vietnam War
Pre-modern Europe
Race, Nation-state and International Relations
Roman History
The Renaissance
Science and Technology in the U.S.
Social History of Early Modern Europe
Southeast Asia since 1800
Soviet Russia
Thinking About History
Topics in American History
Topics in American Intellectual History
Topics in American Political and Economic History
Topics in European History
Topics in French History
Topics in German History
Topics in Intellectual History
Topics in Non-western History
Topics in Russian History
Topics in the History of Science and Medicine
Topics in Women’s and Gender History
U.S. History since 1865
U.S. History to 1865
U.S. History: 1880s to 1930s
U.S. History: 1940s to Present
Undergraduate Research
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe
World History

Quick Facts

Number of full-time faculty: 10

Average number of graduating majors: 39

Number of students enrolled in history courses per year is approximately 700.

Internships

Internships provide history majors with career experience and opportunities to apply and refine their knowledge and skills. Recently, history majors have interned at:

Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives
Kenneth Cole
National Archives and Records Administration
The Office of Senator Arlen Specter