Why Study History at USC?

History teaches you to appreciate and evaluate the world beyond your own lived experience. As a History major at USC, you will join one of the Top-20 history departments in the country. You can work with a world-class faculty, pursue independent study, write an honors thesis, participate in interdisciplinary and multimedia projects, and take advantage of the History Department's special ties to archives and institutes in the Los Angeles area.

Watch this video to learn more about studying History at USC:

In addition to our undergraduate program, USC's graduate program in History is ranked in the top 20 programs in the United States. Watch this video to learn about the strengths of our graduate program in History:

The benefits of a History degree

A liberal arts education in history can open your future to a multitude of options from educator to advocate. In recent years our majors have gone to leading law and medical schools, prestigious Ph.D programs, Teach for America, television journalism (Lisa Ling), as well as the NFL (Keyshawn Johnson and Troy Polamalu) and the Olympics (Kaitlin Sandeno).

History Pays! A recent study completed by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce has concluded that students who majored in history in college, espeically American History, have notably higher annual salaries than individuals from many other fields. For additional details please also see the American Historical Association's New Report Finds U.S. History Majors Highest Earners in Humanities. According to the Georgetown study, one's major in college can lead to substantial differences in annual salary.

USC Provost Elizabeth Garrett majored in history as an undergraduate. "Being a history major has been an important part of who I am," she has stated. Read more about her.

See how other renowned people have put their history degrees to use and what our alumni have to say.

Read these other testimonials:

David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times: "History for Dollars"

Tim Radford, columnist for The Guardian (UK): "Avoiding Another Decline and Fall"

Peter N. Stearns, American Historical Association: "Why Study History?"

Featured Research Institute

The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI) supports advanced research and scholarship on human societies between 1450 and 1850. The Institute’s range is global. Unlike existing centers that focus on particular regions, EMSI aims to advance knowledge of the diverse societies in and around the Atlantic and Pacific basins.

Featured Historical Archive

The Seaver Center for Western History Research collects, preserves, and makes available to the general public research materials documenting the history of the trans-Mississippi West, with special emphasis on Southern California and Los Angeles including manuscripts, books, serials, pamphlets, broadsides, maps, posters, prints, and photographs.

CONTACT INFORMATION

University of Southern California
Department of History
Social Sciences Building (SOS) 153
3502 Trousdale Pkwy.
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0034
213.740.1657
fax: 213.740.6999

What's New

The University wrote a recent piece on Professor Deborah Harkness, exploring the relationship between her work as historian and as fiction author. The complete story can be found here.

Undergraduate history majors Roza Petrosyan and Jasneet Aulakh have received USC Discovery Scholar Prizes for the Academic Year 2012-2013. This award, limited to only ten undergraduate students per year, recognizes outstanding and creative undergraduate academic achievement. The two students will join other outstanding USC scholars at a ceremony during Commencement Week and be greeted by University President C. L. Max Nikias at a reception for the award winners.

Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940-1990

The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, directed by Professor William Deverell, has just launched an online exhibit as part of Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents initiative on Modern Architecture in Los Angeles, 1940-1990.

Principal investigators Professors Greg Hise (UNLV) and Deverell, along with project team members Kris Mun and Jessica Kim, as well as fifteen additional curators, are delighted to announce the launch of our collaborative online exhibit exploring "Form and Landscape" in the Los Angeles Basin. The project is drawn entirely from the Southern California Edison archive at The Huntington, and we are grateful to both the Huntington and the Getty, as well as numerous colleagues at each institution, who helped bring this project to completion. Please access the site at pstp-edison.com

Graduate student Sari Siegel was selected as a participant for The Annual Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization - Northwestern University 2013.

Graduate student Natasha Pesaran was accepted by Middlebury College for their prestigious Arabic language program and received also a Critical Language Scholarship sponsored by the US State Department for Morocco for summer 2013. She declined the former and accepted the latter.

Undergraduate history major Roza Petrosyan has won first place in the research category at the USC Undergraduate Writer's Conference with her honors thesis in history "VOICELESS HEROES. FEMALE RESISTANCE DURING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE" (2012)

Undergraduate history major Jasneet Aulakh won a Fulbright fellowship for India.

The History Department is proud to announce the extraordinary achievements of Jasneet Aulakh, who is graduating this May as a triple major in History, Philosophy and English. She has been selected as one of USC’s two recipients of the Phi Beta Kappa Undergraduate Award for 2013.

A full description of Jasneet's achievements can be found here.

Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow Appointment

USC's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Science, Department of History, is seeking a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow to join its team.

Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow Appointment

Professors Jacob Soll and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal were praised for their pathbreaking research in a recent profile article by USC Dornsife. You can find the full text here.

History Department Announces New Major in Law, History & Culture

Working in close collaboration with colleagues and the curriculum at USC Gould School of Law, as well as with nearly a dozen other USC Dornsife departments and disciplines, the History department will soon launch a new Bachelor of Arts degree in Law, History, and Culture. This major is designed for students drawn to inter-disciplinary study of legal and cultural issues, as well as those who intend to pursue a law degree. It offers students an interdisciplinary education in legal institutions, languages and processes that are central to social, cultural, and political developments in the past and present, and play a critical role in shaping our most basic concepts and categories of thought and identity. It combines approaches from history, literature, philosophy, political theory, religion and classical studies to explore the law's position at the nexus of society. The major will help students develop the critical skills of reading, writing, and analysis crucial to both a liberal education and the study of law. Students will gain theoretical and analytical perspectives on ethical, political, and social issues relevant to law as they explore specific legal issues from a humanistic perspective.

We are delighted to announce this interdisciplinary curricular innovation in undergraduate instruction within USC Dornsife, and, as a department, we look forward to stimulating collaboration with a wide array of students and colleagues who share our interest in this new major.

The new major in Law, History & Culture will begin accepting students in the Fall of 2013.

New Banner Awards presented at Celebration of History Event

The first annual Banner Awards were presented at our Celebration of History dinner on September 11. The award for Best Undergraduate Paper went to Emily Levine for “The Legacy of Public Discourse on the Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793.” Jasneet Aulakh earned the Banner Award for Best Honors Thesis with “Blood for Blood: 1984 India.” The Banner Award for Best Graduate Paper went to Mathew Amato for “Slavery in the Age of Photography.” We are all deeply grateful to Professor Lois Banner, whose generous donation to the History Department will allow us to recognize excellent scholarly work annually among undergraduate and graduate students.

More than sixty students and faculty attended the third annual Celebration of History dinner, held in the new University Club, where we heard Professor Ayse Rorlich present “Kazakhstan: Trojans' Journey Into Its Past And Their Discovery Of Its Present.” Her talk was a fascinating and inspiring reflection on her and her students’ experiences last summer in Kazakhstan, where they went for her “Problems Without Passports” course about the Silk Road. Celebration of History is co-sponsored with undergraduate organizations Phi Alpha Theta and Clio. Co-President Zoey Smith made a compelling statement about why she is a history major. You may read it here. Co-President Bijou Nguyen gave a lovely introduction to Prof. Rorlich, whom Phi Alpha Theta and Clio chose as this year’s speaker.

Professor Deborah Harkness has been named a "woman of influence" by Mt. Holyoke College for her work as a historian and novelist. The Women of Influence Gallery, part of Mt. Holyoke's 175th anniversary celebration, "consists of women who were nominated for this distinction and selected by a College committee. Aware that all Mount Holyoke alumnae are women of influence in their communities and careers, the committee selected a group that represents the broad array of arenas in whcih Mount Holyoke women have been influential trailblazers throughout the decades." Professor Harkness can be found between former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Mona Sutphen and Pulitzer Prizewinner Suzan-Lori Parks.

More recent faculty publications and News from the history department.