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 History at USC:
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.
David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times: "History for Dollars"
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.
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.
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
Graduating USC History students win prestigious awards! Alex Hofmann and Greg Woodburn have been named Discovery Scholars for their History honors theses. Alex has also been awarded a Discovery Scholar Prize ($10,000). Greg joins Cody Nelson, a double major in History and Biological Sciences who has been accepted into the Duke University MD-PhD program, in being selected a Renaissance Scholar ($10,000 award). This means that 3 of the top 21 university-wide undergraduate awards went to History majors.
The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, for which Professor Bill Deverell serves as Director, has received a $200,000 grant from the Rose Hills Foundation in support of K-12 outreach and curricular projects.
Professor Steve Ross, author of Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics (2011), has written an Op-Ed column in the Los Angeles Times titled, "Obama, Take a Page from Reagan."
Two former Ph.D. students in the Department, Ryan Linkof and Liz Willis-Tropea, published articles in the journal Photography & Culture, vol. 4 no. 3 (November 2011). Liz wrote on "Glamour Photography and the Institutionalization of Celebrity," and Ryan is the author of "The Photographic Attack on His Royal Highness': The Prince of Wales, Wallis Simpson, and the Pre-History of Paparazzi."
Alex Aviña, Ph.D. graduate of the History Department in 2009 and currently Assistant Professor of History at Florida State University, has won the Hubert Herring Award for his dissertation, "Insurgent Guerrero: Genaro Vázquez, Lucio Cabañas, and the Guerrilla Challenge to the Postrevolutionary Mexican State, 1960-1996." The book manuscript has been accepted recently for publication by both the University of Wisconsin Press and Oxford University Press. Congratulations to Alex!
The Department's Spring 2012 Open House was held on Tuesday, October 18, 10am-4pm, in SOS 250. More.
The History Department's annual "Celebrating History" event on Sept. 20, 2011 was a fantastic success, drawing over 80 students and faculty for dinner and a talk, "Fiction and the Archives," by Prof. Deborah Harkness. Read the inspiring introductory comments delivered by history major Alex Hofmann, Co-President of Clio & Phi Alpha Theta.
Professor Judith Bennett's book, HISTORY MATTERS: PATRIARCHY AND THE CHALLENGE OF FEMINISM, has been selected as one of five "top recommended" books by historians, according to the American Historical Association.
Professor Deborah Harkness's novel, A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES (published by Viking) reached number 2 on the New York Times Bestseller List and has been translated into over 30 languages. The book is the first of a projected trilogy. As Variety recently reported, Warner Bros. has purchased the film rights.
Ryan Linkoff, who just completed his Ph.D. in the Department and is now a Lecturer in History, recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on the utility of tabloids in the wake of the hacking scandal in Britain. Ryan's piece led to multiple interviews, including with CNN.
Professor Vanessa Schwartz's research on the history of cinema was extensively featured in a New York Times article on April 6, 2011.
Professor María Elena Martínez served as the main academic advisor to When Worlds Collide: The Untold Story of the Americas After Columbus, a new PBS documentary and website. For more information, click here.
Professor Wolf Gruner's interdisciplinary research cluster "Resisting Genocides" was one of the first three selected for funding under the Dean's College 2020 initiative.
Prof. Peter Mancall appeared on C-Span’s Book TV and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to talk about his book, Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson.
More recent faculty publications and News from the history department.
