History

HISTORY University of Notre Dame 219 O'Shaughnessy Hall Telephone: 574-631-7266 Visit the History Department website for more information.

Vera totius expeditionis nauticæ.  Hondius, Jodocus, 1563-1612.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.  Gift of the estate of Robert H. Power. 
Used with permission.

About the History Department

The history department is a community of teachers/scholars united by a common commitment to enhance knowledge of, and understanding of, the human past, to communicate that knowledge to students and to equip those students with both an appreciation for, and facility for a critical appraisal of lives, institutions, and events past and present.  

Valuing diversity, the department also recognizes, values, and seeks to cultivate unity.  That recognition is evident in many dimensions of departmental life, but especially in our teaching in the areas of religious history, intellectual history and the history of science--the records of our attempts as humans to come to grips with the mundane and eternal significances of our lives. It is likewise evident in the focus of many members of the department on places and times in which Catholicism has been particularly important; Europe in the middle ages; modern Poland, France, Ireland and Austria; Latin America and the immigrant experience in America. Finally, it is evident in the concern of many members of the department with what the colloquy refers to as "human solidarity," matters of political participation, and of social and political justice as they are mediated by national, cultural, racial and gender identities.