Northern Illinois University
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Welcome to History at NIU! We are a community of scholars committed to studying the past in all its diversity. Our award-winning faculty excels in teaching, research, and engagement. Our students are deeply involved in historical study in and out of the classroom, and our alumni use their historical studies in a wide variety of careers. Our undergraduate program offers a fascinating, flexible major that permits study of the broadest possible range of human experience, while our graduate programs support advanced study at both the M.A. and Ph.D. levels. Aspiring and current teachers advance their careers through our educator licensure program in history and social sciences. 

Spotlight

Latest Faculty Books

Dr. Emma Kuby has published Political Survivors: The Resistance, the Cold War, and the Fight Against Concentration Camps After 1945 with Cornell University Press.

Dr. Valerie L. Garver has published A Cultural History of Work in the Medieval Age with Bloomsbury Press.

Dr. Anne Hanley has published The Public Good and the Brazilian State: Municipal Finance and Public Services in São Paulo, 1822-1930 with University of Chicago Press.

Latest Awards

• Professor Valerie Garver was awarded a Mercator Fellowship to spend the fall semester at the University of Heidelberg, where she will share her expertise in early medieval material culture with the research group on medieval material text cultures. Her edited volume, A Cultural History of Work: the Medieval Age (800-1450) (Bloomsbury Press), which includes her own piece on "Work, Skill, and Technology," is part of the multivolume work which won the 2020 Prose Award for multivolume reference in the humanities.
• Professor Emma Kuby's book Political Survivors: The Resistance, the Cold War, and the Fight Against Concentration Camps After 1945 has been awarded two prizes: the David H. Pinkney Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies; and the 2020 European Studies Book Award from the Council for European Studies.
• Professor Beatrix Hoffman has received the 2020 Wilma Stricklin Award. The award recognizes exemplary leadership/service resulting in a more favorable campus climate for women.

Faculty Spotlight

Faculty Bookshelf

Student and Alumni Success

News

• Professor Stanley Arnold was interviewed by Rockford NBC affiliate WREX for stories about voter registration and about the protests against police violence against African Americans.
• Professor Beatrix Hoffman wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on health insurance in the United States. She was also interviewed by Slate about the impact of previous epidemics on Progressive-era debates about collective health security benefits.

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Department Events

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