The study of American history has been an essential pillar of our department since the 1890s, when the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented what would become his hallmark thesis on the role of “The Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association annual meeting at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition (1893).<br><br>Our faculty’s expertise spans North American history from the colonial era through the late twentieth century. Areas of thematic strength include environmental history, the American West, gender and race, slavery, politics and culture, education, sports, political economy and capitalism, intellectual and social movements, and military history as well as African American, Asian American, and Native American history.