Features

Imagine it’s 1913 and you’re in a tiny basement restaurant called Polly’s in Greenwich Village, New York. Change is in the air and intellectuals, artists, and activists gather to debate the issues of the day: women’s suffrage, labor unions, socialism, birth control, and anarchism. The nightly crowd...

This fall, the Department of History is excited to welcome Anna Jungeun Lee to our faculty as an assistant professor. Her primary appointment is in the Department of East Asian Languages and...

This fall, the Department of History is excited to welcome Chelsey Smith as a public humanities post-doctoral fellow. Smith is a historian of nineteenth-century Jamaican history and her research interests include education, race, and labor in the Caribbean and Latin America.  The College...

This fall, the Department of History is excited to welcome Deepasri Baul to our faculty as an assistant professor. Professor Baul is a historian of modern South Asia, specializing in urban history, property regimes, and religious...

Graduate student Grace Maria Eberhardt didn’t think she would become a historian when she began as an undergraduate student at the University of Puget Sound. She initially wanted to study STEM, but after taking an African American studies class, she became more interested in ethnic studies and the...

This fall, the Department of History is excited to welcome Angela Diaz to our faculty as an associate professor. Professor Diaz is a Civil War era southern historian. Her research interests include the Gulf South, U.S. territorial...

Researching is like putting together a puzzle you don’t have all the pieces for, according to history professor Anna Whittington. Sometimes you don’t even know what the puzzle...

Politician and businessman Nelson Rockefeller was seen as a moderate or liberal Republican even as he embraced conservative policies as the Republican Party shifted to the right in the 1960s and ‘70s.University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history...

When Andrew Thomas, a former professional blues drummer, decided to study history, it was during the pivotal summer of 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic had shut down music venues across the world and put his 20-year career as a blues musician on pause.Thomas had traveled the world and played with some...

Gender history is hiding in plain sight, at work in all aspects of our society, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor Antoinette Burton.“For many...