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History Magazine: Bridging

Home > Graduate Studies > Areas of Graduate Study : Early American History

Early American History

Jason Eden: I study early American history and Native American history. The professors here challenge, encourage, and motivate students. What is most remarkable to me is that they not only want graduate students to produce solid scholarship, but they genuinely care about the people they work with. This department is not just a factory that produces scholars of high quality, it is a congenial and supportive place that tries to treat everyone with respect, while still expecting them to fulfill professional obligations.

New directions in the field of early American history involve the reconceptualization of the old U.S. colonial history to a new broader focus on North America in the early modern Atlantic world, and bridge the divide from the colonial to the post-Revolutionary periods.

The new approaches draw on international, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspectives on the interactions between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in North America. They focus on borders, encounters, and frontiers; and explore questions of authority, identity, meaning, practice, relationship, and causality in economic, political, religious, social, and cultural arenas.

Our department is particularly strong in the social and economic history of early America, with specialization in race and gender.

Participating Faculty

• Kirsten Fischer in social history (with particular focus on sexuality and the construction of race)
• Russell Menard in the economic history of British America (with a particular focus on slavery)
• Lisa Norling in women's history
• Jean O'Brien-Kehoe in American Indian history.

Affiliated Faculty and Other Resources

In addition to drawing on the complementary strengths within the department in early modern European, Latin American, economic, and comparative women's history, you can also work with a variety of faculty in related fields including:

• American and English literature
• American Indian studies
• American studies
• political science
• women's studies

You can also take advantage of the remarkable holdings of the James Ford Bell Library. A number of faculty and students from history and other disciplines also participate in our early American history workshop.

Graduate Features

Graduate Studies
Rachel Ayers
1130 Heller Hall
271 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Phone: 612-624-5840
Email: histdgs@umn.edu

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