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History

FACULTY

Members of the history department are dedicated teachers and active scholars, having earned numerous awards and prizes for their books -- including a Pulitzer Prize nomination -- and grants from such prestigious institutions as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Several members of the department have been recognized by students for their teaching excellence.

Douglas Ambrose, Ph.D., Professor of History

(dambrose@hamilton.edu)

Ambrose, a professor at Hamilton since 1990, holds a Ph.D. in history from the State University of New York at Binghamton. His teaching and research interests include early America, the Old South, and American religious history. His publications include Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South (LSU 1996) and The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America's Most Elusive Founding Father (NYU 2006), a volume he co-edited with Hamilton colleague Robert W. T. Martin. He has also written numerous articles, book reviews and encyclopedia entries about Southern slavery and Southern intellectual life. Ambrose is a recipient of the Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award.

Kevin Grant, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History

(kgrant@hamilton.edu)
Grant is a historian of the British Empire, with expertise in humanitarian politics. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997, and he has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Historical Association. He received the John R. Hatch Class of 1925 Excellence in Teaching Award at Hamilton in 2003. 

Grant is the author of A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884-1926 (2005), and he is the co-editor of Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire, and Transnationalism, c. 1880-1950 (2007). He has also published articles in leading scholarly journals, as well as essays in edited collections. Grant is now working on a comparative history of hunger strikes. More about Kevin Grant ...

Maurice Isserman, Ph.D., James L. Ferguson Professor of History

(misserma@hamilton.edu)
Isserman received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, and is an expert on 20th-century U.S. history, particularly the 1960s. An expert on reform and radical movements Isserman is widely acknowledged to be the preeminent historian of the American left. A former Fulbright grant-winner, he is co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. His book, The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington, has been named to countless non-fiction "must-read" lists. Facts on File published newly revised editions of his books, World War Two, The Korean War, and The Vietnam War, in 2003.  In 2002, Isserman was on academic exchange with Pembroke College and Oxford University. His book on the history of Himalayan mountaineering was published in 2008 by Yale University Press, and he recently published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on changes in mountaineering ethics in the late 20th century. More about Maurice Isserman ...

Esther Kanipe, Ph.D., Professor of History

(ekanipe@hamilton.edu)
Kanipe came to Hamilton in 1976 as an assistant professor of history. She earned a master's and Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Kanipe's areas of research are modern French history and governmental social policy toward women and family. She worked as principal organizer of a conference for middle school, high school and college teachers to discuss the National History Standards, funded by the Organization of American Historians and the Rockefeller Foundation. More about Esther Kanipe ...

Shoshana Keller, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History

(skeller@hamilton.edu)
Keller focuses on Soviet and Central Asian history and has written on Soviet Marxism as a missionary faith, the women's liberation campaign in Soviet Uzbekistan, and the development of Soviet government structure in Central Asia. Keller is the author of To Moscow, Not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign Against Islam in Central Asia, 1917-1941 (2001, Praeger Publishers). Her current research concerns the development of Uzbek national identity after World War II. She is also planning a resource book for undergraduate classes on the political and cultural interactions of Eurasian peoples in the modern period, tentatively titled The Long Frontier: Inner Eurasia and the Caucasus, 1800-2000. More about Shoshana Keller ...

Alfred Kelly, Edgar B. Graves Professor of History

(akelly@hamilton.edu)
Kelly earned his Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin. His teaching and research interests include modern European intellectual history, modern German history, history of science, and philosophy of history. Kelly's publications include The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914 (1981) and The German Worker: Working-Class Autobiographies From the Age of Industrialization(1987). He is currently researching a book titled,  Remembering and Forgetting: The Legacy of the Franco-Prussian War in Imperial Germany, 1871-1914.
More about Alfred Kelly ...

Robert Paquette, Ph.D., Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History

(rpaquett@hamilton.edu)
Paquette is Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College. He received his B. A. cum laude in 1973 from Bowling Green State University. He received his Ph. D. with honors in 1982 from the University of Rochester. He has published dozens of books and articles on the history of slavery. His Sugar Is Made with Blood (Wesleyan University Press, 1988) won the Elsa Goveia Prize, given every three years by the Association of Caribbean Historians for the best book in Caribbean history. More recently, his essay "Of Facts and Fables: New Light on the Denmark Vesey Affair" (co-authored with Douglas Egerton) won the Malcolm C. Clark Award, given by the South Carolina Historical Society. He is currently working on A Grand Carnage (Yale University Press), a study of the largest slave insurrection in United States history. In 2005, the University of Rochester invited him to return to his alma mater to receive the Mary Young Award for distinguished achievement. A recipient of grants from the American Historical Association, the National Endowment of the Humanities,the Jack Miller Institute, Watson-Brown Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, Paquette co-founded the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. In 2006, he was appointed to the Scholars Council of the Jack Miller Center. In 2008, President George W. Bush forwarded Paquette's nomination to the Senate for a seat on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. More about Robert Paquette ...

Lisa Trivedi, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History

(ltrivedi@hamilton.edu)
Trivedi is a cultural and social historian of modern South Asia, specializing in the history of nationalism, colonialism and women.  Trivedi received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis in 1999. Her dissertation,"Spinning the Nation: Swadeshi Politics, Material Culture and the Making of India, 1915-1935," was made possible by a Fulbright Scholarship to India in 1996 and was nominated for two national prizes.  Among her publications is an article in the Journal of Asian Studies in February 2003 derived from the dissertation. In 2004 Trivedi was a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University's Pembroke College, where she began research on her next book. She has been awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies (2004-05) for this project, "Bound By Cloth: women textile workers in Bombay and Lancashire, 1860-1940." Trivedi was also awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship to India for 2004-2005 to conduct nine months of research on the same project in Bombay, Ahmedabad and New Delhi. She is a member of Hamilton's Committee on Asian Studies and of the coordinating committee for The Kirkland Project at Hamilton. More about Lisa Trivedi ...

Chad Williams, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History

(clwillia@hamilton.edu)
Chad Williams, assistant professor of history, earned his master's degree and Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. Williams' teaching and research interests include modern U.S. and African-American history, World War I, African-American intellectual history and the African Diaspora. His book, "Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers and the Era of the First World War," based on his dissertation, will be published by the University of North Carolina Press. Williams has received fellowships from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Ford Foundation to assist in the completion of his manuscript. He has published contributions in The Encyclopedia of War and American Society (SAGE Publications, 2006), The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History: The Black Experience in the Americas (Macmillan, 2005) and The Black Experience in the Western Hemisphere (ProQuest-Schomburg, 2005), as well as book reviews in The Journal of Southern History and The North Carolina Historical Review.

Thomas Wilson, Ph.D., Professor of History

(twilson@hamilton.edu)
Wilson, who joined the Hamilton faculty in 1989, earned a master's and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He also studied in Taiwan, at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (or Stanford Center), and in the graduate department of history at the National Taiwan University. He returned to Taiwan in 1984 on a Department of Education Fulbright-Hays scholarship to conduct research for his dissertation. Wilson has been a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ, and he has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and Summer Stipend. He has written extensively on Confucian orthodoxy and is a board member of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions.  Wilson edited On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius (Harvard, 2003), to which he also contributed two chapters and is currently co-authoring a cultural history of Confucius titled Confucius through the Ages, to be published by Random House. More about Thomas Wilson ...

Christopher Hill, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor of History

(chill@hamilton.edu)
Christopher Hill, visiting professor in history, joined the faculty in 2006. He has a Ph.D. in medieval European history from the University of Texas at Austin. Hill earned master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Colorado. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and law in the high middle ages and their impact on the development of the western legal tradition. He is currently working on a book about the bishop of London's role in the Thomas Becket conflict. He also occasionally reviews books for The Wall Street Journal.

Back to History overview.

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Hands-on Research

    History Highlights

    Hands-on Research

    The History Department is known – perhaps notorious – on campus for asking intellectual rigor from professors and students alike. Students are trained to do research in primary and secondary sources from all over the world. The department's expertise spans many areas of the globe and all historical disciplines and approaches: social, intellectual, political and cultural.

    An Emphasis on Writing

    History majors apply their reading and research skills through extensive writing — essays, reviews, papers and an independent senior project. Three dozen of the department's regular course offerings — about half — are writing intensive.

    Renowned Teaching Scholars

    Faculty members are highly respected in their specialties and often are honored with teaching awards, fellowships and grants. Several have won and been nominated for major publishing prizes.

    Saluting Excellence

    The department awards four prizes each year at Class & Charter Day for high academic achievement in history. The Edgar Baldwin Graves Prize is awarded to the top senior in the department; the Darling Prize is awarded to the senior with the most distinguished record in American history; the Putnam Prize is a gift of books to the senior with the second-most distinguished record in American history; and the Edwin B. Lee Jr. Prize goes to a senior who has excelled in Asian history or Asian studies.

  • An Emphasis on Writing

    History Highlights

    Hands-on Research

    The History Department is known – perhaps notorious – on campus for asking intellectual rigor from professors and students alike. Students are trained to do research in primary and secondary sources from all over the world. The department's expertise spans many areas of the globe and all historical disciplines and approaches: social, intellectual, political and cultural.

    An Emphasis on Writing

    History majors apply their reading and research skills through extensive writing — essays, reviews, papers and an independent senior project. Three dozen of the department's regular course offerings — about half — are writing intensive.

    Renowned Teaching Scholars

    Faculty members are highly respected in their specialties and often are honored with teaching awards, fellowships and grants. Several have won and been nominated for major publishing prizes.

    Saluting Excellence

    The department awards four prizes each year at Class & Charter Day for high academic achievement in history. The Edgar Baldwin Graves Prize is awarded to the top senior in the department; the Darling Prize is awarded to the senior with the most distinguished record in American history; the Putnam Prize is a gift of books to the senior with the second-most distinguished record in American history; and the Edwin B. Lee Jr. Prize goes to a senior who has excelled in Asian history or Asian studies.

  • Renowned Teaching Scholars

    History Highlights

    Hands-on Research

    The History Department is known – perhaps notorious – on campus for asking intellectual rigor from professors and students alike. Students are trained to do research in primary and secondary sources from all over the world. The department's expertise spans many areas of the globe and all historical disciplines and approaches: social, intellectual, political and cultural.

    An Emphasis on Writing

    History majors apply their reading and research skills through extensive writing — essays, reviews, papers and an independent senior project. Three dozen of the department's regular course offerings — about half — are writing intensive.

    Renowned Teaching Scholars

    Faculty members are highly respected in their specialties and often are honored with teaching awards, fellowships and grants. Several have won and been nominated for major publishing prizes.

    Saluting Excellence

    The department awards four prizes each year at Class & Charter Day for high academic achievement in history. The Edgar Baldwin Graves Prize is awarded to the top senior in the department; the Darling Prize is awarded to the senior with the most distinguished record in American history; the Putnam Prize is a gift of books to the senior with the second-most distinguished record in American history; and the Edwin B. Lee Jr. Prize goes to a senior who has excelled in Asian history or Asian studies.

  • Saluting Excellence

    History Highlights

    Hands-on Research

    The History Department is known – perhaps notorious – on campus for asking intellectual rigor from professors and students alike. Students are trained to do research in primary and secondary sources from all over the world. The department's expertise spans many areas of the globe and all historical disciplines and approaches: social, intellectual, political and cultural.

    An Emphasis on Writing

    History majors apply their reading and research skills through extensive writing — essays, reviews, papers and an independent senior project. Three dozen of the department's regular course offerings — about half — are writing intensive.

    Renowned Teaching Scholars

    Faculty members are highly respected in their specialties and often are honored with teaching awards, fellowships and grants. Several have won and been nominated for major publishing prizes.

    Saluting Excellence

    The department awards four prizes each year at Class & Charter Day for high academic achievement in history. The Edgar Baldwin Graves Prize is awarded to the top senior in the department; the Darling Prize is awarded to the senior with the most distinguished record in American history; the Putnam Prize is a gift of books to the senior with the second-most distinguished record in American history; and the Edwin B. Lee Jr. Prize goes to a senior who has excelled in Asian history or Asian studies.


AFTER HAMILTON

Hamilton graduates who concentrated in History are pursuing careers in a variety of fields, including:
  • Coordinator Corporate Litigation, Exxon Mobil Corp.
  • Senior Policy Analyst, U.S. Department of Commerce
  • Henry J. Baker Professor of Law, Tufts University
  • Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Embassy - Dakar
  • Director, Department of Education and Interpretation, National Museum of American History
  • Editor, New York Post
  • Producer, ABC News - Good Morning America
  • Social Studies Teacher/Coach, New Hartford High School
  • Chief Psychologist, Beth Israel Medical Center
  • Manager of Forecasting & Analysis, Dow Jones & Company Inc.
  • Environmental Policy Analyst, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency