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McGill.CA / History and Classical Studies

Department of History and Classical Studies

PAGES FROM HISTORY

  • Alternatives in history. Throughout antiquity, the conduct of affairs at Athens and Thebes often took opposite directions.

    Hans Beck

  • Altar of Domitius Arhenobarbus, late 2nd century BC.

    John Serrati

  • Recently excavated from large Western Han royal tomb in Jiangsu, 2nd century BCE.

    Griet Vankeerberghen

  • Eastern Han banquet scene, 1st or 2nd century CE.

    Griet Vankeerberghen

  • A syzygia elementorum. To see a digital edition of and commentary on this manuscript, Oxford St John's College 17 (England, ca 1110 CE), visit http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/ms-17/.

    Faith Wallis

  • "Scene from the Indigenous Guachichile resistance to the incursion of Spanish soldiers and settlers along Mexico's northern frontier in the sixteenth century." Image courtesy of Real Academia de Historia Madrid.

    Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert

  • Old map of the Indian Ocean.

    Gwyn Campbell

  • Part of “Plant de la mission de la Montagne” (1694). Round towers depicted here are still standing at the Collège de Montréal on Sherbrooke St.

    Allan Greer

  • An early eighteenth-century fan featuring Doctor Henry Sacheverell, c. 1710.

    Brian Cowan

  • The record of a court case involving a Jewish wine merchant in the 18th century.

    Gershon Hundert

  • 18th century playing card money, New France.

    Catherine Desbarats

  • A rendering of tarring and feathering, which hot-headed Americans were fond of doing to hapless/irritating British officials just before the American Revolution.

    Jason Opal

  • A political pamphlet from 1800, the first contested election in US history.

    Jason Opal

  • Ad for Lever Brothers' soap.

    Brian Lewis

  • Budapest, 1900.

    Judith Szapor

  • Canadian troops at Vimy Ridge, April 1917 (Public Archives of Canada).

    Desmond Morton

  • "Children Playing at the Halifax Relief Commission Playground, 1918" by Jane B. Wisdom.

    Suzanne Morton

  • Budapest, 1920.

    Judith Szapor

  • "Athens, Greece, 1932: Students of the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition: Gymnastics." INRP Archives, Rouen, France

    Anastassios (Tassos) Anastassiadis

  • George Ives (1867-1949), British sexologist, criminologist and pioneering "gay rights" activist.

    Brian Lewis

  • "Men hang around union headquarters in Asbestos, Que., playing cards and waiting for strike bulletins." Spring 1949 (Public Archives of Canada)

    Desmond Morton

  • The art of Persian rugmaking, mid-20th century.

    Malek Abisaab

  • Many of Montreal’s best-known museum philanthropists have been women, to wit from the left, Isabel Dobell, Mrs. Walter Stewart, and Mrs. T.H.P. Molson (Notman Photographic Archives at the McCord Museum of Canadian History).

    Brian Young

  • A refugee camp—Camp Tevrekzena—in Mauritania, 1970s.

    Malek Abisaab

  • Profound changes in the demography and land use in the countryside can be observed near Montreal: abandoned Presbyterian Church in the County of Huntingdon.

    Brian Young

  • A dhow off Zanzibar (2008).

    Gwyn Campbell


Welcome to the website of the the Department of History and Classical Studies! You will find here a wealth of information about the department, its programs, and its course offerings.

The teaching of history at McGill began in 1855, although the department itself was only formally founded at the turn of the twentieth century by Charles William Colby in association with Stephen Leacock and C.E. Fryer. In 1997 the Department of Classics was merged into the Department of History, and in 2010 the name was formally changed to the Department of History and Classical Studies.

Today the department is composed of 39 full-time faculty members as well as a strong complement of visiting professors, faculty lecturers, and post-doctoral fellows. This array of dedicated teachers and scholars supports high quality instruction and research across the periods of history and regions of the globe. Within this breadth, the Department has developed particular strengths in Canadian history, British & European history, East Asian history, the history of medicine, and the history of science, and it is building up newer fields, such as the history of gender and sexuality, the history of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, and global history. The department is also home to programs in Classical Studies, which offer training in Greek and Latin languages and literature as well as a stimulating array of courses in ancient history. A minor concentration in Neo-Hellenic Studies has recently been added to the programs administered by the department.

The department takes its commitments to undergraduate and graduate teaching to heart. Students benefit from learning from scholars who conduct cutting-edge research in their fields. Our professors have won many prizes for their books and articles and their on-going investigations are supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the FQRSC, CFI, the Killam Trust, and the Mellon Foundation. Our involvement in research adds immediacy and excitement to our teaching through both lectures and seminars, and we hire students to participate as research assistants in our investigations.

Our department is also known within the Faculty of Arts for its teaching excellence. The standards are high and the readings are extensive, but over the years students in History classes have consistently appreciated the high quality of instruction they receive. Over the years, members of the History Department have taken numerous H. Noel Fieldhouse Awards for Distinguished Teaching, and the department's teaching evaluations rank amongst the highest in the university.

Classified as
Updated on Thu, 2013-09-19 09:58

Did you know?

Steven Serels, PhD 2012, has been awarded a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship from SSHRC, to be tenable at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where he will work under the supervision of Dr. Roger Owen. His Postdoctoral Fellowship project, entitled Herding for Grain; Northeast African Pastoralists and the Red Sea World, 1818-1956, will reveal the historical forces underpinning food insecurity in the region.

We are delighted to welcome Professors Anastassios Anastassiadis, Jon Soske and David Wright to the Department.

 Professor Anastassiadis is the Phrixos B. Papachristidis Chair in Modern Greek Studies. His current project examines missionaries as actors of transfer of social models and practises in the fields of education and social welfare.

Professor Soske teaches modern African history and some of hishis research interests include 20th century African intellectual history, Africa’s place in the modern Indian Ocean, South Asian diasporas in Africa and the Caribbean, the politics of biographical writing, and the Indian Dalit leader Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

Professor Wright is cross-appointed with the Institute for Health and Social Policy (Faculty of Medicine), where he is a nominee for a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1). Recently, his research has focused on investigating the transnational migration of physicians in the second half of the twentieth century.

Raul Necochea, History PhD 2009, has been awarded the CHA's John Bullen Prize in 2011 for the outstanding Ph.D. thesis on a historical topic submitted in a Canadian university by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.

 

History Professor Nicholas Dew has been awarded the CHA's Wallace K. Ferguson Prize, which is awarded annually to the best book in history other than Canadian, for his book Orientalism in Louis XIV's France.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to PhD student Daniel Lachapelle Lemire on having won the prestigious Vanier Fellowship in 2011. (Daniel is shown here with Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the Vanier award ceremony at McMaster University on August 3, 2011.)

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