
Notable honors. Carefully researched volumes that have claimed the national spotlight. World-renowned scholars.
These are just a few of the fruits of UNHâs history department. âWe take pride in being a strong research department and a strong teaching department, and we work to marry the two together,â says Jan Golinski, professor of history and humanities and the departmentâs acting chair.
âOur scholarship helps make us dynamic and innovative teachers, even as our teaching enriches our scholarship,â adds professor Eliga Gould. âThere really is no tradeoff between the two. I know I speak for my colleagues when I say Iâd be much less effective as a teacher and a scholar if I didnât get to do both.â
That balanced commitment is reflected in the success of faculty, students and alumni alike. In 2016, Gould received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to complete his book about the little-studied Treaty of 1783, which ended the American Revolutionary War. Also last year, professor Ellen Fitzpatrick released âThe Highest Glass Ceiling: Womenâs Quest for the American Presidencyâ to national acclaim; its timely subject made Fitzpatrick, a regular commentator on PBSâs The NewsHour, a sought-after source for the national media during Hillary Clintonâs historic run for the presidency.
Similarly, associate professor Jason Sokol has embraced the âpublic intellectualâ role. His 2015 âAll Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklynâ provided historical grounding for racial tensions in places like Ferguson, Missouri, and Sokol shared his perspectives with major news media, including The New York Times and National Public Radio. Like Gould, Sokol received uncommon national funding â a public scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) â for his next book, âShot Rings Out: How Kingâs Death Was Lived.â The NEH also supported associate professor Julia Rodriguez with a summer stipend in 2016 for a project that looks at the intersection of Latin American conquest and the history of science.
The history programâs reputation for excellence, while longstanding, was not accidental. âUNHâs current prominence in American history research is rooted in the universityâs decision in the 1960s to develop a doctoral program focusing on Colonial American history,â says Robert Mennel, professor emeritus of history and humanities, who taught at UNH from 1969 through 2005. The key figures in those first decades included Darrett Rutman, an early advocate of quantitative history, and Charles Clark, whose book ÌęâThe Eastern Frontierâ attracted wide acclaim, as well as Trevor Colbourn, dean of the graduate school.
Mennel notes that the ânext generation of scholars,â Gould and professor Jeffrey Bolster foremost among them, expanded the definition of Colonial American history to include Atlantic history. Bolsterâs decorated 2012 book âThe Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sailâ won the Bancroft Prize and several honors from the American Historical Association, while professor Kurk Dorseyâs âWhales & Nations: Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seasâ followed the maritime inquiry when it came out in 2014.

In 1976, while working on her doctoral dissertation, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich â80G penned the popular phrase âWell-behaved women seldom make history.â
Itâs not just books and awards the history department has generated: The program has produced prominent historians as well. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich â80G, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning âA Midwifeâs Taleâ and other books about early New England life, is a professor of history at Harvard University and received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, and Kate Clifford Larson â03Gâs recent book, âRosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter,â has topped The New York Times bestseller list. Other alumni, like Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer â90, Boston city councilor Tito Jackson â99 and former New Hampshire governor Stephen Merrill â69, have plied their training in public service.
Consistently ranked among the nationâs top programs for American history, the department continues to attract graduate students who peer into the past to shape their own academic futures.
âOur professors are extraordinary teachers, dedicated mentors and nationally recognized scholars,â says Amanda Demmer, a doctoral student advised by Dorsey on her project on the Vietnam War. âThis rare combination is why students come from all over the country to pursue their doctorates in history at UNH.â
Patrick Lacroix, a doctoral student who works with Fitzpatrick as his advisor on his study of religion and public policy during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, echoes Demmer.
âMy years as a graduate student in history at UNH have made me a better writer, teacher and thinker,â he says. âI have been continually impressed with the collegiality of the program and the academic support so generously provided by our faculty.â
History at UNH, clearly, has a bright future.
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Written By:
Jennifer Saunders | Communications and Public Affairs | jennifer.saunders@unh.edu | 603-862-3585