Areas of Excellence
The History Department offers fellowship assistance in the graduate program in two broadly-defined "areas of excellence," specifically those students whose course of study emphasizes public history and transnational urban history. The Department enjoys a depth and breadth of transnational expertise in the field of urban history that extends beyond the traditional geographic or regional fields of specialization characteristic of most PhD programs with a particularly deep concentration in North American, European and Mexican urban history after 900 C.E. while the larger faculty provides a complementary context for understanding broader tendencies in urban development. In public history, Loyola has been a pioneer, creating one of nation's first masters program in the early 1980s and then a joint doctoral program in US history and public history in 1998, making it the only doctoral program in public history in the Midwest and one of the few in the nation. Leading faculty in the fields work closely with undergraduate and graduate students in and out of the classroom exploring these important topics.