Welcome from the History Department Head

History has been a part of Texas A&M University since the beginning. When this university was founded in 1876 with only six teaching faculty (including the university president), Professor John T. Hanner taught literature, classical languages, and history to those initial Aggies. The Department of History grew as Texas A&M grew. At the time of the last comparable global pandemic a century ago, the department consisted of one faculty member. Now, we have over 40 world-class faculty with a diverse and exciting range of interests.

We offer a BA in History. We serve over 400 majors and nearly 200 minors. In terms of courses, we are most proud of HIST 280 and HIST 481.  In HIST 280 our majors learn the basics of what history is and ways to interpret it. In HIST 481 our majors become the experts and write their own professional history on a topic they help choose and develop. And if you are not a History major, we offer over 20 introductory level courses, several of which are in the university’s core curriculum, and well over 100 upper-level courses in a variety of subjects.

Our graduate program offers the MA and PhD in History. We produce first-rate historians who contribute to the world of scholarship and learn to excel in the classroom with stable funding and additional opportunities for scholarships, fellowships, and teaching. Our graduate program has been greatly enriched by participating in the American Historical Association’s Career Diversity Initiative funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

The History Department at Texas A&M University has been my academic home for twenty years and I hope to share it with you in one of our classes. Please email or call if I can do anything to help further your interest in studying History.

Carlos Kevin Blanton
Head, Department of History
ckblanton@tamu.edu
979-845-7170