Women had been hired for full-time professional appointments in the department only from the late 1960s. Marcia Wright, a scholar of East Central Africa, was the first woman to be hired as an assistant professor of history in 1967. Nina Garsoian, who taught at the...

Nina Garsoïan (1923-), Gevork M. Avedissian Professor Emerita of Armenian History and Civilization. Garsoian taught at Columbia from 1962 and was the first female professor to receive tenure in the department in 1969 where she taught until she retired in 1993. She is...

Norman Cantor (1929-2004), professor at the department of history between 1960-1966. Cantor specialized in medieval history. His books, most notablyThe Civilization of the Middle Ages, are widely read both in academic circles and beyond. In his memoir, “Inventing...

Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) joined the department of history in 1946, after earning his doctorate from Columbia. Hofstadter’s scholarship focused on American political culture. Considered a leading public figure and intellectual in the postwar decades, he was...

In 1942 the Department of History reorganized its curriculum and introduced nine new courses on the historical background to World War II. These included courses on the British Empire and its problems, American Foreign Policy since 1900 and Far Eastern, Russian and...