Fields of Study: Transregional

Transregional field description

By departmental custom and disciplinary convention, the History Department has several geographically and regionally defined graduate fields. But historians—especially several at Georgetown— increasingly work outside these traditional frameworks and have instead turned to global, maritime, and borderlands history. The transregional field permits students to pursue research projects which cross modern political borders and which span oceans, with a particular (but not exclusive) focus on the early modern period, when national and imperial borders were especially contested and porous. Atlantic history is one particular strength of the transregional field (Games (on leave Spring 2008), Rothman, McNeill), but students can also find scholars currently lodged in different regional fields who will enable them to study other oceanic basins, including the Mediterranean and the Pacific. The History Department also contains scholars who work on borderlands and frontiers within geographic landmasses (McKittrick and Voll in Africa, Millward in Asia) and who pursue transregional projects in a global context (McNeill, Games (on leave Spring 2008), Benedict). Students in the transregional field will enroll every semester in a standing field seminar which will focus especially on making use of the rich archival resources in the Washington area. For more information, please contact Professor Carol Benedict Affiliated Faculty: BENEDICT, Carol Ann (PhD, Stanford 1992; assoc. prof.)
China, Chinese medicine, Japan

GAMES, Alison F. (PhD, Pennsylvania 1992; assoc. prof.; on leave Spring 2008)
Colonial America, Atlantic, migration

MCKITTRICK, Meredith (PhD, Stanford 1995; assoc. prof.)
African colonial, gender

MCNEILL, John (PhD, Duke 1981; prof., Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental and International Affairs and Acintg Director of Graduate Studies, Spring 2008)
Environmental, Mediterranean, Atlantic

MILLWARD, James (PhD, Stanford 1993; assoc. prof.)
Intersocietal history; late Imperial China; Central and Inner Asia; Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet; frontiers; ethnicity

ROSHWALD, Aviel (PhD, Harvard 1987; prof.)
19th- and 20th-century European diplomatic, ethnic politics and nationalism

ROTHMAN, Adam (PhD, Columbia, 2000; assoc. prof.)
Early national U.S., slavery, Atlantic

TUTINO, John (PhD, Texas, Austin 1976; assoc. prof. and chair)
Latin America, Mexico, social/cultural/political

VOLL, John (PhD, Harvard 1969; prof. and faculty, Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding)
World history; Middle East, modern Islamic, Sudan