WHAT CAN I DO WITH A MAJOR IN HISTORY?

Overview
Explore Career Options
Career Preparation
Hopkins History Alumni
Graduate School
Honor Societies & Professional Associations
Links

Overview
The Department of History is one of the largest departments in the School of Arts and Sciences, and emphasizes European history, United States history, and the histories of Africa, Latin America and China. The department is also a part of several of the University’s multi-disciplinary programs, including Women’s Studies, Medieval Studies, Latin American Studies, Jewish Studies, East Asian Studies, the Institute for Global Studies and the Seminar in Moral and Political Thought. The department’s courses are credited as both humanities credits and social science credits, reflecting the complexity of the discipline, which includes demographic, economic, and social history along with the cultural and the intellectual.1

Students begin in large introductory courses and advance to smaller, more focused seminars, but the study of history at Johns Hopkins is primarily issue and topic oriented. History at Hopkins is not focused so much on names and dates as it is issues and topics. In addition to the overall narrative of history, students are encouraged to explore and appreciate the variety of history, how it comes to be written and understood, and its relevance to both the presence and the future.2 Very few graduates pursue careers as historians, but the skills mastered by the study of history are many:

• Effective and persuasive writing
• Critical analysis
• Research
• Interdisciplinary thinking and training
• Curiosity and inquisitiveness
• Self-motivation3

As a result, most Hopkins history graduates move on to pursue careers in fields such as law, business, non-profit foundations, government, and teaching.4

Explore Career Options

Students who decide to pursue careers as historians complete doctoral programs, specializing in a country or region, particular period or a particular field, such as social, intellectual, cultural, political or diplomatic history. They research government and institutional records, newspapers and other periodicals, photographs, interviews, films and unpublished manuscripts in order to analyze and interpret the past. Historians help to study and preserve archival materials, artifacts, and historic buildings and sites. Nearly all hold positions at educational or non-profit institutions while writing books and articles about their findings.5

Leaders in every industry can point to their training in and knowledge of history in their intellectual development and their skills in research, writing, argumentation and documentation.6 Historians play roles as teachers, researchers, advocates, communicators, and information managers in all areas of society:

• Educators at Elementary and secondary schools – while public schools require certification and a degree in teaching, a bachelor’s degree in history is significant to teach at most private schools.  Advanced degrees in history are required to teach at the post secondary level.
• Educators at Historic sites and museums – educators are needed to interpret the past to visitors with wide ranges of education and experiences at historical sites such as parks, battlefields, monuments and museums.  Additional courses in art history, folklore, and archeology are useful for history majors looking to pursue this area of the field.
• Researchers at Museums and Historical organizations – team-based research that includes authentication, verification and description of artifacts, and focusing on their meaning, significance and context.  These researchers also work to assemble exhibitions and educational programs based on the institution’s collections.  A bachelor’s degree is typically sufficient for entry-level positions in this area.
• Cultural resources management (CRM) and historic preservation – historians dedicated to protecting and managing the nation’s cultural resources through researching its history and significance.
• Researchers and writers at Think Tanks – an undergraduate degree is sufficient for entry-level positions in policy research and advising at policy research organizations (think tanks).
• Writers and editors – historians, including those without special training in publishing, can write and edit for a variety of publications, including scholarly monographs, films, brochures for historic sites, captions for exhibits, reports for government agencies, testimony for legislative hearings, articles for mass-market magazines, textbooks, historical novels and screenplays.  While an undergraduate history degree is sufficient for this type of work, graduates with experience in editing or majors or minors in English are more likely to be hired.
• Writers within journalism, public relations and advertising – while history is not typically the primary subject of print, broadcast and internet publishing, the ability to use a variety of sources, understand the necessity for accuracy, think analytically and write clearly are crucial for careers in investigative journalism, feature writing, advertising and public relations.
• Documentary editors – locate documents related to a particular individual, agency or movement, determine which documents are legitimate, organize them in a logical order and present them in a documentary format.
• Lawyers and paralegals – the research, writing and analytical skills offered by history courses provide an excellent foundation for work as a paralegal, as well as outstanding academic preparation for law school.
• Legislative staff work – legislative staff members are responsible for drafting legislation, researching options for legislative action, interpreting the position of the history profession on an impending decision, and conducting primary source research to determine the original intent of a law or regulation under scrutiny.
• Corporate work – combined with internship experience, a major in history is excellent preparation for careers in marketing, information resource management, legal affairs, finance, administration, human resources and operations.
• Archivists – found in government offices, educational, cultural and religious institutions, businesses, labor unions, hospitals and community organizations, archivists are responsible for the establishment and maintenance of physical and intellectual control over the records within their care.  Librarians – by cataloguing and classifying the different materials that enter the library, librarians enable researchers to more efficiently access information.  Historians, due to their wide knowledge base and experience in research, make excellent librarians.  While a Master of Library Science degree is required, many history undergraduates begin in this field as library assistants and aides.7
  

Career Preparation

An undergraduate degree in history provides an outstanding foundation of knowledge and skills for the career of your choosing.  Those who plan to enter the job market directly after graduating, however, must be proactive in acquiring the additional real-world skills and experiences they will need to be competitive job candidates.  This includes interning and volunteering in career fields in which you are interested, participating in related extra-curricular activities, and maintaining a portfolio of writing samples from your academic work.  These will also be useful for admission to professional schools and graduate programs, as a masters or doctorate degree is required for more advanced positions in the field.8

Hopkins Alumni

Hopkins History alumni go into a variety of career fields. Since 2003 the Career Center has surveyed recent graduates about their academic and career plans 6 months after graduation. Here is a summary of their responses.

Hopkins Alumni in History

Gregory W. Fortsch, Attorney, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
History, Class of 1991
J.D., 1994, Seton Hall University

inCircle - a professional and social networking site for Hopkins students and alumn where you can identify alumni by career field, major and orgnaization.

LinkedIn.com -a professional networking site where you can identify Hopkins alumni. Join the LinkedIn Johns Hopkins University Alumni Group to add over 4000+ alumni to your network.

Graduate School

The Career Center is here to help you navigate the graduate school search process. Click here for guidelines and preparing for Graduate School and Professional School.

For information on the specific programs, the best people to talk to are the experts in your field you wish to study, faculty members and graduate students in that specific discipline. We strongly encourage you to talk with your advisor and other faculty members with whom you have a good working relationship. This will also help when you request letters of recommendation. The Career Center has a handout to guide you in asking for letters of recommendation.

Professional Associations and Honor Societies

The American Historical Association, or AHA, is the largest historical society in the United States and was founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts, and the dissemination of historical research. Among its 14,000 members are teachers, academics, graduate students, independent historians and those who work at museums, historical organizations, libraries and archives, in government and in business.9

The Organization of American Historians is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history, and its membership includes students. The organization promotes excellence in the scholarship, training and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history.10

Phi Alpha Theta brings students, teachers and writers of history together for intellectual and social exchanges to promote the study of history through research, teaching, publication and the exchange of learning and ideas among historians. It has 860 chapters and over 350,000 members.11

There are also historical societies at the state, city and local level which provide excellent internship and volunteer opportunities for students interested in history.

Links
General History Related Websites
American Historical Association
The Historical Society
Organization of American Historians
Southern Historical Association
Western History Association
Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association
Missouri Valley Historical Conference
Southwestern Social Sciences Association
Society for Military History
World History Association

Endnotes:

1 Department of History, Johns Hopkins University

3 What Can I Do With a History Major, Prof. Catherine Lavender, Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York

4 Department of History, Johns Hopkins University

5 What Can I Do With My Histroy Major, History Department, Dartmouth University

6 What Can I Do With a History Major, Prof. Catherine Lavender, Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York

7 What can you do with an undergraduate degree in history?, American Historical Association

8 What Can I Do With a History Major, Prof. Catherine Lavender, Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York

9 About Us, American Historical Association

10 Organization of American Historians

11 Activities of the Society, Phi Alpha Theta