Georgia State's graduate curriculum has a heavy emphasis on world history in all degree tracks and offers students an opportunity to pursue a specialized M.A. degree in World History. For those who intend to specialize in world history, the curriculum offers a comprehensive course of study ranging from broad global perspectives to more specialized topics and approaches, including cross-cultural encounters, imperialism, nationalism, colonialism, world cities and diasporic communities.

The program defines world history as an interdisciplinary field going beyond ethnic, national and regional histories to explore the interconnectedness of human societies over time. This approach is reflected in the research of world history graduate students, who have examined topics such as the Friends of Ireland in the early nineteenth-century Atlantic world and the convergence of disease, pilgrimage and imperialism in the Islamic world.

The world history introductory course provides students with an intellectual history of approaches to world history, from the early emphasis on civilizations to recent work on transnational and cross-cultural exchanges. While emphasizing history, the program encourages participants to take courses in other departments and bring interdisciplinary approaches to their historical work. At Georgia State, graduate students will find their world history studies greatly enhanced by Atlanta’s vibrant multicultural and international urban setting.

Students interested in European history will find that our faculty have strengths in social, cultural and economic history. Students who wish to specialize in British, Irish, French, German, Russian or European Imperial and postcolonial history from 1600 to the present will find their interests matched by the specific research areas of our faculty. Those interested in connecting the history of Europe — including Spain — to the broader world will also find support in the program.

One of the distinctive strengths of Georgia State’s European history faculty members is the way their research interests, course offerings and student training place European history in comparative, international and transnational contexts. Some Europeanists draw broad geographic connections between Europe and other parts of the world in their work (the relationship between Britain and colonial India or Germany and colonial Africa, for instance). Others have researched how localities within Europe (such as London) were cultural crossroads or have examined the transformative ways culture, politics and economics (for example, in the history of transnational labor relations or the mass media) cross national borders.

Our graduate students have done thesis and dissertation projects on such diverse topics as Women in the Weimar Republic, the politics of memory in the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Holocaust Diaries and the World Missionary Conference of 1910 in Edinburgh, Scotland.