The UNM Department of History

The University of New Mexico Department of History has a strong national and international reputation for research, teaching, and professional work. Our department has an especially strong reputation in U. S. Western and Latin American History, but we also have strengths in medieval history, European history, and American history more broadly. The UNM history faculty have won several prestigious research fellowships, including grants from the Fulbright Scholars Program, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as many awards for the books and articles that they have produced. History faculty and students are active in the field of public history, where they contribute to a range of historical endeavors from scholarly editing and publishing to producing documentary film and museum exhibits. For more information on recent events and publications involving our faculty and students, please see the department's 2007 Newsletter.

The department maintains close affiliations with a number of organzations that represent a wide range of interests and scholarship on the UNM campus. One is the New Mexico Historical Review, which publishes a quarterly academic journal focused on New Mexico and the Southwest region, its peoples, and their cultures. The Center for the Southwest takes an interdisciplinary approach in providing colloquia, film presentations, and lecture series devoted to the Southwest region. Members of our faculty are actively involved with both the academic programs in Latin American Studies as well as the scholarly activities sponsored by the Latin American and Iberian Institute, the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, and the Center for Regional Studies at UNM.

Also associated with the Department of History is the Institute for Medeival Studies, which coordinates an interdisciplinary academic program and offers outreach to high schools as well as an annual public lecture series each spring. The relatively new International Studies Institute which represents the Asian, European, and Russian Studies Programs, is developing an academic program and holds an annual public lecture series organized around significant global topics each autumn. Finally, the organization Western Writers of America has its home in the department and publishes Roundup Magazine.

Strong teaching, however, is always at the heart of the department's work. It is a point of pride that tenure-track professors teach almost all the undergraduates in our department. From 2004 to 2007, the UNM History Department also participated in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, a national program designed to strengthen the design and administration of doctoral programs across the country. In 2008-2011, the History Department will also collaborate with New Mexico public school districts in support of the Rio Grande Valley Teaching American History Grant, a US Department of Education grant that helps public school teachers obtain their Masters in History. Students at all levels find our faculty members open, friendly, and accessible, dedicated to preparing students for professional and intellectual pursuits, and eager to share knowledge both in class and in informal situations.