
Derek Chang
Associate Professor Director of Undergraduate Studies
Academic Interests:
- Migration and Citizenship
- Race and Ethnicity
- Social
- Comparative and Transnational
The Department of History is committed to pursuing excellence in historical scholarship and teaching across many different time periods and research interests. Its outstanding faculty specializes in a wide array of historical issues and themes that transcend particular regions and periods. Courses connect undergraduate and graduate students with the excitement of historic discovery and provide a rigorous training in researching and analyzing the human past.
Are you interested in becoming a history major? You can apply online, after securing your own major advisor. For more information: history-major-application-information. Paper Applications are available at 120 Mary Ann Wood Drive.
Important notices:
Codes for pre-1800 and World Areas courses will be available soon on the new Course List ( https://courses.cornell.edu/courses/hist/).
World Areas are coded as HAN, HNA, HEU, HGS, HTR
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Announcing History’s Open House/Trivia Night at 120 Mary Ann Wood Drive
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Time: 4:30-6:00
Location: 120 Mary Ann Wood Drive, Room 125
Details: Join us for a night of fun trivia, a chance to hear history’s faculty talk about their course offerings, and to find out what CHS is. Handouts will be available, faculty will be on hand to answer questions, this will be a great time to meet other majors and minors, snacks, and earn prizes for trivia questions.
*Please share the details about this event with friends who are interested in History!
The president's leadership was a key factor in getting the deal done, says professor emeritus Barry Strauss.
Read moreProfessor Holly Case from Brown University will be speaking at the European History Colloquium on Friday, October 17 at 12:20 at 115 Sibley Hall. Her lecture is titled "Slurry to Melody: On Bela Balazs, or, How History Makes Order out of Chaos". For a copy of the paper, email: cf476@cornell.edu
Read moreThe Cornell Swift Club will ring in a new Taylor Swift era with a late-night album release party for “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Read moreHIST 4345 Ancient Empires: From Persia to Rome, 550 BCE to 14 CE (also CLASS 4645, NES 4345) (HST-AS, SCD-AS) (HPE, HEU) Thursday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research Professor Talia Prussin This seminar explores how ancient empires developed and were administered as well as how the experie...
Read moreHIST 4243 Public History in Place: Interpreting the Environment (also SHUM 4243) (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (HNA) Tuesday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research Dr. Amanda Martin This class moves beyond the traditional disciplinary confines of academic history to examine museums, archival collections,...
Read moreHIST 4076 History of US-China Relations, 1949-2025 (also ASIAN 4076, CAPS 4076) (HST-AS, SSC-AS) (HAN) Tuesday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research Professor Peidong Sun How did the U.S. and China reach this precarious moment? Are they on the brink of a hot war, or can diplomacy still preve...
Read moreHIST 3953 Cold War Europe (GLC-AS, HST-AS) (HEU) Tuesday and Thursday: 2:55-4:10 plus Independent Research Professor Cristina Florea This course explores the Cold War's profound impact on Europe, examining how the continent became the primary battleground for competing ideologies and vision...
Read moreHIST 2812 History of Scientific Images (also STS 2812) (HST-AS) (HEU) Tuesday and Thursday: 10:10-11:25 Professor Jeremy Schneider Science needs images. Natural history books contain drawings of plants and animals, physics books diagrams of atoms, and medical books depictions of the human b...
Read more