Department Homepage
The College of Arts & Sciences
Cornell historians, undergraduates, and graduates research the World. Our expertise stretches across the globe and through the centuries, illuminating the present.
Oren Falk's book and research considers the medieval Icelandic sagas as case studies in the violence general to the human experience, arguing that violence, “both perennial and contemporary,” serves as a technique for dealing with uncertainty....
In this book, the Icelandic case studies elaborated reveal the historically specific ways in which such general truisms get acted out in a particular culture. Successive chapters move from the individual level of struggling to survive and assert dominance in a feud, through the sociological level of creating and upholding institutions that will serve elites’ agendas, to the existential level of coming to grips with the harsh environment Icelanders faced, a sputtering volcanic outcrop stuck in the middle of a storm-tossed North Atlantic.
The research of Kevin Bloomfield, a Ph.D. candidate in history, and colleagues, was recently honored with a publication in Climatic Change.
The paper, Beyond One-Way Determinism: San Frediano's Miracle and Climate Change in Central and Southern Italy in Late Antiquity, examines the cultural impacts of climate change in Italy during the first millennium by studying scientific data and historical records.
Ezra's Archives is a publication put forth annually by the Cornell Historical Society. The Cornell Historical Society (CHS) is an undergraduate organization at Cornell University founded in 2010. CHS educates and fosters appreciation for historical topics and methodology with the undergraduate student population and the community at large. This journal, launched in the Spring of 2011, showcases stellar examples of undergraduate research in the field of history. In 2021, Ezra's Archives was published online and articles can be read in this and previous issues on e-Commons.
12 faculty members from seven colleges have been named 2025-26 Faculty Fellows with the Cornell Center for Social Sciences.
Read more
It wasn’t easy being in uniform during the Vietnam War era, but military service made Don Stanton '72 a better student—and a better man, he writes in a Chime In essay for Cornellians
Read more
On he third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Cornell University experts discuss sanctions and the state of US and European support for Ukraine.
Read more
The U.S. president's collective actions against Canada have needlessly harmed a long-cherished and close relationship says Jon Parmenter, a professor of North American history.
Read more
Fellows will pursue research in the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
Read more
"Sanctuary from the Storm: Making (My) Room with The Torkelsons," will explore Sheppard’s fondness for the 1990s television show and what the show’s representation of home spaces can tell us about the way television influences living practices.
Read more
This year's Cornell Concerto competition honored three students as winners.
Read more
Those are the gifts that fate gave Ezra Cornell, per one historian. Here’s a look at his life—from humble beginnings to great wealth.
Read more