Welcome to the Gender History Program at UCSB

The University of California at Santa Barbara has one of the nation's strongest offerings in gender history. Nineteen historians of women, men, gender, sexuality, and culture have generated an exceptionally exciting and wide-ranging program that has attracted scholars and graduate students from every continent. This multitude of gendered research and teaching interests has created core strengths that include not only concentration in the history of a single nation but also comparative, transnational, and interdisciplinary perspectives covering a chronological depth from medieval Europe and colonial New England to nineteenth- and twentieth-century West-Africa, Middle East, East Asia, Latin America, Britain, and the U.S.

Students concentrating in the new field of comparative gender history will gain a firm grounding in diverse research methodologies, in historiographies of women, gender, and masculinities, and in theoretical approaches, including culture and representation, materialities and identities, and gender, race, sexualities, class, ethnicity, and nation. As a compliment to the field of gender history, students have the option of doing a doctoral emphasis in women's studies or global studies (women, culture, and development). UCSB also sponsors frequent graduate student conferences including the recent, well-attended, "Women and Conflict: Historical Perspectives," and an annual interdisciplinary conference in medieval history. In 2001, a large international conference, "Africa After Gender?: An Exploration of New Epistemologies in African Studies," provided a forum for faculty and graduate students alike.