Duke History

Military History at Duke is part of a collaborative graduate program that brings together the Duke and UNC faculty and students.  Far from engaging in any policing of disciplinary boundaries, we recognize the rich and ever-growing diversity of approaches and methods that have come to characterize the study of the military, war and society. Our research interests encompass approaches from political, diplomatic and institutional history as well as economic, social, cultural and gender history. Studies of armed conflicts, transformations of warfare, gender relations in combat, male and female combatants and non-combatants, violence against civilian populations, and processes of militarization inform different aspects of our research and course thematics. 

 

Several associated programs support the graduate program at Duke. The monthly inter-university seminar “The History of the Military, War, and Society” brings together all interested scholars from the triangle area and beyond.  Open to faculty and students, the seminar makes a major contribution to graduate training by offering advanced Ph.D. candidates an opportunity both to engage with the work by leading specialists in the field and to present their work in progress.  The Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) is a network of faculty at Triangle colleges and universities in nearly a dozen different disciplines who share an interest in national and international security, broadly defined. TISS sponsors speakers, seminars, conferences, and outreach to local and regional communities. Duke University Law School's Center on Law, Ethics, and National Security promotes teaching, research, and publication on national security law, with an emphasis on national security decision-making from an ethical perspective.

 

Military, warfare, militarization, geopolitics

 

U.S. Civil War history, women and war

 

Medicine, epidemiology, Civil War

 

Modern Russia, World War II, militarization, male/female combatant identities, gender policies/gender relations in the military

 

World War I, African Americans and war, war and society

 

Imperial Russia, terrorism

 

Early modern European war, culture, gender

 

Aztec warfare, sexuality and conquest

 

Social and political history of nineteenth-century America

 

Modern German history; Holocaust studies

 

American military history; Civil War

 

Modern German and European history of military and war (18-20 C.); cultural and gender history of the nation, the military, and war

 

U.S. military history, civil-military relations

 

Revolutionary America , military history

 

Urban political history, 1800 to the present; the American West

 

Early modern Europe

 

Ancient Greece -- especially social history, ancient history