<p>An open question. I'd really appreciate any current students or alumni who can shed some light on this legendary program. Big names like John Lewis Gaddis, Jonathan Spence, Paul Kennedy, Donald Kagan, John Merriman ... am I missing anyone?</p>
<p>Are the big name professors what makes Yale's history department rise above, dare I say, Harvard's? Would THE OTHER school not have the same? Or do any other factors with having history as your major play a part? THANKS! :)</p>
<p>You are missing John Demos, Samuel Knight Professor of History Emeritus. Besides being the leading authority on the Salem Witchcraft trials (and a another famous account of Indian “kidnapping”) he is working on a new book that will tell the story of a Hawaiian (Henry Opukaha’ia) who went to CT, stayed for a while with Timothy Dwight, became a Christian, and really started the whole missionary movement in Hawaii. </p>
<p>I’ll let others ponder on the history luminaries at Yale. . .</p>
<p>David Blight and Jonathan Holloway are two more very popular professors, or so I’ve heard!</p>
<p>You could get a comparable history education at Yale or Harvard, and you’ll make a great choice picking either one. The real decision is which environment you prefer more i.e. student culture, campus life, etc. </p>
<p>But worry about getting in first haha!</p>
<p>Online lectures from some Yale History profs are available. Search around. I can honestly say this: if I were to do anything different from my time at Yale, I would have been a History major. I almost got a dual degree in Econ/PoliSci and History. I was carrying both loads up until Sr. year when I realized I couldn’t pull both off.</p>
<p>My history courses and readings were my favorite by far. The single most amazing lecture I ever heard was in Paul Kennedy’s “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: 1870-1949” lecture. The class was heavily attended and that morning, the time frame he was covering was 1904-1915 – the time immediately leading up to WW1. To be frank, my knowledge here was next to nothing. Kennedy began with the significance of Japan’s rise and defeat of Imperial Russia in the 1904 war and how that accelerated the enormous number of alliances that the various nation states undertook. Russia felt humiliated and needed to shore itself up in Europe. It made alliances – and rivals also made alliances. This led to what was the powder keg of Europe in 1914. Kennedy’s tempo that morning was maniacal. All of us were gripped because we knew the significance of every single event he was describing and the firestorm that would begin in 1914 – it was like watching “Titanic”, knowing what was just around the corner. I recall scribbling furiously as he talked about the Balkans, and how every nation had reluctantly prepared themselves to go to war if so-and-so ally needed them to. As he spoke of how railroad schedules were calculated to move troops to various borders, how artillery shells were being accumulated, etc. the drama was mind boggling. Archduke Ferdinand is killed in Sarajevo: finally Kennedy said “And then came WAR”. No other words came from his mouth. We were all shaken back into the reality that we were sitting in a Yale lecture room, no longer being carried on the back of this enormous story of human history. After a second or two of silence the entire lecture hall (about 300 people) broke out into a standing ovation. Never before or never since in my four years at Yale. I’d daresay everyone in that room could probably recite this story in as much detail as I have here. </p>
<p>It was unbeliveable. The single most riveting academic moment of my life still to date.</p>
<p>I was an econ major but I took a slew of history courses (1) because they were interesting and the pedagogy was different from that in the econ world; and (2) the department had a lot of truly talented lecturers – it was like going to see a movie.</p>
<p>I caught the last few years of teaching of some truly gigantic names: </p>
<p>Jonathan Blum – 20th cent American history</p>
<p>Edmund S. Morgan – Colonial American history</p>
<p>Jaroslav Pelikan – European history</p>
<p>Gaddis Smith – US diplomatic history</p>
<p>The most fun of all was “A History of the Soviet Union” with Wolfgang Leonhardt; Leonhardt had been a rising star in the East German Communist Party and knew all the players in post-war Eastern Europe, he defected and became a scholar. 700 people used to take his course every year (it was held in a big lecture hall in the Law School). Perfect course – not too hard, but you learned A LOT from a great lecturer who had an insider’s view of the material.</p>