Stockton University’s Historical Studies program helps students understand the past and how it shapes the world today. Through the Bachelor of Arts in Historical Studies, students explore different time periods, regions and cultures while learning to evaluate evidence, consider multiple perspectives and communicate clear arguments. These skills prepare graduates for a range of careers and further study.
Students develop their own historical research projects, examine primary sources and strengthen communication and project management skills through capstone courses.
Study the Past. Build Skills for the Future.
What will I study as a Historical Studies major at Stockton University?
The Historical Studies major at Stockton University explores major themes, events and changes across human history while teaching students how historians investigate the past. Coursework may include American and Atlantic World history, European history, Mediterranean history, Asian history and Ancient history, along with advanced work in historical research and methods.
What skills will I develop through a Historical Studies degree?
Students build research, writing, critical-thinking and communication skills by analyzing arguments, evaluating evidence, developing research questions and examining issues from multiple perspectives. Independent research and archival work also help students learn how to turn information into clear, persuasive ideas.
What can you do with a Historical Studies degree?
A Historical Studies degree can prepare students for careers in business, law, medicine, education, public history, museums, government, and nonprofit organizations. The program provides a strong foundation for graduate and professional study in fields that value research, writing, analysis and communication.
What research and professional experiences are available?
Students can expand their learning through internships, archival research, study abroad, academic conferences and history-focused travel. Opportunities may include working with historical societies, libraries and art museums or conducting research in archives in South Jersey and beyond.
Can Historical Studies prepare me for teaching or graduate school?
Yes. Students interested in teaching can explore Stockton University’s K-12 History Certification Concentration, which supports progress toward New Jersey teacher certification. Historical Studies majors may also continue into graduate study in history, business administration, American Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and related fields.
Program Faculty
Faculty
Laura Zucconi
Kameika Murphy
Sharon A. Musher
Sharon A. Musher
Professor of History
BIOGRAPHY
Sharon Ann Musher grew up in New York City. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan, an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.
Dr. Musher joined Stockton’s faculty in 2007. Her teaching and research focus on the arts, visual culture, gender, race, and ethnicity.
Her first book, Democratic Art: The New Deal’s Influence on American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2015) traces a range of aesthetic visions that flourished during the 1930s to outline the successes, shortcomings, and lessons of the golden age of government funding for the arts. Her current book project, Americans Abroad: Hadassah Kaplan, Zionism, and the Making of American-Jewish Women, uses her grandmother’s archive to explore the coming of age of a young American Jewish woman in the early twentieth century in a story that foreshadows the emerging special relationship between American Jews and Israel. She has written book chapters in The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative (Oxford University Press, 2014), Interpreting American History: The New Deal and the Great Depression (Kent State University Press, 2014), and The Case against Academic Boycotts of Israel (Wayne State Press, 2014). She has also published articles and reviews in American Quarterly, American Studies Journal, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Jewish Journal of Sociology, Network: A Journal of Faculty Development, The Academe Blog, and Times of Israel. She teaches the US history survey as well as courses on 1930s America, American Jewish women, identity, motherhood, and American Studies. She was the founding director of Stockton’s Master of Arts in American Studies.
Dr. Musher lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three daughters.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Columbia University
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
20th-century US history, social-cultural history, gender and women’s history, Jewish history, African-American history
COURSES
History: US History Since 1865, US History Since 1920, 1930’s America, American Jewish Women, Gender and Labor History, Introduction to the Study of History, Advanced Seminar in History: Identity, Historical Methods, Thesis
General Studies: Introduction to American Studies, New Deal Drama: Past to Present, Meanings of Motherhood, Perspectives on Women
American Studies: Proseminar in American Studies
PUBLICATIONS
Books and Book Chapters:
Americans Abroad: Hadassah Kaplan, Zionism, and the Making of American Jewish Women (manuscript in progress)
Democratic Art: The New Deal's Influence on American Culture. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago Press, 2015.
"American Studies Association and BDS" in Dream Deferred: A Concise Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict & the Movement to Boycott Israel. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016.
“The Other Slave Narratives: The Works Progress Administration Interviews.” The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative. Ed. John Ernest. New York: Oxford UP, 2014.
“The New Deal and the Arts” Interpreting American History: The New Deal and the Great Depression. Interpreting American History Series. Ed. Aaron D. Purcell. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014.
“The Closing of the American Studies Association’s Mind” in The Case Against Academic Boycotts, eds. Cary Nelson and Gabriel Brahm, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2014.
Refereed Academic Journal Publications:
“Contesting the ‘Way the Almighty Wants it’: Crafting Memories of Ex-Slaves in the
Slave Narrative Collection,”American Quarterly 53.1 (2001): 1-31.
“The Motivations and Assimilation of British Women Who Migrated to Israel, 1965-1975,” The Jewish Journal of Sociology, 41.1-2 (1999).
Digital Humanities Projects:
“Claiming Citizenship: African Americans and New Deal Photography,” digital supplement to an exhibit, 2012.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
American Association of University Professors
Tom Papademetriou
Tom Papademetriou
Professor of History; Constantine & Georgeian Georgiou Endowed Professor of Greek History; Director, The Pappas Center for Hellenic Studies
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Tom Papademetriou is the Constantine and Georgeian Georgiou Endowed Professor of Greek History, and Director of the Pappas Center for Hellenic Studies at Stockton University. A graduate of both Hellenic College (BA, 1988) and Holy Cross School of Theology (M. Divinity, 1992), Dr. Papademetriou received his Ph.D. in 2001 from Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies in Ottoman History.
He was awarded research fellowships by the Social Science Research Council and the American Research Institute in Turkey to conduct research in the Ottoman Archives and the Archives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, Turkey. His research focuses on the history of non-Muslims under Ottoman rule, and he is currently directing an international collaborative project called the Anatolian Churches Project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 1999 to 2000, he was in residence as a Junior Fellow at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Research Center and Library, Washington, DC and from 2000 to 2001 served as Lecturer at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. As a member of the Historical Studies faculty at Stockton University since 2001, he is actively engaged in building a strong Hellenic Studies program in which he teaches courses on the history of the Tourkokratia, Modern Greece, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He lives in Linwood, NJ with his wife Dorrie, and two sons, George and Romanos.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Princeton University
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Southeastern Europe, Middle Eastern history, modern Hellenism
COURSES
HIST 2105 Nation Building: Modern Greece
HIST 2106 Modern Middle East History
HIST 2109 Modern Hellenism from 1453
HIST 2127 Ottoman History, 1299-1923
HIST 2131 Islam and Eastern Christianity
HIST/PHIL 2408 Emperors, Patriarchs, & Sultans
HIST 3609 Modern Hellenism: Memory and Identity
HIST 3612 Empire to Nation-State: Turkey
GAH 2318 Greek Letters and Modern Hellenism
PUBLICATIONS
Render unto the Sultan: Power, Authority, and the Greek Orthodox Church in the Early Ottoman Centuries.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Stones from God. A play co-authored with Pamela Hendrick based on oral history accounts of Asia Minor refugees performed at Stockton College Performing Arts Center, and internationally at Heybeliada International Sound Center, and Zappeion Girls School, Istanbul, Turkey (2010).
National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, The Anatolian Churches Project, 2006-2009
“The Turkish Conquests and Decline of the Church Reconsidered.” In Church And Society in Late Byzantium. Ed. Dimiter Angelov. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2008.
"Raging Parthian Fires: Middle East Policy and the Imperial Ideology of the Emperors Constantine and Heraclius."Church and Society: Orthodox Christian Perspectives: Past Experiences and Modern Challenges. Ed. George Liacopoulos. Boston, MA: Somerset Hall Press, 2007.
"The Continuity of the Holy Man: Orthodox Hesychasm and Dervish Mysticism in the Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Periods." In Festschrift in Honor of George C. Papademetriou. Ed. A. Sopko and C. Papademetriou. Boston, MA: Somerset Hall Press, 2004.
Dong Jo Shin
Dong Jo Shin
Assistant Professor of World History
BIOGRAPHY
He vividly recalls declaring as a teenager, “I will live by traveling to many countries.” The spell of those words carried him through much of his 20s and 30s, taking him to China, South Africa, Hawaii, and the Pacific Northwest. Now, it seems that the spell has finally been broken, and he is happy to embrace this new chapter, nesting in South Jersey with his loving family.
His research interests stem from a question that has nagged at him for as long as he can remember: why do society’s subalterns—the poor and ethnic, racial, and gender minorities—always bear the brunt of the era’s confusions and injustices? In teaching undergraduates, one of his ultimate goals is to help them recognize the universal mechanisms behind these injustices, no matter how far removed they are in time or place. They might well encounter their own reverse reincarnations in history.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in history, Washington State University
M.A. in history, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
B.A. in history, Sogang University (Seoul, South Korea)
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Modern Chinese history
COURSES
GAH 1630 World Civilizations to 1500
HIST 2190 East Asia, 1800-1945
HIST 2195 Pre-modern Chinese History
HIST 3621 Seminar in World History
PUBLICATIONS
Between Means and Ends: Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Korean Autonomy in China’s Yanbian Borderland, 1928-1978(under review by the University of Washington Press).
“‘Utopian Speak’: Language Assimilation in China’s Yanbian Korean Borderland, 1958-76.” Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands, edited by Adam Cathcart, Steven Denney, and Christopher Green, 191-215. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021.
“Factional Violence and Ethnic Relations in a Korean Borderland: Mao Yuanxin’s Cultural Revolution in Yanbian, 1966-1968.” Modern China Studies 23 No. 2 (2016): 141-162. (Special Issue on China’s Cultural Revolution: A 50-Year Review).
Translation of Yokeun Joeng, “The Management of Koryǒ: Local Administration (kunhyǒn) and Its Operation” Korean Studies 41 (May 2017): 99-127
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Historical Association
Association for Asian Studies
Adjunct Faculty
Emeritus Faculty
Demetrios Constantelos
Michael Hayse
Michael Hayse
Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust and Genocide Studies
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Hayse’s main research interests revolve around the ways that Germany has grappled with the legacies of the Third Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust. He is also an advocate of experiential learning, global education, and study abroad who urges his students to travel, visit archives for their research, and to acquaint themselves with actual historical sites. To this end, Dr. Hayse leads study tours to Europe and Israel on the theme of the history of the Third Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., University of North Carolina
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
20th century German history, Russian and East European history, and Holocaust/genocide studies, history and memory
COURSES
HIST 2117 Modern Germany
HIST 2118 Europe in the 20th Century
HIST 2134 Eastern European History
HIST 2135 Modern Russian and Soviet History
HIST 3615 Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin: Dictatorships of 20th-Century Europe
HIST 3616 History of the Third Reich
GAH 2119 History and Memory of the Nazi Era
GAH 2346 Modern Europe
GAH 3114 Military Occupation / Social Change
MAHG 5000 History of the Holocaust
MAHG 5016 Twentieth-Century Europe
MAHG 5021 The Holocaust in German History
MAHG 5026 Germany and the Holocaust since 1945
PUBLICATIONS
Recasting West German Elites: Higher Civil Servants, Business Leaders, and Physicians in Hesse between Nazism and Democracy, 1945-1955. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003.
Main editor, Hearing the Voices: Holocaust Education for Future Generations. Merion Station: Marion Westfield Press, 1999.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Historical Association
German Studies Association
Central European History
Association of Holocaust Organizations
William Lubenow
Concentrations & Minor
B.A. Historical Studies
The B.A. Historical Studies concentration gives students the flexibility to explore history across different time periods, regions and cultures while developing strong research, writing and analytical skills. Students learn to examine evidence, evaluate different perspectives and build well-supported arguments about the past.
Students can extend their learning through independent and archival research, internships
with historical societies, libraries and art museums, study abroad, conferences and
other history-focused experiences. These opportunities can help prepare graduates
for careers in education, law, journalism, government, public history, museums, archives,
library science, nonprofit organizations and other fields that value research and
communication skills.
B.A. Historical Studies (K-12 or Secondary Education History Certification)
The B.A. Historical Studies (K-12 or Secondary Education History Certification) concentration is designed for students who want to combine the study of history with preparation for a career in teaching. Students develop the same foundation in historical research, analysis and communication while working toward the requirements for New Jersey teacher certification.
This concentration prepares students to bring their knowledge of history, historical evidence and multiple perspectives into K-12 or secondary education settings. Students interested in this path work with both Historical Studies and Teacher Education as they prepare for teaching licensure in New Jersey.
Historical Studies Minor
The Historical Studies minor is designed for students in other majors who want to deepen their understanding of history while adding valuable research, writing and analytical skills to their primary field of study. Students can explore historical topics that connect with their academic interests and learn to evaluate evidence, consider different perspectives and understand how past events continue to shape contemporary issues.
The minor can complement studies in areas such as education, political science, communication, literature, business and the arts while strengthening preparation for careers in fields including law, government, journalism, museums, libraries, public history and nonprofit organizations. It is also a flexible way for students with a strong interest in history to make that interest a meaningful part of their Stockton University education.
Dual Degree
4 + 1 B.A. in Historical Studies and M.A. in American Studies
American Studies, as an interdisciplinary field, offers accelerated dual degree programs in Africana Studies, Historical Studies, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology and Anthropology. Students majoring in these programs may earn their B.A. degree with a concentration in American Studies, then earn their M.A. degree in American Studies with one additional year of study. These intensive academic programs include all of the courses required within the program major as well as graduate-level courses in American Studies taken in the fourth year. Up to four graduate courses may be applied to the M.A. degree.
Students interested in these programs should consult with their preceptors and the American Studies chair.
Visit the American Studies Program at Stockton to learn more.
Special Opportunities
Students in Historical Studies can explore their own interests in a wide range of fields such as American/Atlantic World, European, Mediterranean, Southeast Asian, and Ancient Near Eastern history. In addition to coursework for the major, students may
- Intern with historical societies, libraries, and art museums
- Become certified to teach social studies in secondary schools
- Study abroad
- Participate in travel with the History Club
- Participate in conferences, such as those sponsored by Phi Alpha Theta, the national honor society, and by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Historical Studies program at Stockton University provided me with core research and analytical skills that have benefited my various roles in the field of library and archives. I felt supported by my professors who expressed care in my quality of work, historical interests, and professional endeavors. An aspect of the program that I am very appreciative for is the thesis course, which many other undergraduate history programs do not require. While writing a thesis was challenging, it encouraged me to deeply engage with primary sources - which I now handle on a daily basis. I highly recommend the program as it has proved to stimulate and expand my professional and personal interests.
B.A. in Historical Studies
Career Information
Historical Studies can prepare students for careers in teaching, law, journalism, government, museums, libraries, archives and other public or cultural organizations.
{{ studyArea.title }}
{{ studyArea.type }}
