Timeline – 1956 – Going Global – I

In an era of surging enrollments, decolonization abroad, and the civil rights movement at home, the History Department’s curriculum expanded dramatically.

The first East Asian history course appeared in the 1946-1948 course catalog, taught by Eugene Powers Boardman, who had served as a Japanese language officer with the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. African history was introduced with the arrival of Philip Curtin in 1956 and Jan Vansina in 1960. Courses in South Asian history were offered from 1958 and in Southeast Asian history from 1963. Kemal Karpat was recruited in 1967 to bring the study of Ottoman and Turkish history to the UW. African American history entered the curriculum in the brief teaching career of Robert Starobin and with the creation in 1970 of the Department of African American Studies, with which History has a Bridge program.

Sources: UW course catalogs, 1950s and 1960s.