Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society
Towson sponsors a chapter of the national history honor society. Members collaborate in producing the annual Journal of Historical Studies, which includes papers by students.
Digital History Projects
In addition to more traditional scholarly work, many faculty members in the History Department are engaged with digital history projects which have the potential to bring history to broad audiences.
The Gantt Collection
Towson University holds the papers of Nuremberg prosecutor Paul Hawkins Gantt. The Department of History, in collaboration with the Towson University Archives, has committed to bring Mr. Gantt's private and public papers to a larger learning public. We have initiated the digitization and conservation of Mr. Gantt’s papers to ensure that they will survive for generations to come. As the conservation and organization of the papers continues, we will publish important portions of the Gantt Collection with the intention of eventually bringing the entire collection online.
Mr. Gantt's papers represent a small but significant part of a national treasure that documents a high point in the history of United States jurisprudence and the evolution of international law. As university researchers, we are developing finding aids for professional legal scholars and historians, teaching tools for university educators and importantly, educational training for high school and middle school teachers so that they may enhance their social science curriculum with lesson plans on topics that include:
- International Human Rights
- International Law
- Genocide
- Crimes Against Humanity
- Waging War of Aggression
- World War II
Medieval Baltimore
Medieval Baltimore is a project that challenges students to find traces of the Middle Ages in the city of Baltimore. Several churches and public buildings in Baltimore look similar to medieval European buildings. The proliferation of Romanesque, Gothic, and (to a lesser extent) Moorish and Byzantine architectural forms in public and private buildings is remarkable in this city.
Our study of these buildings demands a particular attention to the nineteenth and twentieth century American Culture, in particular the urban history of Baltimore, and investigates how such "medieval" structures came to be constructed and became part of the urban imagination of Baltimore.
What was the appeal of "medieval" aesthetic ideals for the people of Baltimore when these buildings were being erected? What places and monuments of Europe embodied those ideals, and why? These are some of the questions students address in their research. Together, they build this site showing what they have discovered about Medieval Baltimore -- and its buildings, objects, and people.