Marketing and Advertising:
- Researching market performance
- Determining trends for future decisions
- Analyzing historical marketing techniques, systems and advertising strategies
Publishing:
- Copyediting and editing
- Evaluating manuscripts
- Researching market demands for historical publications and their uses (educational, personal, etc.)
Public Relations:
- Researching and analyzing public trends
- Presenting clients’ activities based on historical interpretation
- Managing company archives
- Writing historical material for organizational promotional purposes
Manufacturing:
- Analyzing markets, finances, economics, and political risk over time
- Training staff in corporate history and foreign cultures through diversity and multiculturalism workshops
- Collecting and documenting oral histories for organizational diagnosis
- Managing company archives
- Writing history of the business or organization
- Curating exhibits of archival materials and memorabilia
Industries in General:
- Researching
- Performing analysis studies
- Writing public relations and educational materials
- Writing corporate communications
- Documenting organizational history
- Managing archives and information retrieval services
Mineral Extraction Industries:
- Analyzing political risk and key political figures with reference to economic implications for business.
- Researching claims and geographical and land use history.
Utilities:
- Reviewing local issues and concerns
- Making policy and management studies
- Providing information services
- Performing historical analysis
- Managing archives
Law:
- Researching public and private archives and records collections
- Collecting oral history for depositions
- Developing support material from historical evidence
Banking:
- Producing historical financial, economic, and political risk analyses
- Managing archives
- Researching policy issues
- Writing and teaching staff corporate history
- Exhibiting historical displays
Insurance:
- Researching and evaluating case histories
- Preparing studies of policy matters
- Performing legislative analysis
- Managing company archives
Investment Services:
- Managing archives and records
- Performing research and analysis for companies that specialize in the purchasing, issuing, and selling of corporate equity (such as brokerage firms and investment banking houses)
Communications:
- Researching and writing historical documentaries and narratives
- Analyzing public trends over time
- Providing information and archival services to motion picture firms, networks, cable television companies, and record and tape industries
Journalism:
- Searching and researching historical records
- Interviewing with oral history techniques
- Writing and editing for newspapers, new, trade, and professional (scholarly) journals, historical and popular periodicals and magazines, textbooks, and books.
- Public Sector Opportunities
- The government is one of the largest employers of students with training and degrees in history and related fields.
Executive Branch:
- In Cabinet-level departments (The Department of State, Department of Interior, National Park Service, etc.) and in independent organizations within the federal government
National Endowment for the Humanities (Smithsonian Institution, etc.):
- Studying current issues studies
- Analyzing policy performance, long-range trends, etc.
- Preserving and organizing institutional records
- Editing of public records and documents
Legislative Branch:
- In the historical offices of stage legislatures, the Senate and the United States House of
Representatives:
- Performing staff and committee investigations
- Publishing bibliographic material
- Serving on study commissions
- Providing research assistance where needed
Judicial Branch:
- In the United States Supreme Court Curator’s Office and various historical offices, projects, and regulatory agencies:
- Collecting and preserving records
- Analyzing policy
- Providing research where needed
- Writing reports and various office correspondence, etc.
Military Services:
- Managing the museums and archival and records centers for the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and National Guard
- Lecturing on specific issues
- Prepare institutional histories, etc.
The Foreign Service:
- Duties include researching and writing on the diplomatic, economic, political, social, and cultural history of various areas. A test is required for entrance and placement analysis.
Civil Service:
- Duties depend on the type of location placement is granted. A test is required for entrance and placement analysis.
National Archives and Records Service:
- Managing archives, manuscripts, and records.
- Microfilming of collection items
Other Opportunities:
- The public sector offers many other possibilities, such as:
- Working in libraries, historic sites, museum, community history education centers, etc.
- Working in areas of policy history, oral history, public administration, cultural resource management, genealogy and family history, public works, land-use management, urban history and development, demographic history, environmental history, archeological projects, etc.
- Working in local, statewide, and national historical societies.
- Non-Profit Sector Opportunities
- In addition to appointments within the United States government, the non-profit sector (organizations with 501(c) 3 status) offers a wide array of professional positions in research, administration, education, and exhibition design. Many historians work in fund- raising for these organizations.
History majors in particular are well suited for appointments within the following institutions:
- Historical commissions, associations, and societies
- Scholarly and professional associations
- Galleries and museums
- Colleges and universities
- Research foundations and institutional “think tanks”
- Service institutions (agencies, foundations, etc.)
- Other philanthropic organizations which provide educational, social, and cultural services to the public
- Opportunities within the Field of Education
If teaching history is what you would like to do, appointments can be found in:
- Public and private elementary and secondary schools.
- Community colleges
- Small and large undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities
- Other possibilities include district and state offices for curriculum and text preparation, state and federal departments of education, adult education centers, and corporate training programs.
Individual and Small-Firm Opportunities
- If you have the entrepreneurial spirit and wish to get involved with a small firm or start one of your own, several fields where a history major will surely come in handy are:
- Consulting: Cultural Resources
- Preservation and cultural resource management policy
- Researching and preparing cultural resource statements for environmental impact reports
- Identifying and evaluating historic structures and cultural resources
- Selecting structures for legal protection
- Preparing and teaching preservation education programs
- Research/Writing
- Preparing histories, etc.
- Searching and researching public and private records
- Performing legal and policy research services
- Interviewing and transcribing for oral histories
- Historical editing and indexing
- Fund-raising
- Genealogical Services:
- Searching, researching, and preparing reports on family and community histories
- Preservation/Restoration Services:
- Working in firms offering historic preservation/restoration services
- Rehabilitating historically accurate buildings and artifacts
- Providing information services on the field
- Researching preservation law and tax benefits
- Writing (as professional writers, editors, journalists)
- Author your own historical books, pamphlets, articles, and research papers
- Freelance
Sources of Additional Information
- American Association for State and Local History: 172 Second Avenue North, suite 202, Nashville, TN 37201
- National Trust for Historic Preservation: 740-748 Jackson Place, NW, Washington, DC 20506
- National Endowment for the Humanities: 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20506
- National History Education Network: Department of History, The University of Tulsa, 600 South College Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74104-3189
- American Historical Association: 400 A Street, SE, Washington, DC, 20003