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
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