HIST - History Major

Historians examine the past to form a meaningful image of events previously hidden, partially understood, or deliberately misinterpreted. History is based on a foundation of documents, novels, maps, archival materials, memoirs, numbers, artifacts, and other data combined with scholarly writings and analysis. It is a field of study that is part social science, part poetry, and always a humane quest for understanding. Propicit qui respicit: One who looks back looks forward.

History majors build an intentional course of study by designing their own thematic concentrations. These concentrations give students the freedom to pursue their interests as they articulate, through the guidance of History faculty, the connections that emerge from their classes and their work in the major. The department's curriculum displays the wide reach of the faculty's scholarly expertise. This expertise extends across geographical, chronological, and methodological differences, but it is grounded in a historical approach to the past. At any given time, students can explore courses that focus on the history of the Americas, the Caribbean and Atlantic worlds, Africa and the African diaspora, Europe and the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Islamic world, East and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific world. By assembling thematic concentrations that capture their imaginations and curiosity, majors achieve a deep, historical, and compassionate understanding of the world.

Throughout the major, students practice and hone the skills of critical reading, analysis, interpretation, debate, and writing. Graduates go on to successful careers in academia, education, journalism, law, business, government, social service, and many other fields since the tools and worldview transmitted through the study of history create a springboard for endeavors in many realms.

Courses at the 100 and 200 level are the foundation for the advanced seminars and writing courses of the major. The upper tier of the curriculum—courses at the 300-level—consists of small seminars with the goal of fostering original thinking about the past, whether through primary source research or advanced theoretical, historiographical, and methodological assignments. While reading and writing remain a bedrock of the major, students are also encouraged to explore multimedia and public-facing modes of producing and disseminating historical knowledge.