Imaginative. Resourceful. Engaged. What will you become as a student of history?
History
In offering a disciplined study of the past, the History department challenges students to think, read, and write about issues arising from the tensions societies face in every generation—tensions between freedom and authority, reason and faith, individual agency and powerful structures. The ultimate goal: to become imaginative and resourceful human beings engaged with the world.
Our faculty cultivates the liberal art of critical assessment of the past and change over time. Thus the history student becomes immersed in the study of a region or a topic and develops the skill and ability to read thoughtfully and critically and to write elegantly.
The department welcomes budding historians who love history, as well as students from other disciplines who see a broad view of the world, and students who might simply be curious about a specific time, country, region, topic, or issue.
Our professors have wide-ranging expertise and publish about a range of topics: utopias in the United States; women movements in the US; the oil industry in Mexico; Medieval European monasteries; the history of nursing in Europe; panda bears and conservation in China; the United States in world history; the American Civil War; and environmental history, just to name a few.
The history faculty understands the impotance of living in a globalized world and a diverse state and country and the demands for cultural competency and historical knowledge that places on our students. To that end, the department has developed a unique curriculum that prepares History majors to engage a rich and complex global community.
Our faculty also offers courses in interdisciplinary majors, including Women's and Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Environmental Studies, and International Area Studies.
To find out more about individual professors, please see their profiles. To see what courses we offer, please see course descriptions below. For questions, contact the department chair.
