The Department of History seeks to instill in its majors and in students from other disciplines who sample its offerings the awareness that no effort to make the past meaningful, the present intelligible, or the future conceivable can be divorced from the effort to comprehend change over time. The department encourages the intelligent application of that effort by asking students to regard themselves and their culture as changing entities in a historical continuum-not as the purpose or culmination of the past.
Because the culture that surrounds us is rooted in the history of the West, majors are expected to take courses on the European and American past. To develop both a broader perspective on human history and a vantage point from which to reexamine their own past, majors also take courses outside of the geographical confines of the traditional West, and outside of the temporal confines of the last two centuries.
Because the field of history is inherently interdisciplinary, the department makes use of a variety of methodologies in its effort to produce students who can examine, discuss, and write about complex issues with intelligence and lucidity. It emphasizes training in research, critical analysis, writing, and oral expression. These are skills in broad demand in business, government service, international relations, law, and teaching.