History is not a body of facts to be transferred from the erudition of a professor to the memory of a student. It is a way of understanding the whole of the human condition as it has unfolded in time. Like the other social sciences, it has established methods of investigation and proof, but it differs from them in that it encompasses, potentially, every area of human culture from the beginning of recorded time. Like the other humanities, it uses ordinary language and established modes of telling its stories, but it is constrained by evidence left us from the past. Education in history aims to produce students who can identify and analyze historical problems, interpret difficult bodies of evidence, and write clearly, even eloquently.

Of course, you have to know a lot about some area of the past to be a historian at all. The History Department has defined six areas (concentrations) in which you may acquire this knowledge. Three are geographically defined: Africa, Asia, and Latin America; Europe; and the United States. The others are thematically conceived and cut across geographical boundaries: intellectual history, religion and history, and gender and history. In addition, a student may construct his or her own concentration with the advice and consent of an advisor. The requirements of a concentration are met by taking six history courses that fall under its purview. Breadth is encouraged by the requirement that everyone take at least two courses outside the concentration and one course in the history of the world before the great transformation wrought by industrialization. More intensive work in short periods or special problems is done in at least three seminars, one of which (HIST362) is devoted specifically to introducing the varieties of contemporary historiography and the variety of methods and concepts that historians have worked out to understand the past.

Finally, and most important, the department asks everyone to try their hand at real historical research and writing. This may take the form of a senior thesis (required to graduate with honors; typically at least 80 pages long, requiring a two-semester research tutorial), a senior essay (roughly half the length, in a one-semester research tutorial), or a research paper submitted as part of the work of the course.

Getting started in history. First-year students have preference in the FYI courses that the department schedules every year. Like all FYI courses, these require vigorous class participation in discussion and are writing-intensive. For 2008–09 the History Department's FYI courses are

• HIST101 History and the Humanities (Oliver Holmes)
• HIST103 Travel Narratives and African History (Lorelle Semley)
• HIST116 Education in Society: Universities as Agents of Change, Ivory Towers, or Knowledge Factories (Judith Brown)
• HIST118 Baroque Rome (Laurie Nussdorfer)

• HIST102 History and the Humanities II (Oliver Holmes)

First-year students also have preference in enrolling in the gateway courses in European history, which are offered as follows in 2008–09:

• HIST201 Medieval Europe (Gary Shaw)
• HIST203 Modern Europe (Nathanael Greene)

• HIST202 Early Modern Europe (Oliver Holmes)

A sophomore seminar is required for the completion of the history major. These courses require roughly the same kind of commitment as FYI courses, but sophomores are given preference and the courses are more oriented toward history as a discipline. In 2008–09 the sophomore seminars are: