B.A. with Major in History

Program Overview

The First-Year Student Experience in History

To help students acquire these necessary skills and to gain insight into the meaning and matter of history, UVM's department of history offers a wide variety of courses aimed at the first-year student, all of which require analysis and writing in some form. The department recommends that incoming first-year students take any of its introductory courses, numbered 1170 through 1990, all of which assume no previous university-level work in history. Students should select the introductory course or course sequence that seems closest to their current interests. First-year students should not take any 2000-level history courses without first consulting the instructor, and normally no first-year student will be allowed into a 2000-level course without AP credits or their equivalent.

Concentrations

In addition to meeting the other necessary requirements, students who major in history must also include fifteen hours of concentration in one of the departments’ three areas of study below and six hours in each of the others.

• HI02 - Europe
• HI04 - Africa, Asia, Middle East/Global
• HI05 - The America

The fifteen-hour concentration must include one course at the intermediate level and one seminar at the advanced level. (The Americas concentration must include three hours in Canadian or Latin American History).

Review the courses by area of concentration:

History courses by concentration (PDF)

Curriculum

Popular Courses:

• HST 2713: Medieval Urban Legends

Catalogue course listing for the B.A. with Major in History

Guiding Principals in the Study of History:

The Department of History strives:

1. To expose our students to the diversity of the past and the diversity of methodological perspectives by offering courses that cover a wide range of topics and approaches.
2. To encourage our students to understand history in a global context and to understand the interconnectedness of the world.
3. To immerse our students in the close reading of secondary and primary sources (textual, visual, or material) and to help them acquire an understanding of how to use historical evidence.
4. To encourage our students to acquire high-level and sophisticated historical-thinking skills that include, among others, periodization, contextualization, and causality.
5. To teach our students how to conduct in-depth research and produce well-crafted and well-organized prose and well-articulated oral arguments. When appropriate, we also encourage students to think about how historical knowledge might be disseminated digitally or through other means.

Admissions

B.A. with Major in History (UVM Catalogue)

Outcomes

Our students acquire mastery not only of content but also of historical methodology. Students are expected to research and write well in our program and, to achieve this goal, faculty routinely assign a range of innovative assignments that are thoroughly assessed. Faculty members provide substantive comments on papers and regularly work with students on research methodologies and rough drafts. Faculty explicitly outline course objectives in their syllabi so that students are aware of what will be expected of them and what they may hope to achieve in any given class.

Learning Goals

Students who complete the B.A. with Major in History should:

1. Have acquired an understanding of the key themes and processes of history as they unfold in specific contexts in a way that displays an appreciation for the roles that diverse factors (including political, economic, environment, cultural, religious and race-, ethnicity- and gender-based ones) play in shaping them.
2. Be able to analyze and evaluate primary and secondary historical sources in ways that reflect knowledge of the complexities of the past and the nature of historical interpretation.
3. Be able to frame and pursue research on historical questions using appropriate research techniques.
4. Be able to evaluate the quality and reliability of historical arguments, whether encountered in the classroom or in other arenas.
5. Be able to write persuasive historical prose in proper academic form.

More

Careers of History majors and minors include:

• Advertising
• Banking & Finance
• Education
• Government Relations
• Journalism
• Law
• Market Research
• Museum Curation
• Public Relations/Corporate Communications
• Writing & Editing

Read stories told by alumni about their careers and experience in the History Department.