History, B.A.

The Heritage University History program trains students to develop the habits of mind that allow them to explore the human experience across time and space, placing the history of the Northwest within the context of global forces that shape contemporary life. Utilizing an evolving set of tools to interpret the past with clarity, rigor, and an appreciation for interpretative debate, the History program fosters a disciplined understanding of the world that demands evidence, sophisticated use of information, and a deliberative stance to explain change and continuity over time.

In keeping with the vision of Heritage University to promote cooperation across cultural boundaries and because historians always study the Other—other cultures, times, places, and people—the History program emphasizes the ability to interpret the past in context, on its own terms. Such interpretation depends on the vast documentary record of the past. Consequently, the History program encourages a critical approach to sources that includes distinguishing between different types of primary and secondary sources, harnessing multiple interpretive tools to make sense of those sources, and maintaining a set of professional ethics and standards that demand peer review, citation, and toleration for the provisional nature of knowledge.

As participants in a profoundly public pursuit, the Heritage History program prepares graduates to practice active and empathetic citizenship and to utilize effective communication to make the past accessible to multiple audiences, including secondary students. This allows them to enter into contentious discussions with empathy and a balanced understanding of multiple perspectives. These skills prepare graduates to serve as models for contemporary social dialogue, engaged citizenship, conflict resolution, and lifelong learning. Furthermore, these competencies are essential to many professions that require complex analytical skills and empathetic communication.

Program Outcomes

Upon completion of the Bachelor of Arts in History, a student will be able to:

1. Build historical knowledge.
   1. Gather and contextualize information in order to convey both the particularity of past lives and the scale of human experience.
   2. Recognize how humans in the past shaped their own unique historical moments and were shaped by those moments.
   3. Develop a body of historical knowledge with breadth of time an place-as well as depth of detail-in order to discern context.
   4. Distinguish the past from our very different present.
2. Develop historical methods.
   1. Recognize history as an interpretive account of the human past-one that historians create in the present from surviving evidence.
   2. Collect, sift, organize, question, synthesize, and interpret complex material.
   3. Practice ethical historical inquiry that makes use of and acknowledges sources from the past as well as the scholars who have interpreted that past.
   4. Develop empathy toward people in the context of their distinctive historical moments.
3. Recognize the provisional nature of knowledge, the disciplinary preference for complexity, and the comfort with ambiguity that history requires. 
   1. Welcome contradictory perspectives and data, which enable us to provide more accurate accounts and construct stronger arguments.
   2. Describe past events from multiple perspectives.
   3. Explain and justify multiple causes of complex events and phenomena using conflicting sources.
   4. Identify, summarize, appraise, and synthesize other scholars’ historical arguments.
4. Apply the range of skills it takes to decode the historical record becuase of its incomplete, complex, and contradictory nature.
   1. Consider a variety of historical sources for credibility, position, perspective, and relevance.
   2. Evaluate historical arguments, explaining how they were constructed and might be improved.
   3. Revise analyses and narratives when new evidence requires it.
5. Create historical arguments and narratives.
   1. Generate substantive, open-ended questions about the past and develop research strategies to answer them.
   2. Craft well-supported historical narratives, arguments, and reports of research findings in a variety of media for a variety of audiences.
6. Use historical perspective as central to active citizenship.
   1. Apply historical knowledge and historical thinking to contemporary issues.
   2. Develop positions that reflect deliberation, cooperation, and diverse perspectives.