History Minor

Based on the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project

Goal 1: Build historical knowledge.

Outcome 1.1: Gather and contextualize information in order to convey both the particularity of past lives and the scale of human experience.

Outcome 1.2: Develop a body of historical knowledge with breadth of time and place—as well as depth of detail—in order to discern context.

Goal 2: Develop historical methods.

Outcome 2.1: Collect, sift, organize, question, synthesize, and interpret complex material.

Outcome 2.2: Practice ethical historical inquiry that makes use of and acknowledges sources from the past as well as the scholars who have interpreted that past.

Goal 3: Recognize the provisional nature of knowledge, the disciplinary preference for complexity, and the comfort with ambiguity that history requires.

Outcome 3.1: Describe past events from multiple perspectives.

Outcome 3.2: Identify, summarize, appraise, and synthesize other scholars’ historical arguments.

Goal 4: Apply historical methods to the historical record because of its incomplete, complex, and contradictory nature.

Outcome 4.1: Consider a variety of historical sources for credibility, position, perspective, and relevance.

Outcome 4.2: Evaluate historical arguments, explaining how they were constructed and might be improved.

Goal 5: Create historical arguments and narratives.

Outcome 5.1: Generate substantive, open-ended questions about the past and develop research strategies to answer them.

Outcome 5.2: Craft well-supported historical narratives, arguments, and reports of research findings in a variety of media for a variety of audiences.

Goal 6: Use historical perspective as central to active citizenship.

Outcome 6.1: Apply historical knowledge and historical thinking to contemporary issues.

Outcome 6.2: Develop positions that reflect deliberation, cooperation, and diverse perspectives.