History Minor

Based on the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project

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. Develop a body of historical knowledge with breadth of time and place—as well as depth of detail—in order to discern context.
2. Develop historical methods.
   1. Collect, sift, organize, question, synthesize, and interpret complex material.
   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.
3. Recognize the provisional nature of knowledge, the disciplinary preference for complexity, and the comfort with ambiguity that history requires.
   1. Describe past events from multiple perspectives.
   2. Identify, summarize, appraise, and synthesize other scholars’ historical arguments.
4. Apply historical methods to the historical record because 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.
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.