Program Codes:
BAHIST
Bachelor of Arts
Introduction
The Thomas B. Hagen Department of History helps its students develop as creative problem solvers as well as critical thinkers and evaluators of contemporary life through the study of history. A premium is placed on effective written and oral communication. Research skills, the basic tools of many rewarding careers, are the focus of our program’s senior thesis and senior seminar in history. Majors are prepared upon graduation to assume future challenges in law, public service, business, and many other professional fields. Students who meet the criteria will be invited to join Phi Alpha Theta, a nationally recognized history honor society. History students are encouraged to join the Model United Nations club on campus, which offers the opportunity to participate in intercollegiate historical simulations. The History Club provides opportunities for extracurricular trips, film/discussion events and other history-related activities.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Mercyhurst University History Department begins with the engagement of all students in the infinitely rewarding study of past human societies and cultures—the foundational premise of History’s central place in the Liberal Arts curriculum. We aim continuously to strengthen students’ abilities to conduct primary and secondary source research, to analyze and weigh evidence, and to articulate sound conclusions and arguments both orally and in writing. Through courses that extend chronologically and thematically from the ancient world to contemporary societies and cultures, Mercyhurst History majors acquire knowledge and critical thinking skills that cultivate their development as informed, engaged, and thoughtful citizens. Our graduates are prepared to pursue successful careers as teachers, researchers, writers and journalists, attorneys, non-profit or public service professionals, historians in both the public and private sectors, among many other career tracks. To advance this mission, the curriculum of the Mercyhurst History Department emphasizes thorough and ongoing study of primary sources and the secondarysource interpretations of a wide range of scholars. Through extensive writing and discussion opportunities in virtually every course, students are challenged to develop the historical habits of mind that will provide them with personal enrichment, equip them to better understand the complex world in which they live, and to sustain throughout their lives the spirit of inquiry, curiosity and civic engagement that lies at the heart of the discipline of history.
Critical Thinking
Students will demonstrate an ability to consider, and determine a position on, an historical problem critically: stating the issue clearly, recognizing, questioning and evaluating their own assumptions, and identifying and assessing the relevant interpretations and arguments of scholars on the problem. They will master the ability to examine critically the rhetoric, bias, and motivation of primary source accounts, understanding the critical importance of historical context and audience. Finally, students will be able to present, evaluate, and analyze appropriate supporting evidence and use it effectively in arguing a reasoned conclusion.
Historical Knowledge and Understanding
Students will demonstrate a broad understanding of the general characteristics and key developments of major periods of United States, European, and non-western history (embracing their intellectual, economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions), and a more fully developed and detailed comprehension of one major area of historical study. They will also exhibit an understanding of historiography, and the shifting schools of thought on one particular area of history.
Information Literacy
Students will demonstrate proficiency working with historical sources of information, including: design and refine a research strategy appropriate to a research problem; identify and locate a range of primary and secondary sources; organize, synthesize and incorporate a range of materials to advance an historical argument they have developed; employ the professional standards and practices of the historian—proper use of citation and references, paraphrasing, quoting and summarizing, and thorough contextualizing of primary source material.
Communication
Students will demonstrate proficiency and maximum fluency in communicating historical knowledge and arguments orally and in writing. They will employ a range of high quality, relevant primary and secondary sources to advance their ideas; organize their ideas clearly and methodically; use appropriate stylistic presentation and format for historical writing; and keep grammatical and syntax errors to an absolute minimum.
Intercultural Historical Knowledge and Understanding and Civic Engagement
Students will demonstrate an understanding of the cultural construction of race, gender, ethnicity and nature in history, a historically well informed cultural self-awareness, and a related well-informed understanding of the elements that shape other peoples’ history, cultural beliefs and practices, economic and political systems, as well as their relationships with other peoples and nation states. An empathy-based historical sensibility and knowledge base should move them to ask complex questions about other cultures that transcend time and place. Further, students will exhibit a well-developed understanding of how dominant perspectives in a society shape social authority and patterns of power, as well as of the historical evolution of American democracy in a comparative perspective relative to the expressions of ideals and practices in other countries. Students will demonstrate a capacity to exchange ideas about civic engagement in ways that draws on others’ viewpoints.
Students must maintain an overall GPA of 2.5 and a 2.75 GPA in major courses to be certified for graduation as a History major or minor. No major course may be taken on a pass-fail basis. Additionally, students who fail to earn a grade of C or better in a major course may not count it toward the major. Student progress will be monitored in an annual review. Students whose performance is unsatisfactory are placed on probation or are dropped from the major, depending on the outcome of the review.
Category I: American History
Minimum Nine (9) Credits in U.S. History
In this course students examine the social, economic, political, and cultural forces that have shaped the United States since World War II. We explore the politics and Cold War culture of the 1950s, American foreign policy throughout the period-especially Vietnam-as well as the social change movements of the 1960s, the sobering and transformative events of the 1970s, the subsequent enduring imprint on the American political and economic landscape left by the "Reagan Revolution," and the rise of lone-superpower militarism since the end of the Cold War. In many ways, this course is a critical examination of the roots of contemporary America.
This course, in the broadest sense, covers the history of America from the start of the revolutionary crisis through the Constitutional debate, 1763-1787. Students will explore the origins, meaning, and consequences of America's Revolution, looking at how the struggle for independence from England impacted America society, politics, culture, and economics, eventually giving rise to the United States.
The period 1781 to 1848 was bookended by the two defining moments in early American history-the end of hostilities with Great Britain and the Mexican-American War. Although the interim period was not marked by any large-scale military conflict, domestic political and social disputes engaged Americans from all walks of life. Caucasian, African and Native Americans; men and women; rich and poor; eastern and western; northern and southern-all possessed different visions of what the United States should be. This course will explore the intense struggle conducted by these disparate Americans to forge a nation.
American Indian History examines pertinent themes, issues, and events relative to Native Amricans from pre-contact to the recent past. Native Americans were (and are) resiliant and adaptive peoples who countered massive invasions by maintaining and modifying tribal identities, traditions, communities, spiritualities and connections to the physical environment. This course employs a multidisciplanary approach. Indeed, the only way to understand native peoples and their past is to embrace multiple perspectives. We will therefore rely on the words and wisdom of historians, anthropologies, and of course, Native Americans.
The role of African-Americans in cinematic films has varied widely, ranging from "brutal savages" in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation to dynamic and powerful leaders as seen in Spike Lee's Malcolm X. This course explores the African-American experience through the cultural medium of cinema. Particular emphasis will be placed on examining how Hollywood represented African-Americans and thereby reinforced, shaped and altered public perceptions of race and the role of blacks in society. The course will also investigate how historical developments in turn influenced the depiction of African-Americans in film, examining the modern Civil Rights struggle within the context of the film industry. 3 credits.
In this class students explore the broadly encompassing field of public history, examining first issues of popular memory -- how and why certain histories are remembered and others forgotten or repressed. We survey the history, purpose and functions of history museums, exhibits, and historic sites, as well as other sub-fields such as cultural landscapes, oral history, and documentary film. Through extensive readings, discussion, field trips and assignments, we examine why and how American history is so fraught with tension and discord over its public representation.
In this course students will study the evolution of the preservation movement in the U.S. from its historic roots to the state of the field and the challenges facing it today. We examine shifting theoretical approaches, as well as the various forces driving preservation. Students gain an understanding of the tools preservationists use today, including historical research, state, federal and local law, community organizational support, and the application of scientific and technological methods to building preservation.
Archival work is essential to preserving a culture, country, or institution's history. While public history provides a public interpetation or preservation of history -- museums, documentaries, monuments -- archives work to preserve and organize historical records for researchers to interpret. Through this couse, students will get a broad introduction to various aspects of archival work, like arrangement, preservation, research services, and management. The class will go on to look at arrangement and description, the foundation of archival work, in great detail through examination of description tools and projects based on the Ridge Archives and their personal collections. At the end of this course, students will not only have a foundation of archival knowledge, but also practical skills that can be applied to future internships or graduate education.
This course exposes students to fundamental approaches and best practices employed by history museum professionals. Students learn the changing nature of methods adopted by curators and educators to care, preserve, and interpret artifacts to the public. Through various class projects, students have opportunities to apply concepts presented in the course.
In this course students explore the many ways in which the material artifacts and built environments of Americans serve as historical "texts" -- to be studied, and often, preserved and interpreted for the public. We learn to see America's tangible, three-dimensional cultural landscape as a window into the attitudes, values, beliefs, behaviors, hopes, ideals, achievements, and fears of Americans across time and space. Extensive reading in the field of material culture studies, along with lecture, film, discussion, and two field trips shape the course. Along the way, students are challenged to conduct their own interpretations of places and objects and think about their meanings and significance in American history.
Category II: Western and World Historical Perspectives
Minimum Nine (9) Credits in European and World History
We will survey ancient Greek civilizations from the Bronze Age through the integration of the Greek world into the Roman hegemony. The emphasis is on the varying intellectual, political, aesthetic and social forces that came into play at various stages of Greek history and the ways in which these shaped modern Western values.
This course surveys ancient Roman History from the early Iron Age through the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE. The emphasis is on the military, political, aesthetic and social forces that came into play at the various stages of this history. Given the decisive influence of this history on the American founders, we are especially interested in understanding the political transformation from republic to monarchy that took place over the period c. 100 BCE to c. 100 CE.
The images available to us in movies, both feature films and documentaries, are valuable tools for studying the past. War is more powerfully imagined by non-veterans when it is conveyed through a movie depicting trench warfare (A Very Long Engagement). The tensions of the Cold War are more accessible in a movie that draws viewers into the lives of men and women surviving in and resisting a Communist state (The Lives of Others). Every film is also a primary source. Like a fourth-century vase or a nineteenth-century newspaper, it is a product of a specific set of conditions and intentions that have a lot to tell us about the time, place, and people that produced them. As such we will watch movies created by European directors, some of them made close to the events they depict, some of them well after the fact, which will allow us to examine the short twentieth century through film.
This course will provide an introduction to the history of Ireland from its reputation as the "island of Saints and Scholars" during the European Dark Ages to the rise and fall of the "Celtic Tiger" at the end of the twentieth century. We will craft an understanding of the complicated relationship between Ireland, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the British Empire, issues that are central to modern Irish history. We will cultivate a sense of the political, cultural, economic, and social changes and stagnations that made the partitioned island what it is today, as well as a familiaritywith the strong historiographical traditions that have challenged and, sometimes, rewritten historical narratives.
In this course students survey the major issues that have shaped the 20th century human experience from the beginning of World War I to the present time. The course assesses the causes and consequences of global violence so prevalent in the 20th century. It is centered on teaching an appreciation for non-western cultures and considers relations between non-western powers (specifically, Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries) and European and American powers. We examine the development of modern warfare, new political ideologies, and the fall of communism. 20th Century World History exposes students to diverse perspectives and key social, cultural, and political events that shaped our world today.
Sex is the vehicle that has literally (and perhaps figuratively) allowed us to go forth, multiply, and inhabit this beautiful blue and green planet. Yet sex is so much more to us than mere propagation. Sexual pleasure, sexual desire, and sexual identities - particularly in the period that we will examine in this course - have been central to repression, oppression, and conflict; dialogues of race, gender, religion, and society; and the ways that different cultures and nations organize themselves, their communities, and their members/citizens. In this course, we will tackle many issues and topics that you may find interesting and relevant to your own experience in this world, including (but not limited to): gay and lesbian identities; sexual reproduction, abortion, and birth control; fetishism and sex toys; and state, religious, and familial interference in policing of/assertion of "appropriate" sexual expression. The course engages with narratives in North America and Europe in the twentieth-century with the expectation that students will develop a sense of change over time and a comparative framework for thinking about sex.
Category III: Discipline Methods
Minimum Three (3) Credits in Discipline Methods
This course focuses on the discipline of history: what it is, what historians do, how they do it, and why. A reading and writing-intensive course, we will examine the discipline of history, exploring different schools of historical thought. Part of the process of investigating the history of History will be an examination of our assumptions about the past, about history, and about the discipline of History. We will focus on the processes of historical research and writing, with an emphasis on the development of skills in primary source analysis, critique of scholarly opinion, organization of research, critical thinking, effective writing, and verbal communication of arguments and ideas in a seminar setting.
Category IV: Capstone
Minimum Three (3) Credits in Capstone
Choose six courses total (18 credit hours), no more than two of which may be at the 100 level. No courses taken as part of the History Minor may be credited on a Pass/Fail basis. No more than two courses may come via transfer credits.