History is a field of study which takes a disciplined approach to studying the past. The various sub-fields of history share a common emphasis on the intellectual skills and traditions of inquiry and analysis, comparison and synthesis. Drawing as it does upon the practices and concerns of a wide range of disciplines, a history major provides excellent preparation for graduate study in the humanities and social sciences as well as for many careers in the private and public sector. The history major helps students develop critical thinking, master the close analysis of texts and context, learn how to evaluate and gather evidence, and frame coherent and persuasive arguments and explanations of individual and social actions and events in the world. Students’ intellectual and leadership potential is promoted by encouraging them to develop the skills as well as the interest to engage the intellectual and moral issues of the past as well as of the present.
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History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
--Napoleon Bonaparte
The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected series of continuous events and examine it apart from others, though there is and can be no beginning to any event for one event always flows uninterruptedly from another.
--Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1865-69
his·to·ry: A narrative of events; a story.
--American Heritage Dictonary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000
An account of facts respecting nations or states; a narrative of events in the order in which they happened with their causes and effects.
--Noah Webster, Webster’s Dictionary, 1828
