Learn about the past.
Prepare for your future.

Study History at UNCG and you’ll have the chance to hold history in your hands: read primary sources from different time periods and cultures, visit local museums, study abroad, participate in archeological digs, and even organize your own exhibits.

Unearthing history, building communities

Why Study History?

Inquire into the past, asking questions about people and places and events whose histories still inform our lives in the present. How did African Americans, born in bondage, form new identities and communities after the end of slavery in the United States? In what sense is modern Asia “modern”? Explore the courses below to see other examples of historical inquiry questions.

Investigate the raw materials of the past and learn how history is made. What is history and how is it documented in various forms of human expression—art, artifacts, music, and texts? History majors study all kinds of primary sources to think critically about different perspectives on human experience.

Inspire connections through time. Why have relations among humans across the globe become so complex since ancient times? How have human ideas about the world, nature, and the cosmos changed? History majors develop global knowledge and understanding about human experience and make connections between the ancient and more recent pasts.

Interpret the past yourself by writing an original work of history. All history majors take a capstone course in historical research to create an original interpretation of primary source materials. Recent topics for the research seminars include In the Wake of Columbus, Unraveling America: 1962-1972, Doing Local History, The Great Irish Famine, and American Nationalism and the Second Founding.

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Drop your preconceptions at the door and be open to challenges and possibilities, because you have never examined historical events and actors or engaged with historical evidence and scholarship in the ways you will be expected to.
-Angela Robbins, Ph.D. 2010