The study of history reveals the past, enlightens the present, and influences the future. Historians seek to understand how nations, societies, and individuals lived and thought, and to explain their actions and behavior. History supplies the context that informs art, ideas, institutions, and events, history illuminates all of human experience.

Trained to examine evidence carefully and evaluate received interpretations of the past, students construct their own understanding of historical processes and occurrences, building arguments from primary sources, historians’ writings and appropriate theoretical literatures. In history you also write gripping narratives, empathize with the experiences of people who have gone before and re-imagine past worlds.

The faculty of the Department of History at Tufts promotes a diversity of approaches and ways of understanding the past. From the history of medicine, to labor and migrant histories, to transnational and material culture, courses challenge students to analyze historical material. The department offers a wide range of courses designed to meet the needs and interests of students with differing concerns and levels of preparation. General surveys cover entire periods, fields, or geographic areas, while thematic courses provide more specific, comparative, or regional perspectives. Foundation Seminars introduce undergraduate majors to the historian’s craft; Research Seminars provide them with the opportunity to practice it through a significant research project. Students interested in specialized work are encouraged to explore independent study or to consider the option of writing a Senior Honors Thesis.

Students and faculty in the history department are also involved with the local historical community. The Boston Area Global History Consortium sponsors the Pearson Prentice Hall Seminar Series in Global History at Tufts. The gatherings take place several times per semester, and provide both structured feedback concerning research topics and social interaction with colleagues.

Sample Classes:

• History of Consumption
• Colonial Latin America
• Japan to 1868
• Antebellum and Civil War America
• Europe to 1815

Phot credit: Matt Kieffer CC BY-SA 2.0 from Flickr