History

Overview

Purpose Statement

The History program of the Northern Arizona University offers a close professor-student relationship and is designed to prepare students to pursue careers in academia as well as the public and private sectors. These may include preparation for doctoral or other post-graduate degrees, teaching, public history, and public service. Our program strengths in the U.S. West and Borderlands are complemented by expertise in theoretical and thematic fields such as gender, environment, and race.

Student Learning Outcomes

All students graduating with the M.A. will: 

• Elucidate key principles, theories, techniques, sources, and methods of the historical discipline and in the student’s primary and secondary fields.

• Explain the key principles, theories and methods of World and/or comparative history, and analyze historical processes and events and their interrelation, including debates and historiographies.

• Develop their historical research and writing skills through analysis and interpretation of primary and secondary source materials.

• Retrieve and analyze archival materials, historical documents and historiographical contributions and debates from various periods, interpreting and contextualizing them within their cultural, social, political, environmental, etc. contexts.

• Demonstrate a superior quality of writing both in terms of mechanics and in developing an argument effectively. 

• Synthesize and evaluate the pertinent arguments and debates among historians in their chosen primary and secondary fields.