History

Department Head

Professor Paul D. Barclay

The study of history is an essential feature of a liberal arts education. Historians examine how people living in different times and places understood their world and acted within it. Students taking history courses at Lafayette acquire knowledge about past events around the globe, develop analytical skills, and are taught to think both about historical specificities and about connections across time and space. The curriculum also teaches apprentice historians how to ask important questions about the past, how to research answers to those questions, and then how to communicate findings in compelling prose and clear oral presentations. These research, analytical, and expository skills are essential for the proper understanding of history, but they are also valuable in a wide range of other endeavors that students pursue both during their college careers and afterwards. History majors graduate with a complex understanding of the past and with the skills necessary to both understand and help transform the social and cultural contexts they inherited.

History Courses