Tenure Track Professorship
in African History (link to job announcement)

New Courses for Fall 2008

• The Black Death
• Early Arabic Literature and History
• 20th Century Arabic Literature and History
• The Andes: Race, Region, Nation
• Intro to Latin America and the Caribbean
• African Americans in the West
• Making History: Russian Cinema as Testimony, Propaganda and Art
• Medieval History through Castles
• Church and State: Religion and the Founding of the US
• “Long Walk to Freedom”: Race, Capitalism and Liberation Struggles in Southern Africa
  
  
  

History Department
1600 Grand Ave.
Old Main, Room 311
St. Paul, MN 55105
phone: 651-696-6493
fax: 651-696-6498

OFFICE HOURS
September 1 through May 31
Weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
June 1 through August 31
Tuesdays 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

About the department

The Department of History offers courses in the development of ideas and institutions in different eras and areas. Courses in history contribute to general education and the understanding of an individual's place in society. Furthermore, they contribute to the preparation of students for graduate education in history and allied fields: teaching, law, business, the ministry, international relations, and library and archival work.

The discipline of history seeks to investigate events and cultures of the past by focusing on specific historical eras, particular geographic areas, and/or compelling thematic issues. It uses a wide range of written visual, oral, and material evidence as the basis for constructing contemporary accounts about the past. Historical accounts suggest not only how the past has shaped the present but how any contemporary arrangement represents only one possible result of previous struggles and contingencies. In this sense, history highlights discontinuity as well as pattern, difference as well as similarity, conflict as well as consensus, trauma as well as triumph.

The History Department at Macalester does not cover every time period or geographic area, nor does it try to construct a rigid hierarchical set of required classes. Rather, the Department seeks to examine the interpretive problems that historians encounter while practicing their own discipline and when interacting with other fields of academic study.

The History Department seeks to serve an array of educational goals for both majors and non-majors. Members of the Department strive to encourage a broad interdisciplinary approach and to develop students' proficiencies in analysis, writing, and speaking. As a result, students with any academic major who wish to explore discrete eras in time, the history of different parts of the world, or specific historical issues should find departmental offerings, particularly at the introductory and intermediate levels, appropriate for their undergraduate education.

The Department expects its own majors to:

• Become acquainted with the many, often competing, ways in which historians construct accounts of the past;
• Become conversant with different approaches to textual analysis, with diverse forms of historical representation, with a wide range of conceptual frameworks, and with competing ways of assessing and interpreting evidence from the past;
• Become more proficient in a) using a variety of research and informational tools, b) analyzing and evaluating historical arguments, and c) writing and speaking clearly and concisely;
• Come to appreciate the diversity in human experience through comparisons across time (different historical eras) and space (different geographic regions).

Although an undergraduate major at Macalester can lead to specialized graduate-level study in History, most graduates will likely pursue non-academic careers. Skills and perspectives developed through a History major, augmented by internship opportunities when appropriate, help prepare students for positions in professions such as teaching, law, business, international relations, and library and archival work; they may also contribute broadly to building successful careers in government, business, and the nonprofit sector. Work in History may also prepare Macalester students to be better informed, active citizens in their community, nation, and world.

Macalester College · 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105  USA · 651-696-6000
Comments and questions to webmaster@macalester.edu