History

Overview

Program Details

The regular History program of Case Western Reserve University, based on the Arts and Sciences Core, offers students the flexibility to pursue their historical interests while gaining a wide-ranging foundation.

Historical studies are sometimes categorized among humanistic studies and sometimes among the social sciences. Allied with both traditions, historians seek an understanding of the past by analyzing societies and how they change over time.

The Department of History offers instruction within the customary frameworks that have formed the basis of historical studies, and it also has developed special emphases in social, cultural, political, and economic perspectives that allow instruction and research on such topics as the African-American experience, the environment, business and economy, technology and science, medicine, women’s history and gender studies, legal history, and comparative social history. Courses in history, or a formal major or minor in history, traditionally have been attractive to students as preparation for a wide variety of career and professional interests, including teaching, law, government, medicine, and journalism, and such public history activities as archival administration, historical museum administration, restoration and preservation of historic sites, and writing.