专业描述

The history major at UTK is evolving, and we are excited about our new trajectory. Beginning in 2015, we’re introducing a dynamic new course, HIST 299. HIST 299 is called “Thinking Historically,” but each iteration of it tackles a different theme. All 299s are small, hands-on seminars designed to launch students into the major. Students in HIST 299 will work closely with their professors on cutting-edge research and receive close mentoring that will serve them throughout their careers in the major and even beyond. In History, we teach people to ask good (and sometimes difficult) questions, and we give them the tools to find answers—something we hope becomes a lifelong practice. We know that investigating past worlds and experiences can give us all a broader and more sophisticated understanding of our common humanity, and that knowledge of the past makes all kinds of present-day concerns more intelligible. And that’s what we teach. It’s no surprise, then, that our graduates have found extraordinary careers in every field of endeavor, including media, business, public history, teaching, the law, museum and archival work, public relations, governmental and non-governmental organizations, publishing, and community affairs, among many other fields. History majors do all kinds of things well, from collecting vast amounts of information and distilling it in useful ways to offering fine-grained analyses of significant questions.