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History Department
Do you want to change the world? Do you want to change the world? History is the study of change over time. In a world where change happens faster than ever, understanding change and changemakers is critical to strategic decision making and to implementing change from the local to global level.
Majors
History
Focus your degree with concentrations in either Difference, Identity and Power, or Digital Humanities and Public History. Enhance your learning with minors available in History, Women and Gender Studies, African American Studies, Asian Studies, or European Studies
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History Social-Studies Teaching
Become an educator and focus your learning with minors available in History, Women and Gender Studies, African American Studies, Asian Studies, or European Studies
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Minors
Explore the past to better understand the present! This minor covers U.S., European, and global history, preparing you for careers in law, business, government, or museum work. It’s also great for grad school prep!
Examine how gender shapes society, culture, and identity. This interdisciplinary minor dives into gender roles, intersectionality, and social change, culminating in a research-focused capstone seminar.
Dive into the history, culture, and contributions of Black communities in the U.S. and beyond. This interdisciplinary minor explores politics, literature, social movements, and intellectual traditions, centering race alongside other identities like gender, class, and nationality.
Choose between a research-focused track or a hands-on community engagement path to connect your studies with real-world impact.
Gain a global perspective with this interdisciplinary minor covering the history, politics, and cultures of East, South, and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the Asian diaspora.
Expand your global awareness by studying European history, culture, and politics. Perfect for students interested in international business, diplomacy, law, or the arts. Study abroad courses can count toward the minor!
Departmental Resources
Students of history will learn the following essential concepts and values at Bradley
- History – The study of history leads to interpretive accounts of the past that must be well-supported by the evidence that survives. While narrative is important in efforts to reconstruct the past, history is not simply a story of “what happened.” The past can be known to us only through a disciplined process of research, debate, and problem solving. History produces provisional accounts that may be revised when new evidence is discovered and new questions are asked.
- Historical Evidence – Historians use primary and secondary sources to make sense of the past. These sources come in diverse forms, represent a variety of perspectives, and have their own strengths and limitations as evidence.
- Context – Historians can better understand people of the past by contextualizing their actions. Context includes what they were trying to accomplish; the nature of their beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge; and the culturally and historically contingent assumptions that guided their thoughts and actions.
- Complexity – Historians explain change, so they are intensely interested in the “how and why” questions of historical developments. They avoid monocausal explanations and categorical or reductionist thinking, because the motives and behaviors of people in the past were multifaceted, complex, and sometimes mysterious.
- Fairness and Empathy – People in the past cannot speak back to historians. Therefore, historians have an obligation to strive for an empathetic understanding that only allows for judging people’s decisions and actions within their own historical context. In fact, history is a great discipline for teaching the value of compassion not only toward our acquaintances, but toward people whom we will never meet and who live lives that often seem quite foreign to us.
- Intellectual Curiosity and Citizenship – Historians value the study of the past for fostering an abiding curiosity about others, as well as the searching, contemplative, and magnanimous world view that is an essential component of democratic citizenship. History done well trains people to gather knowledge and weigh the evidence about any given problem, to engage calmly and rationally with a diversity of viewpoints, and to become active participants in civil society.
Students of history will learn the following skills at Bradley
- Location and Interpretation of Primary Sources – Learning to find and interpret primary sources of all kinds is the key to doing history. Students in our program learn to find sources in libraries, archives, and internet. They distinguish between kinds of primary sources (for example written, visual, or aural; descriptive or prescriptive; tonally objective or subjective). They consider how the historical context of the source affects its guiding concerns, language, credibility, and message. Through close analysis they address questions of genre, form, content, audience, and biographical perspective in order to discover the author’s deeper meaning.
- Development of Historical Arguments Using Primary Sources – By carrying out original research in primary sources, upper-level students will construct accounts of historical change that demonstrate understanding of historical evidence, context, interpretation, and perspective.
- Evaluation of Secondary Historical Accounts – Historical research also involves reading other scholars’ accounts. Students learn to recognize the common forms and tropes in historical writing (for example narrative, exposition, causal model, and analogy). They identify a writer’s interpretation and scrutinize the evidence and analysis upon which that interpretation rests. They critically evaluate, compare, and synthesize historiography on specific subjects in history.
- Range, Depth, Diversity, and Cross-Cultural Empathy – Students learn about a variety of time periods and civilizations in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, and in so doing they learn about diverse cultural perspectives, the study of which promotes empathetic understanding as an antidote to “othering.” Students are required to take two courses that specifically address cross-cultural relationships, or they can fulfill this requirement by taking one such class plus a Study Abroad course. During their junior and senior seminars, students gain in-depth expertise in specific historical subjects. History naturally sparks the interest of people who are intellectually curious. Through the wide range of subject matter, students not only get to explore the areas they are already interested in, they also develop new interests and questions about world history.
- Comprehension of Complex Messages, and Clear, Effective, and Truthful Communication – Professionally trained historians should communicate well to each other and especially to laypersons about the importance of investigating the past. A grounded understanding of history is crucial to an informed democratic polity. Yet too often, untrained public figures oversimplify and thus distort the truth about the past, and the vast amount of bare, unfiltered, and often false information on the internet easily flummoxes people as well. Full comprehension of complex messages, alongside effective, clear, and truthful communication, are essential skills that historians are well equipped to develop in their students. These skills are central to good citizenship within any type of democracy. Truthfulness of communication is at a premium and needs to be protected and promoted during a person’s college education.
The Armstrong Lecture Series, sponsored by Bradley University’s history department, is named for Professor William Martin Armstrong (1919-1991) and brings interesting, provocative, and expert speakers to campus to offer new perspectives on the past and the present.
Born in Peoria, Armstrong entered Bradley in 1937, but his college years were interrupted by World War II. After enlisting in 1941, military service took him to both Europe and the Philippines. Returning to Bradley, he graduated with his B.A. in history and went on to earn his master’s degree from Louisiana State University and his Ph.D. in history from Stanford University in 1954. Armstrong taught at a variety of institutions over his career, including: Eastern Illinois University, Washington College, Helsinki University, City University of New York (Brooklyn), and Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., where he was tenured. William Armstrong’s research and writing was focused on late nineteenth-century US history with a particular emphasis on the life and work of E. L. Godkin, founding editor of The Nation and Godkin’s connection to issues of U.S., Irish, and British relations. Armstrong was also an accomplished landscape artist who exhibited work in juried art shows and sold pieces to private collections. He was proud of his membership in the Sierra Club and the ACLU and remained actively engaged throughout his life. William Armstrong’s life work was devoted to the enduring importance of historical understanding and generously endowed the university with funds to support this lecture series in history.