History

Browse Majors & Minors

Drawing of an electrostatics experiment by English scientist Fracis Hauksbee (or Hawksbee), 1767

  • <div class="lw_blurbs_body"><p> Famous lines: “Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.”</p><p style="text-align: right;"><strong>— St. James, the Greater (d. 44 C.E.)</strong></p></div>
  • <div class="lw_blurbs_body"><p> Famous lines: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”</p><p style="text-align: right;"><strong>— Confucius (d. 479 B.C.E.)</strong></p></div>
  • <div class="lw_blurbs_body"><p> Famous lines: “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”</p><p style="text-align: right;"><strong>— Ibn Battuta (d. 1369)</strong></p><p>  </p></div>
  • <div class="lw_blurbs_body"><p> Famous lines: “If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we should suffer from.” </p><p style="text-align: right;"><strong>— Sei Shonagon (d. 1025 C.E.)</strong></p></div>
  • <div class="lw_blurbs_body"><p> Famous lines: “It is love alone that gives worth to all things.”</p><p style="text-align: right;"><strong>— Teresa of Avila (d. 1582)</strong></p></div>
  • <div class="lw_blurbs_body"><p> Famous lines: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”</p><p style="text-align: right;"><strong>— Socrates (d. 399 B.C.E.)</strong></p></div>

Learn why History is one of the most popular majors across the country, preparing you for a rapidly changing world.

Recent graduates report working in a wide range of fields including business management, the non-profit sector, records management, and teaching. Our students also have pursued graduate study in medicine, law, library science, and, of course, history.

Alma’s history program offers both a major and a minor, including courses on Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Subject matter spans an extensive range of time periods and cultures, addressing special topics like the history of public health, religion, immigration and ethnicity, foreign policy, the American Constitution and law.

Thanks to the breadth of topics and flexible course sequencing, many history students also choose to double major in related subjects like political science, English, business or philosophy.

Alma’s history majors and minors take advantage of special opportunities such as the Smith and Mitchell Fellowships, Posey Global Fellowships and topical Spring Term courses as well as class-based and independent research projects that lead to conference presentations and publication in academic journals.

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