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Elizabeth Sage, Chair

Robert Marks, (Emeritus)

José Orozco

History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1938- ) 

If the house is to be set in order, one must not begin in the present; he must begin with the past. 

John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) 

The Department of History at Whittier College is a welcoming and challenging home for students curious about both the past and the present.  In a world that is both interconnected and complicated, the study of history is a particularly apt way to explore how the world we live in, as well as our place in it, came to be.  In order to understand that world, we offer a curriculum that is global in its approach, placing all national and local histories into a global context.  Our courses explore how historical categories are constructed and reconstructed historically, and interrogate familiar historical narratives, often posing difficult questions about the past.  Our students explore the contingent rather than the inevitable nature of the past, and thus learn how the past leaves us with a legacy that might constrain, but never traps us. 

Reflecting the department’s commitment to providing an historical education that is truly global, the major begins with an Introduction to World History and ends with a Capstone Seminar.  Three courses in one world area offer depth of historical knowledge, and courses in other world areas provide breadth.  Small seminars introduce students to the problems and practices of historiography and methodology, and foster community and cooperation among students learning to do the detective work of the historian.  Courses expose students to a wide variety of approaches that historians have taken to studying the past, and to the ever-shifting array of questions that they have asked about the past. 

Our students emerge from our major with a wide range of analytical skills that will prove invaluable in any professional setting: the ability to develop and critique arguments and interpretations; the capacity to carefully analyze, interpret, and draw meaning from texts; and polished reading, writing, research, speaking, and problem-solving skills.  Our graduates have gone on to secondary school teaching and administration; museum, library, and archival work, professional degrees in law, business, medicine, and history; union organizing, non-profit work, and political activism. 

Programs

• History, B.A.

• History Minor

Courses

• AFBL 283 - African Diaspora and Liberation Movements
• HIST 101 - Introduction to World History
• HIST 200 - Europe Before 1700: The Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Worlds
• HIST 201 - Introduction to Modern European History
• HIST 206 - United States to 1865
• HIST 207 - United States Since 1865
• HIST 220 - East Asian Civilizations
• HIST 230 - Introduction to African History
• HIST 235 - Middle East: Muhammad to the Mongols
• HIST 236 - Islam, the Middle East, and the West
• HIST 245 - Introduction to Modern Central America
• HIST 246 - Introduction to Modern Latin America
• HIST 280 - History and Theory
• HIST 290-01 (Fall) - History of California
• HIST 290-01 (Spring) - Our Story: Unearthing the Black History of Whittier College
• HIST 300 - Colonial America
• HIST 311 - Native American History
• HIST 313 - Early African American History
• HIST 323 - Modern China
• HIST 329 - Modern Japan
• HIST 347 - Modern Mexico
• HIST 348 - US/Mexico Border Studies
• HIST 351 - Cuban Revolution
• HIST 360 - Race, Class & Gender in Modern Europe
• HIST 361 - Romantic Revolutions
• HIST 362 - Streets, Barricades & Graffiti: The History of the Modern European City
• HIST 363 - Socialism & Revolution in Modern Europe
• HIST 364 - Modern France: 1789-Present
• HIST 380 - Historical Methods
• HIST 390-01 (Spring) - Native American History, 1890-present
• HIST 480 - Capstone Seminar

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