Guided Pathways

History is a superb foundation for the study of law, because legal reasoning depends fundamentally on historical reasoning. Law schools look favorably on a history major because the critical thinking, research, and writing skills that are taught in history classes are so similar to the skills that are required for the study of law.  Students on this track will focus on the development of legal codes and political systems and will be especially well prepared for the demands of law school.

Simply put, public history is history put to work. Public historians work in both historical resource management and applied research. They collaborate with community partners or clients to interpret the past in useful and accessible ways. Public historians disseminate their research to broad public audiences through a wide variety of methods such as museum exhibits, documentary films, historic preservation projects, the collection of oral histories, and digital media. Students on this track will examine the theories behind and gain practical experience in various aspects of public history, laying the groundwork for potential careers in museums, archives, historical consulting, cultural resource management, and government agencies.

HIST 4360: Careers in Public History
HIST 4365: Oral History: Capturing and Presenting Individual and Community Stories
HIST 5080: American History and Its Publics
HIST 5100: Internship in History

To study African history is to study the world. African history classes focus on the continent’s longstanding and changing relationships with other parts of the world covering everything from ancient trade routes in the Sahara and Swahili coast, to the international relations of polities like Aksum, Mali, and the Kongo Kingdom, to the devastating impact of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism. Studying Africa’s more recent past provides students with the analytical tools to understand many of the modern world’s most critical issues including global health challenges, the climate crisis, relationships between citizens and the state, and the changing role of technology in society. All African history courses include a heavy focus on African-generated sources such as oral traditions, popular literature, material culture, and music, enabling students to consider these connections, changes, and challenges from the perspectives of African creators from the very distant past to the present. Coursework in this area will help students to become critically engaged and informed global citizens and provide a useful background for a variety of career paths.

The study of the American West is a strength of this department. We have faculty who teach about the interaction of native peoples with settlers who came in to the region, faculty who teach about environmental issues in the US and its Southwest, those who teach about Utah as a state, those who tackle labor issues in the West, those who deal with the religious culture of the state and the West. Students taking this pathway not only delve deeply into a broad range of topics as they relate to this part of the US, but they also come to understand how this region relates to the wider world like the rest of North, Central and South America, the Pacific and Asia, Europe and Middle East. The department also shares deep connections to the American West Center, which houses thousands of oral histories and a wide range of curriculum support materials, and which initiates and supports projects for both undergraduate and graduate students. Students of the American West have gone on to work in archives, business, law, the non-profit sector, and various other professions.

Asia is the size of North and South America combined with nearly six times the population of Europe. It accounts for over one-third of the entire world's Gross Domestic Product. The study of Asian history extends from India to Japan and Indonesia to Mongolia, from the early Indus River and Yangzi River civilizations 5,000 years ago to the very present global economy. Connections between Asia and Utah and the intermountain West run deep in modern history from the railroads and mines to current businesses in cosmetics, sportswear and pharmaceuticals. The range of courses related to Asia complement those in World Languages and Literature, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, Art History, International Studies, Film Studies, Social Work, Architecture, Environmental Studies, and even Medicine and the Physical Sciences. The study of Asia’s past is highly relevant to current concerns in the US, and in recent years, students of Asian history have gone on to careers in computer graphics and animation, game design, finance, international law, foreign liaison service, military intelligence, microbiology, sustainability consulting, and museum work, as well as post-graduate studies at elite institutions.

European History explores and challenges transformations in Europe and its influence in the world over the last several centuries. By examining such themes as empire, war, migration, and cooperation in Europe, students gain a broader understanding of other cultures and societies. It prepares students to critically consider Europe—and by extension any region—and the construction of nationality and identity. To do so, students examine primary sources from different regions, cultures, and media. Students who study European history often go on to teach primary or secondary school, attend law school, work for the State Department, or teach English abroad.

Understand the historical roots of contemporary issues like immigration, the drug trade, corruption, foreign debt, and trade negotiations.  Discover the rich history of Latin American poets, neighborhood activists, medical history, and indigenous society and culture.

The degree emphasis in Latin American history is built around two core courses (1300 and 1310) that take an interdisciplinary approach and fulfill degree requirements for Latin American Studies.  Students may focus on specific countries of emphasis and gain a broad knowledge of trends in the region.  The Latin American history emphasis offers course sections in target languages (Spanish, Portuguese), thus allowing students to access non-English historical documents and materials. The degree emphasis prepares students in the ways that history in general does, with the additional benefit of cross cultural study and consideration of colonization and post-colonialism, indigeneity, state formation, culture, and social movements. The degree emphasis is necessarily comparative in nature.

The curriculum prepares students for graduate study or for Latin America-related careers in business, communications, government, bilingual/bicultural education, secondary teaching, community organizing, and international work.

The history of the United States is, like all history, constantly evolving in response to new questions, the discovery of new evidence, the introduction of new perspectives, and the shifting needs and demands of an increasingly diverse, mobile, and globally connected society. Training in the field leads to a wide variety of careers, including jobs in law, government, non-profits, business, medicine, technology, education, historic preservation, museums, publishing, and other public history fields. As students of U.S. history you can examine everything from the indigenous cultures and societies that thrived in North America before European contact to the present day problems and debates that influence our modern nation and world. You will gain new insights into the political, social, economic, diplomatic, religious, and cultural histories that inform the way we live in the U.S. today and the way we choose to remember the nation’s past. Beyond specific career training you will investigate important contemporary issues through a critical historical lens, training that will enable you to be an informed, engaged, and inquisitive modern citizen. With specialists in early and modern America, women, gender, military, African Americans, Latinas/os, American Indians, Asian Americans, the U.S. West, Utah, and Mormon histories, the History Department is well-equipped to help you explore the many different histories that, when combined, make up the American experience.

Clothing made in China, jobs in Saudi Arabia, immigrants from Honduras: all these phenomena are part of the globalization of the world today.  While these developments seem new, they have many precedents.  In London in the seventeenth century, Indigenous representatives from North America walked the streets of the huge metropolis.  British drug dealers harvesting opium in India peddled their wares in China in the nineteenth century.  Manila hosted Chinese merchants who sold luxury goods in exchange for silver mined in Potosi in present-day Bolivia for over two hundred years.  Ideas, religions, goods, and people crossed the planet on a regular basis.  By 1900, a global system of communication and transportation was fully operational.

The Department of History offers numerous courses addressing global exchange and encounters, from the ancient world to the present day.  Survey courses of World History both before and after 1500 are regularly available to students.  Courses such as Global Islam and  Christianity in the Modern World give students unique perspectives on major world religions.  Offerings also address exploration, empires, decolonization, and world health.  These are crucial to understanding the tensions and challenges of the contemporary world.    Well educated students with global knowledge are well prepared for the positions available in a globalized world where careers often take one overseas, from East Asia to Europe.

For thousands of years, empires have been one of the world’s most widespread and influential forms of political and social organization.  Ranging in time from the empires of ancient Mesopotamia to the European empires that dominated much of the globe until the mid-20^th century, they have done much to shape the contours of human history.  The study of colonialism and imperialism includes attention to gender, environmental history, religion, slavery, the history of science and medicine, and histories of indigenous peoples.  Colonial authorities remade landscapes, polities, and societies.  Empires also shaped beliefs, impacting the inner worlds of colonizers and colonized alike.

Yet with colonial rule came dissent and contestation.  In the face of often exploitative and hierarchical regimes, colonized peoples sought to retain control of their own lives, refashioning the dynamics of imperial influence in the process.  In the modern era, the legitimacy of empires has been comprehensively called into question.  The phenomenon of decolonization was one of the most important political developments of the twentieth century, and, while imperialism has not disappeared from the contemporary world, colonial practices have taken new forms.

Students who choose to pursue coursework in Colonialism and Imperialism will explore the complex dynamics of colonial interactions, which remain profoundly relevant to the textures and structures of contemporary human experience.

The way we understand gender, both in theory and in practice, has changed over time. Scholars currently think of gender as systems that sort people into the categories of male, female, queer, or non-binary. As we know from more recent studies of sex and gender in the sciences, the biological and cultural expressions of gender shape each other. Our Comparative Gender track allows students to study gender across and among different cultures and in different historical moments. Such comparisons make the socially constructed nature of gender much easier to see and illuminate the profound impact it has always had on our daily lives, social structures, legal frameworks, and economics. Studying gender cross-culturally also allows students to think about how gender interacts with other social hierarchies such as race, class, and sexuality. Students in this track will develop crucial skills for analyzing how systems of power and hierarchy work and how they interact with each other. Students will also acquire an understanding of how gender has shaped opportunities and experiences in the past, leaving lasting legacies. With this knowledge we can imagine a range of possible futures.

Environmental history is the study of the reciprocal relationships between people and the natural world. Environmental historians explore the historically and culturally derived ways in which human societies have engaged nature, the influence of nature on human life, and the consequences of these interactions for both nature and people. Environmental historians utilize interdisciplinary methods that combine traditional historical source materials with research from the natural sciences. The environmental history track will help prepare students for further academic work as well as potential careers in environmental law, land and resource management, environmental science, and government agencies.

HIST 3460: Environments, Health, and Development in African History
HIST 4380: U.S. Environmental History
HIST 4855: Environmental History of India
HIST 4860: Environmental History of China

Issues of race and ethnicity have permeated all aspects of socio-political and cultural life. History cannot be properly understood without understanding how racial formations were created and sustained and how those formations shaped societies. Racial and ethnic hierarchies formed states and nations, caused the migrations of masses of people, transformed economies and trade, altered systems of beliefs, and produced multiple layers of cultures. In addition to the Diversity courses in African American, Chicana/o, and Asian American history, courses on colonialism and imperialism, gender, and World history take as a key component an examination of race and ethnicity. Students who pursue this pathway will heighten their perception of less visible structures of racial formations across societies, develop critical analytic skills in comprehending theories and events, and raise their ability to synthesize pragmatic initiatives regarding racial issues and their intersections with those of gender and class.

The history of belief systems that we explore in the Religion track goes beyond Europe and North America. In addition to a wealth of courses on Christianity from the earliest times to the present, the Religion track also encompasses non-Judeo-Christian traditions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and various indigenous systems of belief, both ancient and modern. As the flagship Utah institution of higher learning, a key component of the Religion track is the study of the history of Mormonism. The study of religious history informs our understanding of social institutions and cultural values and it reveals how communities determine and encourage ethical behavior even in areas such as business and trade.

Between the European Middles Ages and the contemporary post-colonial era, European expansion led to the creation and consolidation of colonial regimes around the world. Colonial authorities sought to transform societies by remolding their subjects’ own vision of themselves, their families, their lands, their sciences, and even their futures.

The pervasive and insidious influence of colonialism, its technology, and its violence was thus felt in the mind and body, marked vast landscapes, and found expression in everything from politics to material culture. Yet with colonial rule came dissent and contestation. In the face of what were often stringently hierarchical colonial regimes, women and men in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, attempted to retain control of their own lives. Their strivings meant that, as Western ideas about gender, ethnicity, science, technology, and the environment were extended overseas, they were themselves refashioned.