How does the past impact our present? What about our future?

How do we interpret what has happened and use that information to create a better world?

Program Description

The history program at Tennessee Wesleyan University will help prepare you for a variety of careers or classroom teaching in the various disciplines related to history. The program views history with a non-western focus, from the use of cinema, art, environment, and literature.

History students are highly encouraged to explore the liberal arts disciplines throughout the university. The program deliberately has a smaller course loud, to encourage students to sample minors and other courses, to get the full breadth of liberal arts study they can bring back to their history classrooms.

History majors looking to go into education can complete their degree for secondary education, preparing them for licensure to teach grades 7-12.

Career Opportunities

Teacher

Graduate School

Politics

Law

Western Heritage

A survey of Western, essentially European, institutions, culture, religions, and ideologies from the Paleolithic era until about 1945. The course also attempts to show how history is not simply a body of knowledge but also a way of thinking. This course covers the topic from the Paleolithic era until 1789.

History of Modern China

This course is an introduction to modern Chinese history from approximately 1800 to the present. Since the 1600s China has been transformed from a traditional agricultural empire into a modern nation-state with a developing industrial economy. During this time, China has faced many external challenges and internal disruptions. The course will explore major themes including changes in the form of government, the impact of the West and Japan, the transformations of urban and rural society, the political and military struggles for power in the 20th century, recent political and economic trends, and China's determination to return to the heights of its glory as the "Middle Kingdom."

Civil Rights Movement Biography

One of the most extraordinary stories of the American twentieth century (quite possibly of American history overall), the Civil Rights Movement largely turned southern society-- and America in general-- upside down. Southern history might still be marked (in much the same way as the Civil War itself) as “before and after” the revolution in civil rights of the 1950s and 1960s. This course will tell the story of the movement largely through the biographies of the extraordinary people who made it happen– African American and white, male and female, journalist and activist, politician and foot soldier.