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Trinity College

 

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For a small college, Trinity's History Department is unusually large and diverse. Preparing students to be citizens of an increasingly interdependent world, the Department offers courses in the history of many continents and cultures: the United States and Europe - both areas of special strength; East and South Asia;  Latin America and the Caribbean; the Middle East and Africa. Courses address every period from the ancient to the contemporary, and they range across a variety of approaches, from broadly political, economic, diplomatic, social, and cultural to intensive focus on the experience of women, people of color, businesspeople, and workers.

To balance this breadth, the Department requires History majors to dig deep into the discipline. All majors must complete a core historiography course, then a specialized seminar, and finally either a thesis or research seminar in which seniors carry out ambitious research projects based on primary documents.

In recent years, graduating History majors have gone on to distinguish themselves in a wide array of careers in higher education, law, business, banking, public service, journalism and many other fields.

 


The Requirements for a B.A. in History

Students pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in History are required to attain proficiency in and complete the following course work:

  • one survey course at the 100 or 200 level in each of the following fields: England or Europe before 1700 or in ancient times; England or Europe since 1700; the United States
  • three survey courses at the 100 or 200 level in any one of these fields: East or South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, or the Caribbean.
  • Historiography (299) a study of the character and range of activities undertaken by historians;
  • one junior seminar (401)
  • one senior seminar (451) or the year-long senior thesis (498-499).  A thesis is a two-semester, two-credit research project.
  • three elective courses, two of which must be at the 300 level or higher

 


A Rich Curriculum

Trinity's History majors find ample variety in this Department's curriculum. Here are a few titles from the many course offerings.

  • Foundations of Greek and Roman History
  • Warring States: The United States and Vietnam
  • Medieval Britain: English Law and Government: 1066-1688
  • Renaissance and Reformation Europe
  • America in the World: Historical Perspectives onn 9/11
  • African-American History
  • Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Non-Violence
  • Colonialism in the Americas
  • The Cuban Revolution
  • The Rise of Modern Russia
  • The Western Impact on Modern Japan
  • African History to 1800
  • African History Since 1800
  • Past and Present in Italian Intellectual History
  • Mobs, Masses, and Democracy in America
  • The Arab/Israeli Conflict
  • Drink and Disorder in America
  • Latinos/Latinas in the U.S.
  • The History of Hartford, 1865-Present
  • The History of China, Qing to Present
  • History and Literature in 19th Century France
  • Middle East, 700-1600
  • Early Modern Ireland

 


Integrated Learning

Because History intersects with many other disciplines, historians at Trinity collaborate with professors from many other departments and programs. History courses stand at the core of Women's Studies, International Studies, American Studies, Guided Studies, the Cities Program, and many of the College's minor programs. History faculty have been also pioneers in the development of year-long interdisciplinary series of courses, films, faculty lectures and symposia.    All History majors are urged to explore widely in the humanities and social sciences to enhance their historical studies.

 


A Distinguished Faculty

Trinity's History faculty are teacher-scholars whose research has earned them recognition by their professional peers around the world. Books published by Trinity historians in the last few years include Professor Joan Hedrick's 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning Harriet Beecher Stowe - A Life, which was also nominated for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize and named to The New York Times list of Notable Books of the Year.

Other notable publications include:

  • The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth Century Paris, by Kathleen Kete;
  • Or Does it Explode? Black Harlem in the Great Depression, by Cheryl Greenberg.
  • Regionalism and Change in the Economy of Independent Delos, by Gary Reger;
  • Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia, by Samuel Kassow;
  • A Vision for London, 1889 - 1914: Labour, Everyday Life and the London County Council Experiment, by Susan Pennybacker
  • Reinterpreting the Banana Republic: Region and State in Honduras, 1870-1972, by Dario Euraque.
  • Estado, Poder, Nacionalidad y Raza en la Historia de Honduras: Ensayos, by Dario Euraque.
  • Alsatian, Autonomist Leaders: 1919-1947, by Philip Bankwitz.
  • Mazime Weygand and Cibil-Military Relations in Modern France, by Philip Bankwitz.
  • Solitary Comrade: Jack London and His Work, by Joan Hedrick.
  • The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, by Michael Lestz and Pei-kai Cheng.
  • A Vision for London 1889-1914: Labour, Everyday Life and the LCC Experiment, by Susan Pennybacker.
  • Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters, by Barbara Sicherman.
  • Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer, by Edward Sloan.
  • America and the Sea: A Maritime History, by Edward Sloan, Benjamin Labaree, William Fowler, Jr., John Hattendorf, Jeffrey Safford, and Andrew German.
  • and Hartford: An Illustrated History of Connecticut's Capital, by Glenn Weaver.

 


State-of-the-Art Resources

Trinity's campus-wide computer network plays an integral part in enhancing each student's educational experiences. Every dorm room is wired for direct computer networking, offering links to other students, to the CTW library system, to the campus-wide Local Area Network, and, through the College's subscription, to the Internet international computer network and the World Wide Web.

As is true of most of their peers, both History faculty and majors are begining to exploit the Internet, with some exciting results. For example, Trinity's Learning Technology Project,with financial support from the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation,  has encouraged faculty development and exploration in the use of the web in some of Prof. Luis A. Figueroa's courses, such as Hist. 247- Latinos/Latinas in the U.S.A., and Hist. 378 - Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans: Colony, Nation, and Diaspora. The Department has also set up state-of-the-art computing, scanning, and printing hardware and software to support the use of information technology by History students and faculty as part of the renovation of the recently-named "Professor Jim Williams History Study" in Seabury Hall.

 


Research Opportunities

Students learn how to do their own research at Trinity. All senior majors prepare independent research projects, either theses or senior research essays, under the supervision of faculty. Interested students may also have the opportunity - unusual at the undergraduate level - to assist the faculty in their research. One History major recently assisted a professor in assembling an English-Language bibliography of works on the Carolingian Empire; another helped a professor scan 1940s periodicals for a study of Black-Jewish relations.

 


A Strategic Location

Any list of resources for historical research at Trinity must begin with the College's own Watkinson Library, an extraordinary Americana collection that attracts scholars from around the country. Just off campus are located many other institutions that provide a wealth of opprtunities for supplementing the classroom experience of Trinity History students. A city rich in history, Hartford is home to the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, the Mark Twain House, the Connecticut State Library, and the Connecticut Historical Society. An Historic Hartford trail links more than two dozen places marking the cultural and industrial leadership of the 19th-century city.

Many students visit these sites in connection with courses, do research in their collections, or undertake internships that give them hands-on experience in the museum and library fields. Still other opportunities for learning the historian's craft are offered by the Hartford Studies Project, which takes many approaches to investigating the modern history of the city. Directed by Professor Susan Pennybacker of the History Department and Professor Stephen Valocchi of the Sociology Department, the Project sponsors a popular research-oriented History of Hartford seminar for seniors and graduate students. Its achievements to date have included the acquisition of important records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for the State Library and the assembly of a collection of 4,000 pictorial images of historic Hartford.

 


Study Abroad

About one-half of Trinity's History majors choose to pursue studies in academic programs overseas. Many spend a term at Trinity's Rome campus. Others have studied in locations as diverse as the curriculum itself, including England, Ireland, France, Russia, Mexico, Australia, and India.  Trinity has also started new study abroad programs of its own in Cape Town, South Africa; Trinidad, in the West Indies; and Kathmandu, Nepal.   A special semester-away Trinity program in San Francisco, California, got under way in 1999.

 


Life after Trinity

Many generations of students have used their History studies to build a firm foundation for a variety of rewarding careers. Among our graduates are the following accomplished individuals:

  • Hans W. Becherer '57 - Chairman and CEO, Deere & Co.
  • Charles McGill III '63 - Vice President/Corporate Officer, American Brands, Inc.
  • Charles Perrin '67 - President, CEO, and Chairman of Duracell International, Inc.
  • Paul Raether '68 - General Partner, Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co.
  • Philip S. Khoury '71 - Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science and Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • David Sarasohn '71- Associate Editor, Portland Oregonian
  • Steven Hoch, Ph.D. '73 - Professor of History, University of Iowa
  • Elizabeth Endicott-West, Ph.D. '74 - Professor of History, Middlebury College
  • Judith Coffin, Ph.D. '74 - Professor of History, University of Texas, Austin
  • Mark S. Blumenthal '78 - Rabbi, Denver, Colorado
  • David Brooks '80 - U.S. Foreign Service Officer, based in Poland
  • Alice O'Connor, Ph.D. '80 - Professor of History, University of California at Santa Barbara
  • Bruce M. Berg '81 - Development Director, The Walt Disney Company
  • Joseph McAleer, Jr., D. Phil. '83 - Archdiocese of Bridgeport, CT -1994 Recipient of the Longman's History Today Book of the Year Award for Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain, 1914-1950 (Clarendon Press, 1993)
  • Jennifer Yong-Hee Chi '92 - Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, New York University
  • Peter Friedman '94 - Office of Legislative Relations, The White House

 


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