Courses and Teaching in the UNC History Department

Courses offered by the Department of History at UNC-Chapel Hill expose students to the breadth and diversity of the human experience, from the ancient world and distant locations to times and places closer to our own. The scholarly and pedagogical expertise of our renowned faculty members enables them to bring a wide range of histories to our students, at the same time equipping them with the vital, life-long skills of conducting research, analyzing evidence, and communicating effectively.

In some courses, the subject matter’s contemporary urgency makes the selection, analysis, and discussion of historical evidence particularly challenging. In these as for all History Department courses, we take care to ensure the skill and qualifications of our instructors as well as the alignment between course themes, materials, and activities and the overall pedagogical goals of the department.

The History Department is proud of the pedagogical excellence of its faculty, graduate student teaching assistants, and teaching fellows. As a department, we emphasize and value open and inclusive classroom discussions, active learning, and rational argumentation. We teach our students about the histories of the powerful and the powerless, about people who are oppressed as well as their oppressors, and about peoples of all origins, races, religions, and genders. We challenge our students to ask questions, to evaluate information critically, and to draw conclusions from historical evidence. In the wake of recent, coordinated attacks on a scholar in our community, the History Department affirms these principles.