Research Methods Course

The Department of History and Geography now offers a course entitled Research Methods (HST 301). This is part of a curriculum change in the history major that took effect in 2000. The course is offered each year in the spring semester, and it is intended to be taken in the sophomore year.

The course's primary purpose is to prepare you for the kind of intensive research you will conduct in the senior seminar. Different history professors teach the courese from semester to semester. We see this as an opportunity for us to share with you our research and the ways we go about doing that research. We think you will find the course to be a useful combination of theoretical discussions about the nature of the discipline of history on the one hand, and nuts and bolts advice about how to write research papers on the other. The Research Methods course will help you begin your senior seminar experience with a significant head start.