History
Michael Breen
Early modern France; Renaissance Italy; political, cultural, and legal history.
Jacqueline Dirks
American social and cultural history, U. S. women’s history.
Douglas L. Fix
Modern China and Japan.
David T. Garrett
Latin America and early modern Spain.
Anthony Iaccarino
American political and cultural history.
Benjamin Lazier
Modern Europe, Intellectual History.
David Harris Sacks
Early modern Britain and Europe, Atlantic world.
Edward B. Segel
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, diplomatic history, war and society, the Cold War.
The department tries to inculcate students with a sense of
history—to impress them with the legacy, conscious or unconscious,
that each present has inherited from its past, as well as the many
perspectives one can have on that legacy. While many graduates have
become prominent as professional historians and teachers of
history, it is even more as a fundamental contribution to liberal,
humanistic education and the development of a critical
intelligence, carried through in many different professions and
ways of life, that the department program is conceived and directed
to majors and non-majors alike.
The junior qualifying examination in history is a critical essay
dealing with a given issue or problem within a particular
historical field and period. The department expects students to
develop some competence in various periods and areas of history, as
specified in the course requirements below. The department
administers the junior qualifying examination only in November and
April of each academic year. Exceptions are made only for students
returning from leave away from campus, or for other circumstances
beyond the student’s control. The department encourages but does
not require its students to pursue the study of a foreign
language.
For students who wish to combine American history, literature,
economics, and government, Reed offers an American studies major.
Among other possible programs are interdisciplinary majors
involving history, such as history–literature and international and
comparative policy studies.
Requirements for the Major
1. Humanities 210, 220, or 230. This course is considered part of
the major field of study and may not be used to satisfy the Group A
or Group B requirement.
2. Six semesters (six units) of history courses. (Lower-division
history courses taken outside Reed College may be included only
with the consent of the department.) These history courses must be
distributed so as to include, chronologically, at least one unit
before 1800 and one unit after 1800, and geographically, at least
one unit in each of the following areas:
a. Europe
b. United States
c. Areas outside Europe, the United States, and Canada
The same course may fill both a geographical and a chronological
requirement. No more than two cross-listed courses from other
departments may be included.
3. One semester of a junior seminar, to be taken during the junior
year (History 411 or 412). (The junior seminar counts as one of the
six required units in history.)
4. History 470.
