I am now working on clericalism and anticlericalism in modern Catalonia, Castile, and Italy. History has a two-fold fascination. It invites us to make a mental escape from our surroundings and limitations, as we seek to understand men and women who lived lives, nursed aspirations, and cope with changes quite different from our own. And yet the study of others leads right back home, for the goal of human learning is self-knowledge. By comparing past to present, we become more alert to the opportunities for change and to the force of traditions, in our world and in ourselves.
History also offers more tangible benefits.
To grasp the past we need to learn how to read sources critically, frame questions carefully, pose productive hypotheses, and convince others of the force of our ideas orally and in writing. The undergraduate student of history is well prepared as an analyst, a writer, and a persuader, for the worlds of law, public affairs, communications, international relations, and business. The present course seek to introduce the excitement, the uncertainties and the skills that the study of history can provide. The period is Western civilization from the ancient world through the eve of industrial revolution. The basic sources are classics of the western tradition, from the Bible to voltaire.