Teaching

Though each member of the history faculty teaches in a distinctive way, all agree on these basic principles:

History is an interpretive discipline. The primary aim of history classes is not to bring students to mastery of a certain body of facts—though control of many facts is crucial—but to teach them how to see meaning in them. The point of historical study is to achieve the best possible analysis of how people in the past fashioned lives under the terms—economic, political, cultural, ideological and so on—they had to work with. History is driven by questions: How did these people live? How did they think? What is the connection between the way they lived and thought? What caused any changes in their living and thinking?

What one learns from history is something more complex and valuable than “lessons from the past.”The famous nineteenth-century Swiss historian, Jacob Burckhardt, put it to his students this way: “We want experience [history!] to make us not shrewder (for the next time around), but wiser (forever).” What he meant by that is that we shouldn’t go to history to find examples (positive or negative) for handling today’s problems. Every situation in the past is too unique to provide an exact model for ours. Instead, we study history to get a larger perspective on human living. It is a way, as Burckhardt’s language suggests, to enlarge our experience by forcing us, as does travel to foreign countries, to understand worlds crucially different from our own.  When we get back home, we’re better equipped to sort out the issues we face. But to get the full benefit of the exercise, we have to try to forget home while we are away.  

To be good, history must be well-written. In the end, it is words that give meaning to the facts of the past (even when numbers are being deployed), and if those words don’t convince us that they have captured important meaning, they haven’t done their job. They won’t convince us if they are confusing, illogical, imprecise or lifeless. Gathering information is less than half the battle in historical study; the real work begins with the effort to explain it (narrative being a form of explanation), and that means hours of intense solitary reflection, consultation with others, outlining, drafting and re-drafting.

So whatever teaching style students may meet in a particular Richmond history class, they are sure to encounter one question after another, the suspension of present-day concerns, and much attention to writing.

Freeman Professorship

Along with permanent faculty members, the history department brings a distinguished visiting historian to campus annually through the Douglas Southall Freeman Professorship, established in honor of the noted biographer and journalist by his family. The Freeman Professor teaches one course and either delivers a series of public lectures or organizes an historical conference. Learn more about this year's Freeman Professors and past recipients of this prestigious professorship.