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Undergraduate Record 2024-2025
History, B.A.
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Universal Curriculum Requirements
To be awarded a degree from the College of Arts and Sciences, students are required to complete universal curriculum requirements in addition to the program requirements provided below. The school universal curriculum requirements can be found on the school Degree Programs page .
The Major in History
The department encourages students to work closely with faculty to construct challenging, coherent, and integrated programs of study. The major program is structured flexibly to achieve breadth while permitting students to specialize in an area that is of particular interest. Students are encouraged to explore new areas by taking courses that focus on periods, regions, and themes with which they are not familiar.
Many history majors choose to study abroad, and faculty advisers are happy to work with students in incorporating foreign study into their major.
Optionally, history majors may elect to declare one of the following thematic concentrations: Capitalism and Economic Life; Environment, Space, and Society; Global and Transnational History; Law and Society; Race, Ethnicity, and Empire; or War, Violence, and Society.
The requirements for the history major are as follows:
1. Ten history courses of 3 or 4 credits each, taken for a letter grade.
a. At least two courses, in any mnemonic(s), concerned principally with the period before 1700.
b. At least two courses, in any mnemonic(s), concerned principally with the period after 1700.
c. Five courses in distinct mnemonics (HIAF, HIEA, HIEU, HILA, HIME, HISA, HIST, HIUS).
d. One Introductory History Workshop (HIXX 3501). Students should complete this requirement before taking the Major Seminar.
e. one Major Seminar (HIXX 4501 or 4502) or Major Colloquium (HIXX 4511 or 4512).
i. Major Seminars and Colloquia are offered in a wide range of topics. Students should select a Major Seminar or Colloquium whose topic is familiar to them based on their work in at least two previous History courses.
ii. A grade of “C” or better is required for the Major Seminar or Colloquium to count toward the major.
f. additional courses chosen from among the total offerings of the department to complete a ten-course program of study.
g. Students may elect to complete one of the thematic pathways designated by the department (see below, BA in History with a Specialist Concentration). Students must complete five courses from the list approved for that concentration.
2. Of the ten courses required for the major, no more than five may be taken in any one mnemonic.
3. No more than two 1500-level seminars may be counted toward the major.
4. Courses with the General History (HIST) mnemonic count toward the major, HIST 4501/4502 or HIST 4511/4512 courses count as the Major Seminar or Major Colloquium.
5. Advanced Placement (AP)/International Baccalaureate (IB) courses cannot be counted towards the major.
6. Up to three approved transfer courses may be applied toward the major. Courses taken before matriculation transfer toward the major if they have been approved by the University and are on SIS with a History mnemonic (HIAF, HIEA, HIEU, HILA, HIME, HISA, HIST, HIUS). Courses taken after matriculation require departmental approval. Consult the Transfer Credit Approval Procedure link.
7.Courses taken in other departments may not be counted toward the major unless cross-listed in the History Department (e.g., ECON 2061/HIUS 2061).
8. Students must maintain a GPA of 2.0 in the major.
9. Before declaring the major, a student should have completed at least one university-level (i.e., UVa or transfer) history course with a grade of “C” or better. This course may be counted toward the ten required for the major. AP or IB courses do not satisfy this prerequisite.
10. B.A. in History with a Specialist Concentration
History majors may elect to complete a thematic pathway within the major. To complete a concentration, students must complete all other requirements for the major and select five courses from the relevant list below. A student may choose only one thematic pathway.
Concentrations
History majors may elect to complete a thematic pathway within the major. To complete a concentration, students must complete all other requirements for the major and select five courses from the relevant list below. A student may choose only one thematic pathway.
Capitalism and Economic Life
The study of economic life has long been at the core of the historical profession. Modern society’s greatest triumphs, along with its ongoing trials and tribulations, can be traced to the changing forms of socio-economic organization that humans have adopted and the ideas and discourses that motivated them. This pathway explores the processes, practices, institutions, and ideologies that have shaped human economic activity across space and time. It does not limit itself to the quantitative study of the past, but takes a more holistic approach to questions of production, exchange, and consumption over the course of human history.
Courses in this pathway closely examine how human practices and institutions have shaped trajectories of economic growth, but also how they sowed the seed of inequality at both the local and global level. Together, we will develop a better understanding of the multiple histories of modern capitalism, but also a sharp sense of the other forms of socio-economic organization that societies engaged in and experimented with. Over the course of the pathway, students will build an analytical toolkit that will help students understand the deep inter-relationships between economy, society and government. They will be able to engage in archival research on questions of economic life across societies and time periods.
Students electing to follow this pathway must complete all of the distribution requirements for the B.A. in History and select five courses from the following list:
Environment, Space, and Society
People shape their history as they engage with the natural world and the built environment. This pathway investigates how they move through space, understand it, and attempt to influence it. It centers on environmental history, the history of landscape and material culture, and the politics of spatial control, among other perspectives. It harnesses approaches from the study of literature, geography, philosophy, and digital humanities to generate new historical knowledge.
How do people interact with the spaces around them? How do they reach out to the wider world to shape it? How do their understandings of these spaces, in turn, shape them as individuals and as members of cultures and societies?
Students electing to follow this pathway must complete all of the distribution requirements for the BA in History and select five courses from the following list:
Global and Transnational History
The Global and Transnational History pathway provides students an opportunity to examine the global dimensions of historical problems, both through examining the origins of interconnections between geographic regions and tracing the emergence of international and transnational cultures and religions, social networks, economic patterns, and political movements and institutions across time and space. The methodological goal of this cluster is to train students to think critically about the global links between peoples and places across, above, and beyond states that have shaped the human past and defined our current moment.
Students electing to follow this pathway must complete all of the distribution requirements for the BA in History and select five courses from the following list:
Law and Society
The Law and Society pathway draws on UVA’s unusual strengths in legal history across many fields in the United States and around the globe, and from the ancient world to the modern. Students have the opportunity to explore law’s history in institutional settings—the work of legal professionals, courts, and legislative bodies, and at the national and international level—and to explore more informal modes of legal life. Among topics covered in this pathway are law and human rights, the law of the sea, and the origins of transregional legal regimes; law in relation to race and slavery, in the U.S. and beyond; criminal law in multiple countries; and legal history in and among empires.
Students electing to follow this pathway must complete all of the distribution requirements for the BA in History and select five courses from the following list:
Race, Ethnicity, and Empire
The Race, Ethnicity and Empire Pathway encompasses the long temporal arc and shifting geographical scope of imperial formations, as well as the contingent constructions and reconstructions of racial and ethnic formations. It further encompasses both the creative political, cultural, social, religious, and artistic worlds and subjectivities forged by imperial and/or racialized and gendered subjects; and the ongoing transformations in state formation (e.g. citizenship, law, carceral regimes) labor regimes, and social formations that have produced continually evolving forms of racial, ethnic, and gendered hierarchies, exclusions, and subjugation.
Students electing to follow this pathway must complete all of the distribution requirements for the BA in History and select five courses from the following list:
War, Violence, and Society
The War, Violence, & Society Pathway aims to strengthen students’ historical understanding of armed conflict and other forms of mass violence by contextualizing these in the polities, economies, societies, and cultures in which they took place. Courses in this pathway explore the experience of civil war, international war, and one-sided mass violence in order to better understand how these have shaped and, in turn, been shaped by political, social, economic, demographic, and cultural formations throughout history. These courses also examine the relationship between violence, on the one hand, and sovereignty, state formation, communal or national belonging, citizenship, race, gender, and sexuality, on the other. Faculty teaching in this pathway address all historical eras and regions of the world from antiquity to the present.
Students electing to follow this pathway must complete all of the distribution requirements for the BA in History and select five courses from the following list:
The Distinguished Majors Program
Students who seek independent study and directed research may apply for admission to the History Distinguished Majors Program (DMP). The program consists of a two-year course of study. In the fall of their third year participants take a special colloquium on historical theory and methodology, and follow this in the spring with a Major Seminar or Major Colloquium of their choice. The fourth year is devoted to research and writing of a substantial (60 to 90 page) thesis. Distinguished majors must fulfill all the requirements of the history major.
Applications for admission to the program are normally accepted in late March of each year from second-year students who have declared – or who plan to declare – history as their major. DMP students are eligible for degrees with distinction, high distinction, and highest distinction. The level of distinction is determined by the student’s GPA inside and outside the major (a minimum GPA of 3.4 is required for a degree with distinction), the quality of the DMP thesis, and overall performance in the program. For further information, contact the DMP director or the director of undergraduate studies.
The American Studies Major
The American Studies Major offers students the opportunity to study the United States in a multidisciplinary context. History majors focusing on the United States can also major in American Studies readily and efficiently, and this double major will deepen and enrich their study of United States history in fruitful ways.
Students will be admitted to the American Studies Major after a competitive application process that is normally completed at the end of their second year. Those accepted take, in their third year, two seminars that are available only to American Studies students; a fourth-year seminar in a special topic of American Studies; and seven other courses, to be chosen in consultation with the Director of American Studies, from other departments throughout the college and the university.
NOTE: History majors may count some of their coursework in United States history towards the American Studies major.
For more information, please contact the Director of the American Studies Program.
Additional Information
For more information, contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Corcoran Department of History, Nau Hall, P.O. Box 400180, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4180; (434) 924-7147; Fax: (434) 924-7891; www.virginia.edu/history. |
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