History Dept to Revamp Course Selections

Although history may be set in stone, new course offerings will soon shift the Academy’s perspective on the past. Faculty meeting members voted unanimously earlier this month to offer four new proposed history electives next year. The course topics range from “Art and the State” and “A History of Demons, Sorcery and Witchcraft” to “Genocide in the Modern World” and “The Global Cold War.”The initial discussion surfaced after the history department conducted a survey that collected history instructors’ opinions on the current course offerings. The results indicated that current course offerings lacked diversity. As a result, the history department gathered in small committees over a period of several months to design four new additions.“Art and the State,” the only new 200-level course, is available to lowers and uppers only. Molly Davis will teach this offering.The two other formal courses to be introduced are “Genocide in the Modern World” and “The Global Cold War:” both 400-level courses for seniors to be taught by instructors Leah Merrill and Betty Luther-Hillman, respectively.History 490, “Special Topics in History,” will also be offered and taught by instructor Kent McConnell. Unlike many classes at Exeter, the subject of 490 will change from year to year. The chosen topics course for 2014-15 will be “Persecuting Deviance: A History of Demons, Sorcery and Witchcraft.”In exchange for the new course line-up, the history department will no longer offer “Intro to Anthropology and Archaeology,” “Monkeys, Apes and Humans,” “States and Empires of Middle and South America” or “The 1960’s—At Home and Abroad.”Many felt that current history 200-level electives are similar in themes and location—all current 200-level courses focus on either European or Colonial American history.“We were also trying to diversify the course offerings for preps and lowers, giving them opportunities that aren’t traditionally honed in geographical state or nation-state, or guided by the 20th century,” McConnell said.Davis said that the new 200-level class, “Art and the State,” will investigate the various impacts that art could have on a state.Davis added that the course may be a step forward for the history department, because it provides an opportunity to focus on new content and methodology.“It’s a new type of class for the department,” Davis said. “While many current history teachers use art in their classes, it will be more specifically art-historical and will use art as a primary source, in addition to text and music and a variety of other materials,” she added.Similarly, the motivation for the new 400-level classes was to increase Exonian interest in issues throughout the world.“We’re trying to think about globalizing history, but we still have to think about that in terms of both global expansion and periodization,” McConnell said.Students felt that this move to a broader scope of topics would be more interesting.“During my experience taking the US history sequence, I noticed that not a lot of time is dedicated to the Cold War,” senior Brian Kim said.When making changes to the curriculum, the history department must consider many factors, such as adjusting courses accordingly to teachers' preferences’ and previous experience, as well as student interest. Yet the history department is always adjusting its offerings, especially with the influx of new courses.“We have a whole bunch of changes that are happening, so we will always be thinking critically about how well those things are working,” Davis added. “We are never done—this process will never be done.”Contrary to college professors, who can easily add whichever courses they wish to teach to the offerings, instructors at Exeter must take out a course in order to add a new one.The decision was also based upon a changing demographic of history instructors due to many recent hires—six new teachers have joined the history department since 2011. Merrill said that the courses taken off the list were primarily taught by teachers no longer working at Exeter.“I think there has been a fairly conscious effort for us as a department to regroup and think about what we offer and where we would like to go,” Davis said.Merrill agreed, saying that the history department as a whole has been working to fill in gaps and strengthen the diversity of the curriculum.“We considered our curriculum as a whole; strengths and weaknesses, interests and expertise of the current faculty, and our goals for the students as well as what we anticipate being exciting new opportunities of study,” she said.Yet additional changes to the curriculum are constantly altered. Many committees within the department are still coming up with proposals for new courses, and some, such as “Genocide in the Modern World,” have been in development for years.“This course was created last spring as a HIS 999 by six students who expressed an interest in working with me on this topic,” Merrill said.