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High School Preparation
High school students planning to major or minor in history at UC Santa Cruz need no special preparation other than the high school courses necessary for UC admission. Some background courses in history and a foreign language are helpful but not essential.
Transfer Preparation
Transfer students will find it useful to complete courses that satisfy campus general education requirements before coming to UC Santa Cruz. Transfer students may apply up to three history courses taken elsewhere toward the history major or minor. A minimum of five regularly scheduled history courses plus the comprehensive requirement must be taken from members of the UC Santa Cruz History faculty.
While it is not a condition of admission, students from California community colleges may complete the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) in preparation for transfer to UC Santa Cruz.
Transfer course agreements and articulation between the University of California and California community colleges can be accessed on the ASSIST web site.
Recognition
History professor Gail Hershatter has been selected to receive a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship award. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. An expert on Chinese history, Professor Hershatter has centered her research since 1996 on the investigation of rural Chinese women during the period of early socialism. She will use the fellowship, in conjunction with an award from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, to write a book based on this research entitled The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past.
Associate Professor of History Lisbeth Haas has received a fellowship to study the role of fear in history at the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University during the 2007-08 academic year. Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines will join Haas at Princeton to pursue projects that examine fear as a historical experience – its productive and destructive roles in history, as well as the process by which it operates, spreads, dissipates, and is countered. The Davis Center focuses on research based on interdisciplinary approaches and subjects that span different geographical areas or periods.
Associate Professor of History Brian Catlos has been awarded the 2006 Premio del-Ray from the American Historical Association for his book The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims in Catalonia and Aragon, 1050-1300 (Cambridge University Press, 2004). The biennial prize is awarded for the best publication on Iberian History of the pre-1516 period. Dr. Catlos also received the 2005 John Edwin Fagg Prize for the same book.
Recent faculty publications include Law and Authority in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to Thomas Garden Barnes (Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 2007) by Professor Buchanan Sharp.
Careers
Business
Communications
Foreign service
Historic preservation
Historical research
International relations
International trade
Journalism
Law
Museum management
Public administration
Publishing
Teaching
Theology
Writing
These are only samples of the field’s many possibilities.
Requirements for the Major
A minimum of 12 courses is required for the major. The history major does not require an exam for entrance and does not limit the number of students accepted into the program. It is strongly advised that students complete at least one introductory history course before declaring the major.
At UC Santa Cruz, the history curriculum offers three broad, geographically defined regions of concentration:
• The Americas and Africa
• Europe
• Asia and the Islamic World
Course Requirements: Each history major selects one of the three regions of concentration listed above. History majors who enter UC Santa Cruz during fall 2002 or later are required to take at least one lower-division survey course within their chosen region of concentration. A list of the lower-division survey courses offered within each region is available online at history.ucsc.edu. In consultation with the history undergraduate adviser and a faculty adviser, the student plans a program of study that will also fulfill the following distribution of courses:
• five courses in the region of concentration, one of which must be the lower-division survey course; three must be upper-division;
• two courses from each of the remaining two regions of concentration;
• two upper-division history electives based in any of the regions of concentration;
• a comprehensive exit requirement in the student’s chosen region of concentration. Students may choose to complete either a seminar or a thesis.
Distribution Requirements
Among the 12 courses required for the major, at least three courses must be set in periods prior to the year 1800, and one of these must be set before 600 A.D. Also, no more than four of the minimum 12 courses may be lower-division.
Interdisciplinary Course Work
The History Department encourages its majors to take upper-division courses in disciplines related to history, including sociology, literature, community studies, American studies, politics, Latin American and Latino studies, and others. Students who wish to substitute one or two such appropriate upper-division courses for history electives must meet with their history faculty adviser and complete a course substitution form (available online at the History Department web site). These courses are subject to the limitations in the Transfer Preparation section on the reverse and may not be applied toward a second major or minor from another department.
Comprehensive Requirement
Taking a course from the History 190, History 194, or History 196 series can fulfill the senior comprehensive requirement. They are either research seminars or readings seminars and must be taken in the student’s area of concentration to count towards the major.
The other option is to complete a senior thesis (two quarters: courses 195A and 195B). Please consult the History Department web site for more information about completing a thesis.
Language Recommendation
Proficiency in a foreign language is strongly recommended for all history students and is essential for those who plan to pursue graduate studies in history. Many Ph.D. programs in history require applicants to read one or two languages besides English. The UC Education Abroad Program (EAP) is appropriate for history majors as a means to both enhance language skills and take history courses elsewhere.
UC Education Abroad Program (EAP)
EAP offers students an opportunity to study abroad in 34 countries. Subject to the limitations in the Transfer Preparation section, up to three courses in history completed through EAP may be applied toward major requirements. Consult the History Department web site, and speak with the undergraduate adviser for further details.
Requirements for the Minor
Students whose major area of interest is not history may nonetheless find that a minor in history makes an invaluable contribution to their studies. For the minor in history, eight history courses, four of which must be upper division, are required. There is no senior comprehensive requirement for the minor.
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The history program at UC Santa Cruz is designed to bring about an understanding of the ideas, experiences, and events that have shaped this country and the world at large. The program’s main emphases are in social and cultural history, with additional strengths in intellectual and political history.
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