History Field Group

At Pitzer College, Field Groups (similar to a discipline or department) organize major requirements and courses.

At Pitzer, history invites you to understand the contours of their world—its political boundaries, its economic systems, its social structures and its cultural practices—as historical products.  

It pushes you to question assumptions and to approach the present through the prism of a rich and variegated past. It uses investigation and interpretation, both to explore the unfamiliar and to reconsider what we think we already know. 

Thus, courses in history encourage students to analyze documents critically, to evaluate historical arguments thoughtfully and to examine theories of history and culture. Far from being a simple chronicle of facts, history demands that students consider how the past is used and remembered.