Historical Contexts: To understand societies in the contemporary world and the forces that have shaped them, graduates of SMU will be able to identify and analyze problems, events, and documents or artifacts from the past and know how to situate them in their appropriate social, political, economic, and cultural contexts.

To this end, students take two courses from the Historical Contexts Pillar.

Historical Contexts: Student Learning Outcomes

Level One
1. Students will be able to identify the main events, actors, and evidence involved in a defined historical period.
2. Students will be able to summarize in their own prose the major changes that took place over time in a defined historical period.

Level Two
1. Students will be able to analyze both secondary and primary historical evidence.  
2. Students will be able to develop and support extended historical discussions in their own prose, based both on critical understanding of specific historical problems and on evaluation of secondary and primary evidence.  

HC courses come from such fields as Anthropology, Art History, Business, English, Film, History, Human Rights, Music, and Philosophy.