HIST 310

Knowledge of Competing Historiographical Approaches

Students will describe the most significant global, historical work on the car and be able to place scholarship in various schools of thought or in their particular thematic approaches. They will become aware of what is known so they can ask questions and engage in research that will not simply reinvent the wheel, so to speak, but contribute to the field’s advance.

Creativity and Original Thinking

Students will produce an original piece of historical research, using primary sources, to advance our knowledge about the social, technological, environmental, or cultural impacts of the automobile.

Revision and Critique of Arguments

Students will be able to effectively critique the strength and weakness of one’s own arguments and do the same with generosity and constructive intent toward fellow students and scholars.

Interdisciplinary Skills

As the automobile’s impact is so broad, students will develop interdisciplinary, synthetic, thinking skills, noting in readings, discussions, and their writings how technology, society, politics, art, and nature intersect and shape one another.

Deeply Seeing the Mundane and Imagining Alternatives

In the last century, the automobile and its infrastructure have become ubiquitous and hence almost invisible. Students will utilize this invisible ubiquity to demonstrate the power to see, analyze and deconstruct the world as it is, its hidden assumptions, and think radically about alternative presents and futures.