What Jobs Can You Get With a Masters in Liberal Arts Focused on History
History is happening all the time.
I day, everything that we have seen or experienced in our lives, from the attempted insurrection on January sixth to the COVID-19 pandemic, will end upwards every bit a folio or a paragraph in high school social studies classes. Even the commonplace volition become historical; historians will 1 twenty-four hours catalog the trends and importance of Facebook posts and Instagram memes.
Maybe even things we don't remember or know about today will become historically huge: Gregor Mendel's humble experimentation in breeding pea plants received almost no notice when he was alive, simply historians discovered and elevated his work to mark one of the key turning points into a world where DNA analysis and gene therapy have become enormously important.
Merely those students won't be seeing the same headlines in the same ways that we see them today. They'll be learning about all of these events within the broader scope of what has followed, and with the benefit of perspective we don't still have.
Who puts these events in that context? Historians, that'due south who.
It's the job of historians to deliver not just the raw stuff of history, the dates and places and events that happened, but to besides give modernistic audiences the reasons those things were important and relevant to life and society both today and yesterday.
Their training allows them to draw connections between historical events and how the world exists every bit those events shaped information technology. They put themselves, and their students, in the shoes of generations who came before and draw understanding from those comparisons.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to echo it.
Information technology'due south not just for the satisfaction of understanding what came before, either. Historians have real and important contributions to make to today's world, past sharing and comparing patterns and events from the past that reflect similar situations of today. But while we tin can't know the results of decisions nosotros make today, historians tin can show us what is likely to happen based on what has happened before.
Anybody gains perspective over fourth dimension on the events of the past, merely historians actively study perspective. And that kind of far-ranging introspective platonic is a perfect fit for the world of liberal studies, which encourages a diversity of views and the use of comparative ideas to shed light on both history and modernity.
History Degree Jobs Emerge in Surprising Places
One affair y'all learn pretty quick in liberal studies is just how important history is in every aspect of modern life. Every manufacture, every country, every profession is building on a foundation of noesis and practice that was built by those who came earlier.
So, you tin find jobs involving history in a surprisingly diverse array of fields. Of class, there are all the usual jobs you would expect to find, like museum of natural history jobs or art history jobs.
Only you can as well find historians working in some unlikely places. That could include major corporations like Raytheon and Boeing, consulting on records preservation and document analysis to itemize the evolution of technologies as a way to defend patent claims. Historians work with construction companies building on lands where artifacts may be found and must be preserved. Y'all can find historians who work at investment firms, helping to value avails of a historical nature. In that location are jobs for history degree holders in government!
In a nondescript laboratory on a military base of operations in Hawaii, a grouping of historians daily comb through records of bombing missions, of witness testimony, subsequently-activeness reports, fifty-fifty recordings of radio transmissions made during combat. Their job: attempt to identify human remains nonetheless existence discovered in war zones from the records of those who went missing, and to identify areas to send search teams to look for those remains to render lost soldiers to their loved ones.
Past comparing materials and maps, these historical sleuths track downwards last known sightings of missing military members and put together the pieces from confused firefights and aerial battles that happened decades agone. They are office of a major military effort to exit no 1 backside, using skills that few other people have.
And then, if you lot are interested in history, don't panic about what jobs yous can get with a history caste. In that location are a lot of heady options in every corner of the country and every sector of manufacture.
The Day-to-Day Reality of What Jobs For History Majors Expect Like
You're probably wondering "What jobs can I get with a history degree?" Entry level history jobs are oft institute in places that aren't necessarily strictly considered to exist history positions.
History jobs are more often than not office jobs, although that'south non universally true. Architectural historian jobs might accept you out to old homesteads in out of the way places, cataloging cut marks on timbers to date time periods. Anthropologists spend some of their days in dusty pits, painstakingly brushing dust molecules off fossilized remains in hopes of identifying them.
Even Indiana Jones ended upwards back behind a desk at his history professor job. Almost history-related jobs involve a lot of reading and inquiry. That means surfing online catalogs and databases or sifting through the stacks at a library, looking for documentary evidence. Historians try to absorb every bit much information as possible in their subject field to develop a ameliorate understanding of the discipline, too as to build more well-rounded theories to explain mysteries still unsolved.
Nigh all historians need to develop adept interpersonal and communication skills. Historians rarely study only for their own edification, and history research jobs aren't conducted in a vacuum. Historians have obligations to share their noesis, and that means developing solid written and verbal communication skills.
Research is another key piece of the historian toolset. Unraveling historical events is like piecing together the plot of a mystery novel. You need a programme to gather all the relevant perspectives and bear witness, from contemporaneous messages written past participants to modern scientific analysis of soils or building sites where it happened. There are many different sources for that of import information, and historians spend a lot of time digging through them.
The historian job clarification can vary a lot between different specialties, however. Here are some of the most popular kinds of private and public history jobs for your consideration.
Qualifying for History Teacher and Professor Jobs
Probably the most common jobs for history majors are in instruction.
The path for how to become a history teacher is very different from near history jobs, notwithstanding. High school history teachers have to run across their state requirements for becoming teachers beginning and foremost. That ways getting a degree or certification that fulfills your country's initial teacher preparation requirements. After or as part of that procedure, you usually have to have and pass a specific test in history, such as the Praxis secondary history education examination, in order to get your certification as a history teacher specifically.
That makes history teacher one of the few history bachelor degree jobs bachelor. There are many colleges with bachelor of liberal studies degrees that are integrated with ITP (Initial Teacher Preparation) programs. You tin can easily build a curriculum that will support a history focus and cruise to entry-level history jobs in teaching.
How to go a history professor is slightly more than involved. Any kind of history instructor chore at the university level will require a main's degree at a minimum, and certainly a PhD for tenure-track faculty. In these cases, a degree in liberal arts actually a bad option, at least at the avant-garde level. Your chances of employment depend on your experience and reputation in the field where y'all are applying, so y'all will need stiff ties to history departments and a thesis or dissertation very specific to the area you hope to specialize in.
Exploring Art History Jobs In and Out of Museums
Oddly enough, if you search for art history major jobs, you typically get back a large list of jobs that have nothing to do with art history. In other words, majoring in art history is a sort of less powerful version of simply majoring in liberal arts in the first identify.
What kind of art history major jobs actually be out there? Well-nigh of them fall into the category of museum jobs, described beneath. Training in the fine arts and the history of arts specifically gives you lot a leg up for fine art museum curation and docent positions.
Other fine art historians take a more commercial plough. Privately owned and operated art galleries also tin can apply historians with expertise and a background in the arts. It'south fifty-fifty ane of the few areas where a history expert can exercise their entrepreneurial talent, opening and running their own business organization on the strength of their knowledge and power to chronicle it to potential buyers.
There are too more exotic jobs that draw on art history, such equally:
Art appraisers – Appraisers need a potent history groundwork to evaluate and value pieces of art for pricing purposes.
Insurance investigators and adjustors – Art theft is an expensive thorn in the side of the fine art industry, and a select number of investigators pursue art thieves and fences around the world. Art adjustors also work in the insurance earth, determining both valuation for art works and risks associated with their display or transport.
Exhibit installer – Not all art is as uncomplicated equally a rectangle yous hang on the wall. Major pieces of art are both expensive and intricate; that's the sort of job that not just anyone tin can handle, so professional exhibit installers should have a strong grounding in fine fine art and art history.
Art economist – Art has its own economic ramifications, and it takes a special combination of creative knowledge and accounting skill to forecast, estimate, and evaluate the economics of fine art works.
Needless to say, a liberal studies programme tin be congenital to requite you all the specific kinds of grooming y'all demand for whatever of these professions.
History Museum Jobs Are Both Public-Facing and Backside the Scenes
One of the master ways that nearly people interact with history in one case they are out of school is through museums. There are all dissimilar types and sizes of museum, covering every imaginable subject area… railway history museums, lawnmower museums, table salt-and-pepper shaker museums—anything is fair game.
The government Institute of Museum and Library Services estimates in that location are more than 35,000 museums in the United States as of 2014—more than the number of Starbucks stores and McDonald'south restaurants in the country combined!
Those museums come up in all shapes and sizes and are located in every part of the land… tiny San Juan County, in Washington state, has more museums per capita than any other county, with 21 museums in a county that just has around 17,000 full-time residents.
Naturally, this leads to a lot of jobs. Those can range from sitting solitary in a back room cataloging and evaluating artifacts in the collection, to serving as an interpretive historian making presentations to large crowds every day.
Learning how to become a history museum curator can involve earning a liberal studies degree either style, though. The enquiry and analytical skills you get through liberal arts programs are ideal for curatorial documentation. On the other manus, the communications and rhetorical skills are smashing preparation for existence a docent or interpreter for the public.
How To Get an Historian
In that location is a lot of history out there, and more of it happening all the time. Virtually historians have to adopt a fairly narrow area of expertise in order to go upwardly to speed with all the knowledge necessary to get a history chore.
History is fractal. Almost any event or era can be studied at infinite levels of detail.
Condign a historian means a lot of college is in your hereafter. Near historians concord an advanced degree in the field, which ways that on top of a four-year available's degree, you can expect to spend at to the lowest degree another two years earning a primary'south degree, and mayhap upwardly to twelve years for a full-fledged doctorate.
There is a lot of room for specialization in history, both in the era you choose to specialize and in the subjects inside that era. Natural history museum jobs fifty-fifty combine history and biology or anthropology studies!
Liberal arts offers you a unique path into the blazon of pedagogy y'all need to become a historian. A liberal studies program comes with tremendous flexibility in the kind of classes you lot can enroll in. There's no problem taking the mix of hard science or biology coursework you need for subject matter cognition in anthropology together with the kind of writing, inquiry, and historiographical courses that build your independent history skills.
A BA in History Starts You On The Path Toward History Jobs
Bachelor's degrees in history are some of the most popular higher degrees in the country. In 2021, the most recent information from the National Center for Education Statistics plant that social sciences and history was the third virtually usually earned degree in the nation, with more than 160,000 granted in the 2018 schoolhouse year.
Each of those history graduates started off with some of the most basic elements of a history education.
Historical trends and themes – Virtually history majors require, at least initially, some sort of broad overview of world history, sometimes broken down into European, Asian, and American history. This gives students the opportunity to consider various sub-specialties and to place their own interests in a broader perspective of historical studies.
Historiography – History is an academic discipline with its own standards, methods, and theories. To become a historian means understanding your pursuit of historical studies in this context. Classes in historiography give y'all the history of history itself, and how the field interprets and writes almost historical events.
Enquiry techniques and sources – History is a heavily research-based profession, and research requires skill and planning. Most history majors will have courses in how to develop research programs, and to help you understand the differences and relative importance of main, secondary, and tertiary sources of information about historical events.
History curriculums are commonly very specialized. A student who chooses to focus on Japanese history of the Edo period may pursue a completely dissimilar course of study than someone specializing in the Qing dynasty of Communist china, despite the similarities in era and location. The volume of material is staggering in about specialties, leaving relatively little time for more general studies.
History is already one of the core fields of liberal arts, so information technology's no surprise that there are plenty of similarities betwixt a history caste and a liberal studies program. A liberal arts degree tin contain the same level of detail equally a BA in history in most cases, combining your history studies with more general explorations of logic, science, and the arts that you can focus on your historical areas of interest.
Liberal arts has its ain special focus on certain parts of history anyway, just as a office of the overall heritage of the field—any historian of classical civilization has an advantage that comes with exploring a rich educational tradition that emerged from that era.
Entry Level Jobs in The History Field Require More Than Just an Entry-Level Education
The reality is that most history jobs are master's in history jobs. You won't find many available's in history jobs available in any field.
Jobs you can get with a history caste are also generally available to students with the correct kind of liberal arts caste. You will discover that the standards are much higher for history jobs beyond the lath, however. Even a curator position might crave a PhD to even land an interview.
Specialization becomes even more important in advanced degrees for historians. Your entire career might hinge on your thesis or dissertation. Preparing for even entry level jobs for history majors in bookish or museum settings will require intensive knowledge in the very specific areas those jobs will cover. Most master's programs offer specific concentrations in full general categories similar:
- American History
- European and World History
- Public or Customs History
- Military History
You'll usually tailors your studies fifty-fifty further within those categories, and your choices matter. Japanese history majors need not use to American Museum of Natural History jobs, for example.
Your studies at the chief's or doctoral level will involve learning equally much as you lot tin about the area of history you determine to focus on. But they also expand your knowledge of historiography. Your inquiry skills will be honed to a high level as you dig through ancient manuscripts, piece of work to decipher old letters and logbooks, or appoint in laboratory analysis of artifacts left backside from the era. Y'all'll learn about preservation and different types of media.
Y'all'll also spend as much as half of your entire graduate program working on your thesis or dissertation. This is where your historical research and writing skills are put to the test, crafting an original paper that illustrates your own ideas and supports them with meticulous enquiry.
A Master of Liberal Studies Degree Can Assist You lot On The Path to History PhD Jobs
These are skills that are developed and honed only every bit securely in whatever master of liberal studies (MLS) degree program as they are in a graduate-level history plan. MLS degrees have a wide latitude in the type of report you can focus on, so yous have the opportunity to dive into the same type of historical studies that you would as a history major.
The key advantages to the MLS, however, is that information technology will too incorporate coursework in arts and sciences that you tin use to support your historical research and arguments. In fact, many MLS theses are already built around historical enquiry. Topics from full general MLS programs recently take included:
- Examining the artwork of Republican propaganda during the Spanish Ceremonious War
- Looking at a history of labor organizing in the U.s.a. through the ethnic solidarity of Chinese Manus laundrymen
- Studying the Distant Early Alarm System as an case of geographic, infrastructure, and defensive environments
Source: https://liberalartsedu.org/history-majors/
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