1. History
  2. Undergraduate Program
  3. Curriculum
  4. Introduction to Historical Study (HIST 300)

Introduction to Historical Study (HIST 300)

student looking at text on a laptop computer

History 300 is the gateway course for the History major at VCU. It is required of all History majors, and they must earn a C or better in the course in order to graduate from our degree program. Because of the limited number of seats available, HIST 300 is normally open to History majors only.

The goal of HIST 300 is to provide students with all of the tools they will need to do the work of the History major. The course covers such topics as the philosophy of history, the critical reading of primary and secondary sources, library and archival research, forms of historical writing, logic and argumentation, and the scholarly documentation of historical sources. 

While the History program at VCU is not structured such that HIST 300 is a prerequisite for most other upper-division coursework, we strongly recommend that History majors take HIST 300 as early as is reasonably possible, and ideally no later than the first semester of their junior year. HIST 300 does serve as a prerequisite for the capstones in History (HIST 490 and HIST 493).