History focuses on both ordinary people and on famous names. Studying ideas, belief systems, political institutions and social and economic structures make events and facts more meaningful to people of today.

History also entails understanding the writings, methods and attitudes of earlier historians, whose views and narratives contributed to older and newer debates about the past. Far more important than merely mastering dates and details is the greater respect for the past and greater humility about the present gained by students of history.

Southern Virginia history students learn to appreciate the lesson that deliberate actions often have unanticipated consequences. They learn to see individual intentions and actions in context, and they question commonly held assumptions about the naturalness or inevitability of our own ideas and ways of doing things.