Graduates of this program will be able to:

• Analyze primary sources (texts, artifacts, images). MA students will be able to locate, assess, and analyze primary sources and incorporate those sources into original historical research projects. They should be able to do this with a high level of proficiency (not at the PhD level, but more sophisticated than at the BA level).
• Conceptualize, research and write book reviews, annotated bibliographical essays, historiographical essays and research papers. Course grades help to measure student performance (only work of B or better is considered "passing" at the graduate level). Any students whose grades are deficient are dismissed. The culmination of the program's writing component for those students intending to go on to doctoral work is the completion of a substantial thesis based on original primary-source research and the oral defense of that thesis.
• Dissect secondary sources in a variety of areas of historical specialization and participate actively and positively in class discussions of those sources. They will be able to complete various kinds of writing assignments--book reviews, comparative review essays, historiographical pieces. They will understand that interpretation is one of the foundations of graduate-level study in the discipline, and will be able to offer their own interpretations of work both orally and in writing.