What you’ll learn to do: examine how historical accounts are understood and constructed from various perspectives and sources

Figure 1. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands next to Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Omar J. Jones IV, commanding general, Joint Task Force-National Capital Region, during the pass in review ceremony as part of the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., January 20, 2021. (DoD photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Gabriel Silva)

In this course, you’ll do more than just receive information or read about things that happened in the past. History is about much more than this—it’s about thinking critically about the past, about people, and their relationships with the world and with others. In this course, you’ll learn how to think like a historian, and how to analyze sources from various perspectives in order to piece together an argument. In this section, you’ll start to think like a historian by learning about sources—how to read them and how to cite them.