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AROUND THE WOLRD. AHR students are allowed to learn about history all around the globe.

Most students have heard of the popular Advanced Science Research (ASR) class. But not so many are familiar with the history department’s newest course, Advanced History Research.
Offered for the first time this year, Advanced History Research (known colloquially as AHR) offers students interested in history the opportunity to delve deeper into topics not explored in depth in standard classes and to practice their research and essay writing skills. The class culminates in a research paper about a topic of the student’s choice.
Jon Peterson, the course’s teacher, explained AHR’s origins. “AHR was created to give students the opportunity to practice the historian’s craft. Over the years students have asked for deeper and more specialized study of history. That could have taken one of two forms, either honors courses or a focused research class. We decided to make it a research course. It is also designed to, in some ways that make sense, parallel Advanced Science Research,” he said.
In ASR, students practice lab technique, scientific writing, and formal presentation. Prior to conducting their own research, students investigate a topic of their choice and develop a research focus. Students then design and conduct an original research project which leads to a formal research paper and presentation and the end of each semester. Advanced History Research follows a similar trajectory.
AHR has been a class in the making for far longer than students might expect. “I was the department chair when we started discussing the course before the pandemic and talking about where it might fit in the department. I gathered input from many constituencies in that role regarding the opportunities and also potential the bear traps of the course. Dr. Moerer and I worked together last semester to put together a course proposal as two of the teachers who were interested in teaching AHR,” Peterson said.
Peterson outlined the plan for the class. “We have begun the course by talking to each student individually regarding their research interest. We are currently reading and discussing the question ‘What is history?’ Next, we will be examining component parts of scholarly history books by breaking them apart – we won’t literally tear up books, this isn’t Florida – to see what’s inside the monographs.”
The first project students will start is a book-based report on the Cold War. The project will help them practice how to distill extensive source material into something they can analyze and pull conclusions from. Later in the course, students will work on their research project, in which they will choose their own topic, read a book on it, and review it before writing their own prospectus for their research projects. During the second semester, students who remain in the course for the entire year will research, write, revise, and publicly present their projects.
Senior William Richardson had previous experience with advanced research courses, having taken ASR last year. In fact, that experience is what drew him to the new class. “I really liked how the structure of that [ASR] class was very independent and self-directed. And I wanted to experience that with AHR because history has always been an area of interest for me. I really enjoyed that independence that I experienced last year,” he said.
Richardson was also able to offer insight into some similarities and differences between ASR and AHR. “I think since this is the first year of AHR, they’ve kind of eased students into it a little bit more. They’ve given us more time to understand the context of the work we’ll be doing. To practice some of the skills involved in doing the research before we actually are getting into it. Versus with ASR last year, there was a much greater sense of urgency about, you know, like, getting things started right away.” Richardson appreciated having the time and space to explore the basic principles of research in opposition to jumping into project work straight away.
Junior Ben Macedo, on the other hand, was drawn to the class because he’d never tried something like it before. “History is my favorite subject and my dad thought it would be a good class for me and I agreed with him. It’s mainly just that I wanted to try something new.”
Macedo described what he and other students have been up to in class. “So we choose an event in history, mostly events that were chosen in the post Cold War, that was just a general thing. And we just have to write, like, read about the context of it. It’s more like the goal of the class is actually to write history rather than to like, explain it. So at the end of the class, we should be able to write our own history.”
While Richardson hopes the class will allow him to look at topics he hasn’t looked at before and spend more time with self-directed work, Macedo has different goals: “Better essay writing. Maybe, deeper knowledge of history than I have at the present moment.”
Despite signing up with different ideas of what they wanted to get out of the class, both Richardson and Macedo had nothing but good things to say about the class. Macedo confidently recommended ASR to other students: “Absolutely. It’s a very fun class and Dr. Peterson is a very good teacher.”
The teacher has also been a highlight of the class for Richardson. “I haven’t had him [Peterson] until this year. And again, this is a new class and so I think to a certain extent, he’s figuring it out as he goes, but he’s been very engaging and he’s given us great feedback about what we thought about so far for our work and our class discussions are always very interesting. And I give him a lot of credit for that,” he said.
AHR is open to all incoming juniors and seniors and will be available next year.