- Through exposure to the diverse lenses provided by literature, anthropology, visual art, political science, and history, students will develop an interdisciplinary understanding of the Civil War Era.
- Students will recognize the important political and military events of the Civil War Era within a national and international context.
- Students will understand the cultural, religious, and intellectual life of the antebellum North and South, and be able to describe the coming of the Civil War, Northern victory/Southern defeat, and the process of emancipation and Reconstruction.
- Students will be challenged to develop a sophisticated understanding of the diversity of lived experience during the Civil War era, placing great emphasis on the experiences of enslaved and free Blacks, other people of color, women, immigrants, and the working poor, before, during, and in the aftermath of the war.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the complex ways in which the political, economic, racial, medical, and regional ramifications of the Civil War and Reconstruction era continue to resonate in contemporary American society, particularly as expressed in ongoing black freedom struggles.