The Undergraduate Major in History at SNU provides students with a basic grounding in history and archaeology, with the development of skills in research, analysis and quantitative reasoning that are essential to a thorough grounding in the liberal arts. Our teaching programmes encourage a critical engagement with the past by offering an engaging, analytical and thoughtful syllabus that is able to accommodate the vast sweep of chronology and geography—from pre-history to the present and from South Asia to the wider world.
Key Information
The Department of History is committed to the University’s liberal arts curriculum, combining flexibility and choice in allowing students to take a number of courses in disciplines other than their chosen majors’ discipline. We also offer Minor programs in both history and archaeology for students in other disciplines. We feel that an understanding and analysis of sources is foundational for history and archaeology. In our courses, the past comes alive in various ways: through hands-on study of artefacts, reading texts, exploring maps, reviewing movies and documentaries, thinking through life histories of objects, practices of collecting and museum-making, and study trips to archaeological and historical sites, museums and archives. The programme is fully integrated into the culture of research and training at Shiv Nadar University. Students at the University benefit from a choice-based credit system. Shiv Nadar University guidelines require a student to complete 150 credit hours of coursework over a minimum of 3 years to graduate with a BA (Research) degree, of which at least 42 credits must be completed from the CCC category and the UWE selection (with a minimum of 18 credits to be taken in each category). The Department of History sets a minimum requirement of 108 credits of course work for a Majors degree in the discipline.
Students enrolled for a BA Research degree in History benefit from the extra-curricular provisions of research and training available to all students at the university. Beyond the formal requirements of the classroom, students may opt for a supervised research project under the direction of a faculty advisor under the Opportunities for Undergraduate Research (OUR) scheme. Present and recently completed projects cover a wide range from the domestic architecture in medieval Delhi, to projects dealing with the history of social statistics in British India, and the recent food history of Bengal and eastern India.