A liberal education should provide students with a broad perspective on changing human experience. Sympathetic yet incisive study of the past gives us ways of seeing our own world anew. It helps us to understand why people made the choices that they made and lived the way they did; to appreciate the consequences of those choices and ways of living; and to see how our own circumstances came to be. Knowledge of the past is produced through a range of methods and concepts that allow us to interpret words and other artifacts. Courses in this category introduce students to students to these methods and help them to understand particular aspects of past lives here and around the globe.