![]() Bitzan was able to integrate some of the letters into his class on the Holocaust to bring to life for his students the day-to-day realities of being Jewish in Nazi-occupied Poland. In October 2015, a UW alumnus named Michael Stern contacted Professor Amos Bitzan for help translating letters from his grandmother, Sara Spira, to his parents. ![]() In learning about the past, we often discover how our own lives fit into the human experience. History helps us realize how different our lived experience is from that of our ancestors, yet how similar we are in our goals and values. Studying the diversity of human experience helps us appreciate cultures, ideas, and traditions that are not our own – and to recognize them as meaningful products of specific times and places. History Builds Empathy Through Studying the Lives and Struggles of Others In many ways, history interprets the events and causes that contributed to our current world. Understanding immigration patterns may provide crucial background for addressing ongoing racial or cultural tensions. For example, a course on the history of public health might emphasize how environmental pollution disproportionately affects less affluent communities – a major factor in the Flint water crisis. The Past Teaches Us About the Presentīecause history gives us the tools to analyze and explain problems in the past, it positions us to see patterns that might otherwise be invisible in the present – thus providing a crucial perspective for understanding (and solving!) current and future problems. ![]() ![]() Studying history helps us understand and grapple with complex questions and dilemmas by examining how the past has shaped (and continues to shape) global, national, and local relationships between societies and people. Historians use a wide range of sources to weave individual lives and collective actions into narratives that bring critical perspectives on both our past and our present. They use a range of methods and analytical tools to answer questions about the past and to reconstruct the diversity of past human experience: how profoundly people have differed in their ideas, institutions, and cultural practices how widely their experiences have varied by time and place, and the ways they have struggled while inhabiting a shared world. To study history is to study change: historians are experts in examining and interpreting human identities and transformations of societies and civilizations over time. ![]()
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