History, Classics, & Philosophy   

This course is designed to give lifelong learners a better understanding of the forces that saw Pittsburgh’s transformation from a resource-rich wilderness into an industrial powerhouse whose people and innovations helped build America. This course will present Pittsburgh’s history to the start of World War II as more than two-dimensional, grayscale ideas about rivers, coal, and steel. Rather, the city’s history is presented in a vibrant way that not only tells the stories of the names we know—Braddock, Forbes, Carnegie, Rooney—but digs deeper to pull from the margins the voices whose stories we haven’t yet heard.