Adam Parsons - History Grad
“Don't come here looking to learn dates of assassinations and minute military details,” he says. “That's not what the program is about.” But history buffs needn't worry. Geneva College certainly requires its students to know the facts. What Parsons means by his advice is that facts are just a small portion, and hardly the focus, of the history program. “It’s about equipping students to tell the story of history,” Adam explains, “to make sense of what has happened and what sort of impact that has on the present day. The faculty is constantly challenging students’ ideas of what it means to be a historian.” It’s true enough that history is history no matter where one studies it; what happened in the past cannot be changed. But this doesn't mean that history is a dead subject. It remains alive through interpretation – and its relevancy to the rest of life. This is where the uniqueness of Geneva’s approach to history comes into play. “Students are relatively free to explore relationships between history and theology or philosophy or any number of other disciplines, and to blur the boundaries in the process,” says Adam. During his time as a student, he relished the opportunity to attend and even participate in professional conferences as well as spend a demanding semester studying abroad at Oxford in the spring of 2006. And the history department’s intimate discussion-based senior seminars of about five students “provided invaluable preparation for advanced study.” Adam also experienced Geneva’s uniquely Christian approach to history. “It’s not a matter of simply saying that we often pray before class, which is true, or that we use special Christian textbooks, which is decidedly not,” says Adam. “What it is, however, is an example of the Christian way of life, the way of thinking, approaching a problem, grappling with it and proposing a solution. “The experiences of living in the city of Beaver Falls and interacting with the professors have helped me to, I think, grow into someone who is able to see outside of the dominant capitalist paradigm of our society,” Adam says, “and to seek instead an alternative community: the kingdom of God.” When put that way, Adam's advice seems less like a contradiction and more like an invitation – an invitation for future Geneva students to “tell the story of history.” - by Brooke Prokopchak ('08)
Adam Parsons, originally from Pataskala, Ohio, graduated from Geneva with his bachelor’s degree in history on May 12, 2007. He is now pursuing his master’s degree in Christian thought from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., where he hopes to explore the interface between doing theology and writing history. He plans to eventually obtain his doctorate, teach at the university level and establish a communal farm.
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As a recent graduate of Geneva’s history program, Adam Parsons’ advice for potential history majors may sound strange, even contradictory:
