About the American Historical Review

The American Historical Review (AHR) is the journal of the American Historical Association and has been the journal of record for the historical discipline in the United States since 1895. In its second century of continuous publication, the AHR strives to be the leading forum for new historical research, while meeting the challenges of an ever-evolving digital age and an ever-expanding global community of scholars.

One of the few journals that brings together scholarship from every major field of historical study, the AHR is unparalleled in its efforts to publish scholarship that makes a significant contribution to historical knowledge through content, interpretation, form, and method. The journal also annually publishes approximately 600 reviews surveying and assessing contemporary historical scholarship.

Our rigorous review process often prompts the question: What makes an AHR article? While there is no template or model, the basic criteria include: historical work distinguished by sophisticated analysis, deep research, historiographical significance, clear writing, and new or significant interpretation. Beyond this, we seek manuscripts that have broad appeal, are accessible to our wide readership, and engage questions or methods that transcend fields of historical inquiry. In short, an AHR article should speak across the discipline. 

Just as the AHA strives to represent and serve all historians, the AHR aims to be of interest to historians of all times and places in its content and to address issues and methods common to us all. In addition to articles and digital media formats, the AHR has multiple ongoing projects. The AHR History Lab is an experimental space featuring collective projects that reimagine historical practice in terms of content, form, and method. The #AHRSyllabus is a collaborative project designed to help teachers and students look “under the hood” at how historians in the 21st century do the work of history. Each syllabus module features a practical hands-on teaching module that foregrounds innovative uses of historical methods in the classroom. History Unclassified features unusual and surprising contributions to history and is overseen is by AHR consulting editors Kate Brown and Emily Callaci.

The AHR also produces a podcast overseen by AHR consulting editor Daniel Story. This podcast, History in Focus, takes listeners behind the scenes of the journal as we explore the who, what, how, and why of doing history in the 21st century. 

The journal is currently published by Oxford University Press.