American Historical Association

 

Dear AHA Member,

Fortnightly News is the AHA's e-mail newsletter, sent out around the first and fifteenth of every month to keep members up to date with the AHA and the history profession.

In this issue:

1. Annual Meeting 2010 – Registration & Housing Now Open
2. Perspectives on History – September 2009 Issue Now Online
3. AHA Today – Recent history news
4. News from Washington – Updates from NCH, COSSA, and NHA
5. Annual Election of Officers
6. Archival Reviews Wanted
7. Calendar – History Events
8. 125th Anniversary Fund

 

Please feel free to forward this e-mail to your friends and colleagues.

Annual Meeting 2010 – Registration & Housing Now Open

Registration and housing for the 124th Annual Meeting opened Tuesday, September 15.

Members will find the link to registration on the main page after logging in through member services.  Registration is required to receive the deeply discounted housing rates for the meeting. 

Housing
Attendees can make a hotel reservation at the time of preregistration (Step 6 of the process). However, they can also make a hotel reservation later, as a link to housing will be included in the registration confirmation e-mail and will also be located on the Registration Resource Center page (which opens in October). For more information on the Annual Meeting, including registration and housing rates, see the AHA’s Annual Meeting web  and housing pages.

 

Perspectives on History September 2009 Issue Now Online

Look to the future in the September 2009 issue of Perspectives on History. AHA executive director Arnita A.  Jones looks toward her future retirement, convention director Sharon K. Tune looks toward the 124th Annual Meeting and the special sessions organized by the Working Group for Historical Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage, and Michael H. Fisher and Barbara H. Rosenwein look toward the 125th Annual Meeting in 2011 (the theme and the call for proposals).

Everyman His Own Historian
AHA President Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, on the other hand, looks back at a Carl Becker’s famous 1931 presidential address: “Everyman His Own Historian.” She notes that “[i]t remains the most quoted speech in the AHA archive, and it is well worth reading today.” Despite its enduring popularity, Ulrich delves into some key points that are as puzzling today as they were to his listeners then.

The Job Market and the Economy
Closer to the present, Robert B. Townsend, AHA assistant director for research, takes a backward glance at the challenges of the history job market in the 1970s. This retrospective ties together two other reports by Townsend in this issue. The first examines the struggles of history departments today, surveying the current economic toll in freezes (in salary and hiring), cuts (of staff, support, supplies, and programs), and reductions (in staffing and graduate students). The second article (co-authored with John Dichtl, executive director of the National Council for Public History) offers a picture of public history employment, summarizing preliminary results from the 2008 Survey of Public History Professionals.

News
The September issue also covers a range of other news about the AHA and the discipline, including:

AHA News

• AHA Council Decisions, June 2009
• CWH Launches Information and Resources Web Page
• Jameson and NASA Fellows Selected
• The AHA Announces the Martin A. Klein Prize in African History
• Members, September 2009

 

News from Washington

• President Makes Key History-Related Appointments
  By Lee White
• News Briefs

 

Finally, the issue is rounded out by a forum on Capstone Courses (at Saint Peter’s College, the University of Idaho, and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), a number of letters to the editor, and three remembrances of historians who have passed away.

 

AHA Today

Keep up with the latest information on history and the profession on the AHA’s blog, AHA Today. Recent posts include:

• Exploring the Google News Timeline
  The Google News Timeline, introduced by Google this past April, creates a visual and interactive chronological view of recent and historical events.

• Members' Books Recently Received at the AHA
  As a service to AHA members, we are initiating a new listing of books by members received in the headquarters office in recent months.These postings will only constitute an announcement of their publication, and provide short descriptions of the books.

• Is There a Future for Journals in the Humanities?
  Drawing on a new study of the finances of eight of the largest disciplinary societies in the humanities and social sciences, and more specific information about the American Historical Review, Robert B. Townsend ponders the future of journals in the discipline.

• Announcing the Martin A. Klein Prize in African History
  The Association is pleased to announce the establishment of the Martin A. Klein Prize in African History, which will be conferred annually starting at the January 2011 annual meeting. The prize will recognize the most distinguished work of scholarship on the history of continental African history published in English during the previous calendar year.

• Also, see the most recent What We’re Reading (September 3 and September 10) and Grant of the Week posts (Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship and Sabbatical Fellowships).

 

News from Washington

In addition to AHA Today, the Association also draws on the efforts of a number of coalitions that support the Association's agenda to keep track of issues in the nation’s capital that will be of concern to historians. Here are news updates from some of them.

• 

  National Coalition for History (NCH)

  • Obama Administration To Release White House Visitor Records
    On September 3, the Obama administration and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) settled four ongoing cases regarding public access to White House visitor records. As a result, for the first time in history records of White House visitors will be released.

  More News

  • Walmart Receives Permit To Build At Wilderness Battlefield

  • Fiscal Year 2010 Federal Budget Update

  • NEH Awards $29 million in Grants & Offers

  • NARA Nears Completion of Ingesting Bush Records

  • Library of Congress to House Papers of Jack Kemp

 

• COSSA

• The September 15, 2009 (PDF) COSSA Washington Update covered the following, and more:

  • Collins Confirmed as NIH Director: Outlines Five Areas of Opportunity in Constituent Meeting
  • Recovery Act Increases Scrutiny of Spending by Agencies
  • SRCD Policy Fellowship Opportunity
  • Applications Sought for NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and New Innovator Award

 

• National Humanities Alliance

• National Humanities Alliance Action Alert

 

 

Annual Election of Officers

Ballots for the 2009 election were sent to all members in good standing on September 1.

If you need assistance with the online voting process or to change your preference (from paper to online, or online to paper), contact the AHA’s Help Desk at 866-720-4357 (toll free) or e-mail: ahahelp@electionservicescorp.com.

Changes of address requests or non-election related questions should be forwarded to: http://www.historians.org/info/contact.cfm?u=members or call (202)-544-2422 (ext. 123).

Please return your completed ballot no later than 11:59 p.m. on November 1.

 

Archival Reviews Wanted

If you have spent some part of the summer in an archive anywhere in the world, we hope you'll report on your experiences at the facilities you visited. A few minutes of your time can assist many other scholars in their research endeavors. Please visit the ArchivesWiki to make your contribution today.

 

Calendar

The AHA’s online calendar lists upcoming meetings and seminars, research opportunities, awards and fellowships, internet resources, and exhibitions. Contribute your own announcement through this online form. Below we offer snippets of some of the current listings.

• Conference: Re-evaluating Africa and World War II Conference, September 17-19, 2009, Cornell University, Africana Studies and Research Center

• Call for Papers: Texas Medieval Association—The Texas Medieval Association is holding its 19th annual state meet at the University of Texas at Austin, October 23-24, 2009. Subjects on all medieval topics are welcome and abstracts (100-200 words) should be submitted by September 21, 2009

• Call for Papers: China on the Water—An international conference organized by Hans van de Ven, Univ. of Cambridge, and Zheng Yangwen, Univ. of Manchester, and to be held on July 30-31, 2010 in Singapore or Xiamen.

Read more about all of these events and more at the AHA’s online calendar.

 

125th Anniversary Fund

We have already received generous support from many members of the Association. If you have not yet contributed, and would like to aid in the expansion of the Association’s public programs and outreach efforts, we hope you will give your support to the AHA 125th Anniversary Fund.

You can contribute to the fund online at www.historians.org/give or by check to AHA Anniversary Fund, 400 A St. S.E., Washington, DC 20003.

 

Please feel free to forward this email on to a colleague or friend.

Contributions to this issue of Fortnightly News came from: David Darlington, Kelly Elmore, Elisabeth Grant, Vernon Horn, Sharon K. Tune, Robert B. Townsend, and Lee White

 

 

 

Last Updated: September 15, 2009