Dear AHA Member,
AHA news and updates for the history profession.
In this issue:
- Do your children's textbooks make the grade?
- AHA Today – Recent history news
- News from Washington – Updates from NCH, NHA, and COSSA
Please feel free to forward this e-mail to your friends and colleagues.
2011 Annual Meeting
Registration
Members can register by logging in to member services and clicking the link to “Meeting Registration” on the main page Members Services page.
Registration Resource Center
The messaging function is now available in the Registration Resource Center. Log in today to contact others who have registered for the meeting or sign up to receive e-mail or text message alerts when you have a message waiting for you. The Registration Resource Center also provides receipts and links to housing.
Job Center
The 2011 Job Center Handout is now available on our web site here (PDF). This document includes a review of how the Job Center works, plus a list of all the job searches taking place in Boston that have been reported to the AHA. The Handout will be updated frequently until the meeting begins.
More Information
See the AHA’s Annual Meeting web page for more information on hotels, venue locations, registration, exhibit hall details, transportation, and the Job Center. Also, view the Program of the 125th Annual Meeting online.
Jim Grossman Interview with Lee H. Hamilton, Roosevelt-Wilson Award Winner
In a video we’ve recently posted online, AHA executive director Jim Grossman interviews Lee H. Hamilton, director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University, and the recipient of the AHA’s 7th Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Public Service Award. The award will be presented to Hamilton at the AHA’s 125th Annual Meeting in Boston, Jan. 6-9, 2011.
Boston and the 125th Annual Meeting
.jpg)
Supplement to the 2011 Annual Meeting Program
The Supplement to the 125th Annual Meeting is now online, and print copies will be available at the annual meeting. Along with important details about the meeting and changes that have been made to the Program, the Supplement also includes information on:
-
Sessions and Events. Learn more about the The 125th General Meeting, see who is presenting at the AHA Poster Session, check out the screenings at the 2011 AHA Film Festival, and read up on making presentations accessible.
-
Boston and Historians. The Local Arrangements Committee has organized tours and put together an excellent array of articles covering Boston’s revolutionary history, the history of areas surrounding Boston, religious sites, LGBTQ past and present, and where to eat near the meeting hotels.
-
Job Center and Exhibit Hall Info. Get the FAQs about the Job Center, read the AHA’s Guidelines for the Hiring Process, and see a list of Exhibitors at the meeting and where they’ll be located.
There is also content on how to make presentations accessible for everyone, including those with disabilities, and guidelines for the hiring process. Be sure to check out the complete Supplement to the 125th Annual Meetingonline.
Proposals for 126th Annual Meeting
The 126th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association will be held January 5–8, 2012, in Chicago. The Program Committee welcomes proposals from all members of the Association (academic and nonacademic), from affiliated societies, from historians working outside the United States, and from scholars in related disciplines. The theme for the meeting is “Communities and Networks.” The Program Committee is also interested in proposals that examine new forms of digital research, publication, and teaching.
The deadline to submit proposals is February 15, 2011. For more information, see the Call for Proposals. Proposals must be submitted online; detailed instructions are available on the AHA website.
Twitter at the Annual Meeting
Attending the 125th Annual Meeting in Boston? Have a Twitter account? Use the hashtag #AHA2011 for tweets about sessions, events, and other AHA annual meeting related topics.
Also, be sure to follow the AHA on Twitter (@AHAhistorians) to stay up-to-date with AHA news!
The George C. Marshall Lecture on Military History
The Society for Military History and The George C. Marshall Foundation extend an invitation to you to attend: The George C. Marshall Lecture on Military History on Saturday, January 8, 2011, 5:00–6:30 p.m. in the Boston Marriott Copley Place’s Grand Ballroom Salon F.
Gerhard L. Weinberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will speak on “Some Myths of World War II.” Gerhard Weinberg’s address will examine some myths of the war that have been widely shared by many. This will include those pertaining to the war as a whole as well as others about individual leaders and groups of individuals. Among the latter will be Adolf Hitler and his generals, Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Yamamoto Isoroku. Professor Weinberg will also touch on such issues as the Yalta Conference and the Morgenthau Plan. As the war recedes in time, much new information has become available that was closed earlier, but some of the myths enjoy a long life.
A reception will follow in the Boston Marriott Grand Ballroom Salon E beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Session of the Week
We’ve launched a new series on the AHA blog that will run each Monday through the first week in January 2011, highlighting a “session of the week” pulled from the Program of the 125th Annual Meeting. So we’ve featured the following sessions:
Session of the Week: Valuing the Environment
Participants in session 188, Valuing the Environment, look to nature and environmentalism in different nations from the 19th century through the present.Session of the Week: Sacred Politics: Rethinking the Rise of the Religious Right
Friday, January 7, 2011: 9:30 AM-11:30 AM
Tremont Room (Marriott Boston Copley Place)The Borders of Immigration History
Friday, January 7, 2011: 9:30 AM-11:30 AM
Boylston Room (Marriott Boston Copley Place)Careers in History: The Variety of the Profession
Thursday, January 6, 2011: 3:00 PM-5:00 PM
Room 302 (Hynes Convention Center)
See the other sessions we’ve featured online here.
Photocopying
Need to photocopy your c.v. in Boston? Make a copy of your paper?
Options include the business center in your hotel, or the following two options in and near the Hynes Convention Center:
-
FedEx Kinko's in the Hynes Business Center on the plaza level. It is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is not open on weekends. Copies cost 15 per printed side – standard black and white copies.
-
Staples. Registration, exhibit hall, AHA hdqtrs. office are all on the plaza level. You would go down one level to the ground level, taking the escalators/stairs in the circular configuration on the floor plan, and walk out the Boylston Street doors. The Staples is directly across the street. It's open weekdays 7 a.m.-8 p.m. and has weekend hours: Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Staples charges 10 cents per printed side – standard black and white copies
Perspectives on History – January 2011
The online version of the January 2011 issue of Perspectives on History is now available to AHA members (sign in to member services to gain full access).
Introduction
Last month Barbara D. Metcalf said “Hasta la vista and Farewell” to her time as AHA president. This month, Anthony Grafton begins his term with a column on criticism of history in academia in “History under Attack.” Meanwhile, AHA Executive Director James Grossman again looks to how historians can and should engage in public discourse in “Citizenship, History, and Public Culture.”
History Jobs and Departments
Robert B. Townsend reports on how the history job market sagged in the 2009-10 academic year, but after looking at the number of recent job ads he offers hope for recovery. He also offers sobering news of economic troubles in history departments in his article “History under the Hammer.”
News
In AHA news, Lisa Forman Cody presents the Nominating Committee’s report on the The 2010 AHA Election, while AHA members are reminded of the 2011 call for nominations. There is also a call for proposals out for the 126th annual meeting of the AHA, which will have the theme “Communities and Networks.”
Other news includes Lee White’s article on changes at the National Archives and his regular Washington news briefs column. From our affiliates, the American Society for Legal History is calling for papers for their 2011 annual meeting.
Awards
The Conner Prairie Interactive History Park has received a National Medal for Museum and Library Service, we announce a new AHA prize for South Asian History, and the last John Edwin Fagg Prize will be presented at the 2011 annual meeting.
Articles
This month’s issue also offers a range of articles on international history (see Gabrielle M. Spiegel’s introduction and Nikolay Koposov’s article on post-Soviet Russia), teaching history to inmates, historians and the law, the art of writing history, and digital history (in scholarly journals and online).
Find all of this, as well as Michael Altschul, Norman Arthur Graebner, Paul H. Hardacre, and Tony Judt remembered in the In Memoriam column.
Do your children's textbooks make the grade?
Last week, following the news that more errors had been discovered in a Virginia history textbook, WTOP reporter Kate Ryan interviewed AHA Executive Director James Grossman on inaccuracies in history textbooks.
"Grossman says he's not trying to act as a gatekeeper, but he is saying that professional standards should be employed. 'That's what matters, not who you are, but whether or not you subscribe to the standards...of the discipline of history,' Grossman says."
AHA Today
Keep up with the latest information on history and the profession on the AHA’s blog, AHA Today. Recent posts include:
-
Precirculated Papers at the 125th Annual Meeting
Precirculated paper sessions are organized around presentations (papers, PowerPoint, text from online) and made available online for audience members to access and read before the Annual Meeting. -
Books by Members – December 2010
As a service to AHA members, we are listing books by members received in the headquarters office in recent months. -
JSTOR Focus Group at the 125th Annual Meeting
JSTOR would like to know your thoughts (at the AHA’s 125th annual meeting) about the quality of their collections and their future directions. -
Also, see the most recent What We’re Reading (December 23 and December 30) and Grant of the Week (Bogliasco Fellowship Program in Italy and American Institute for Yemeni Studies 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
National Humanities Alliance
-
111th Congress Passes Another CR and Adjourns 112th Congress to convene January 5, President to release FY 2012 budget request week of February 14.
-
Senate Confirms New IMLS Director Susan H. Hildreth is new Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services
Consortium of Social Science Associations
-
December 13, 2010 Washington Update
Please feel free to forward this email on to a colleague or friend.
Contributions to this issue of Fortnightly News came from: David Darlington, Debbie Ann Doyle, Kelly Elmore, Elisabeth Grant, James Grossman, Vernon Horn, Pillarisetti Sudhir, Sharon K. Tune, Liz Townsend, and Robert B. Townsend
Last Updated: January 3, 2011
