Voting begins June 1 and extends until July 15. Watch your email for your personalized link to the ballot or find the link on historians.org/myaha. If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact ltownsend@historians.org.
President
The president-elect stands unopposed for election to president. The current president is Thavolia Glymph, Duke Univ. (slavery, emancipation, plantation societies and economies, gender, women).
Ben Vinson III
Howard University (president; African diaspora, colonial Mexico)
Candidate Statement
I have long cherished the AHA. Most recently, serving as vice president of the Research Division, I have participated in and been made privy to the AHA’s deeper nature as a quintessential bonding entity, a potential source of connection for all of us—regardless of research field, institutional affiliation, institutional type, and professional rank. The AHA has always been a powerful convener of our profession, creating the vital space for us to exchange ideas and enrich our scholarship, as well as to think about ways to strengthen the public humanities, advocate for historical truth in our broader society, and navigate the complexities of our respective institutional homes and departments. The AHA has also been the location where we have forged meaningful, oftentimes lifelong relationships that have nourished our careers and personal lives. In the post-pandemic era, such institutional presence and bonding character has perhaps never been more important, at least from my perspective. This is not to say that our institutional history has not been pocked with rifts, exclusions, debates, and even omissions. It has. But we’ve always rallied in the face of such challenges, and we’ve always grown immeasurably. The AHA’s recently launched Racist Histories initiative, for instance, is just one example of how we’ve fruitfully reckoned with our past to our collective betterment.
Perhaps because of this, amidst the panoply of learned and professional societies in the United States, the AHA stands as an unquestioned leader. Our willingness to tackle hard social topics and to engage in advocacy, our ability to insist on principles of truth and evidence, and our continuous striving to polish the careers of all historians has been a veritable signature of our organization. In my view, the AHA presidency offers a unique opportunity to emphasize and reinforce the full value of our collectivity, our public platform, and our capacity for greater professionalization. As a career Latin American historian, university provost, former journal editor, president of the Conference of Latin American History, chair of the board of the National Humanities Center, and an Executive Committee member of the National Humanities Alliance, I bring substantial experience for championing our colleagues, elevating their work, and cultivating their success. If elected as the AHA president, I would look to take these activities to the next level. I would also look to help strengthen relations across our subfields, while engineering meaningful ties with other disciplines. As an administrator-scholar, I would look to fortify relationships between the AHA and multiple institutions of higher education, including foundations. I believe that a stronger future for the AHA hinges on the necessary bridge-building work of collaboration, which can ultimately yield mutually beneficial outcomes for all.
President-elect
The president-elect serves a one-year term. At the end of the term, he or she stands unopposed for election for president. The current president-elect is Ben Vinson III, Howard Univ. (African diaspora, colonial Mexico).
Philippa Levine
University of Texas at Austin (professor emerita; British Empire, race and sexuality)
Candidate Statement
Over the course of my career I have worked at universities in the US, Britain, and Australia. I have taught in public and private institutions with radically different student bodies and have championed the widening of the profession itself, of the topics and areas in which we teach, and of our student bodies. I have taught in diverse locations within the US: at two institutions in the South as well as on the West Coast. I began my career as a British historian interested in the origin of history as a discipline, and moved from there to studies of 19th-century feminist activism. Turning my attention thereafter to the tentacles of the British Empire, I have argued for the centrality of sexuality to the creation of imperial power, and in the past couple of decades have focused largely on how scientific and medical knowledge contribute to colonial authority. Over the years my work has become increasingly comparative in scope, a shift reflected as much in my teaching practice as in my own research. My publications include textbooks and books aimed at non-academic readers as well as scholarly monographs.
From the struggle over the content of high school textbooks to the rights of free speech at colleges and universities, history lies at the heart of a national, and indeed an international conversation about the role and value of education. As professionals in the field, we need to be central to that discussion and the AHA is the key organization through which we work to get our voices heard. We should be setting the agenda as well as responding to attacks on the discipline and on education more generally. As president I would seek to expand our public influence, building on the already substantial work the AHA has undertaken in recent years. It is also vital that we develop policies that support newcomers to the profession whose working conditions are increasingly onerous, whether in schools or in universities and colleges. My experience as a champion of my fellow faculty (as a senate president), of my field (as president of the North American Conference on British Studies), and of my peers (as a former AHA vice president for research) have prepared me for the advocacy role that I take to be the principal element in the AHA presidency.
Suzanne Marchand
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (Boyd Professor; European intellectual, history of humanities/material culture/arts, Germany and Austria 1700–1945)
Candidate Statement
I guess my best qualification for this office is that I love it all. I was trained as a modern European intellectual historian, specializing in the history of the human sciences in Germany and Austria, and I have an enduring interest in the long afterlife of the ancient world, classical and Near Eastern. I have also written a prize-winning book in business history, and co-authored two textbooks, one European and one world history. I have studied or taught at universities in four regions of the US, two private institutions and two flagship state universities (Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, LSU); my courses treat urban, economic, religious, military, and cultural affairs. I learn a great deal from former students who are K–12 teachers, and from classicists and Egyptologists. I am completing a book on Herodotus and the instabilities of Western civilization, which shows how fierce battles over the trustworthiness of “the father of history” have shaped modern conceptions of how to write “proper” history—but never in consistent or universal ways. And that is a good thing: scholarly progress depends on debate! My priorities include ensuring that we advocate for the importance of teaching and researching premodern histories, that we defend expertise and evidence-based conclusions in the classroom against political pressures, and that we continue our work on career diversity. I think I can be a good advocate for history and historians as I have a good grasp of all that we have been (including the ugly chapters), and all we might be.
The AHA’s purpose is to advocate for all of America’s historians, wherever and in whatever field they work, and to facilitate communication between professionals and with the public at large. The president’s job is to provide leadership and introduce new ideas to complement ongoing, excellent, projects such as Tuning, History Gateways, and Where Historians Work. Today’s challenges include threats to freedom in the classroom, pressures to eliminate all but “relevant” and recent histories, the challenges of adapting to AI, the exploitation of gig laborers, and the perils posed by public hostility to expertise. As someone who has studied or taught in many different institutions and locations, including a big public university in the South, I hope to defend with a cool head and a warm heart our vital need for expert, honest, and unfettered scholarship and teaching, the foundation for civil discourse and democracy.
Teaching Division
The AHA Teaching Division collects and disseminates information about the training of teachers, studies and encourages innovative methods of instruction, and works to foster cooperation among faculty. Returning members are Jennifer Baniewicz, Council member, Amos Alonzo Stagg High School (US, AP US, AP European, Western civilization) and Charles Zappia, Council member, San Diego Mesa Coll. (corporatization of higher education, community college historians, transformation of work and the American labor movement).
Vice President
Jennifer Hart
Virginia Tech (professor and chair; mobility/technology/infrastructure/urban space in Ghana)
Candidate Statement
I became an academic because amazing teachers changed the way that I understood the world. Teaching and learning are a core part of the foundational commitment that drives my academic work—that no one should have to be lucky to benefit from the transformative power of higher education. I have long worked with the Teaching Division of the AHA as the North American president for the International Society for the Scholarship on Teaching and Learning in History, organizing panels and workshops that sought to bridge the gap between the scholarship of teaching and the thoughtful pedagogical practice of so many historian colleagues. As a senior scholar with the AAC&U’s Office of Curricular and Pedagogical Innovation I have been involved in national conversations about the future of general education, assessment, and student success. And as a former director of general education and a current department chair, I understand all too well the practicality and urgency of these issues. I hope to continue to bring history more fully into the center of these conversations, while also bringing new subfields—including my own field of African history—into discussions about how we teach the past and expand access to our field.
Serena Zabin
Carleton College (professor; early America, American Revolution)
Candidate Statement
I am honored to be nominated for the position of vice president, Teaching Division. Spending my entire career at a teaching-focused institution has allowed me to reflect on and practice the varied approaches to pedagogy in undergraduate education. I look forward to promoting the creative teaching and learning work that is happening at all levels, from kindergarten to graduate school. As VP, I would work with members and staff to support the dissemination of excellent pedagogical and curricular innovations through teaching-focused sessions at conferences and through sharing the outcomes of the AHA’s research into effective teaching, particularly at the introductory level. I know that faculty who teach at under-resourced or otherwise struggling institutions are eager to find creative approaches to teaching, especially after the ravages of COVID on our secondary schools. With my experience as Carleton’s Broom Fellow for Public Scholarship, I would also look at bringing in public history colleagues who teach visitors at museums and public sites. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, such work will need even more support. Finally, honest history teaching has been under attack in several states, and I look forward to being a part of the AHA’s advocacy work on behalf of history teachers everywhere.
Council Member
Erik Ching
Furman University (Walter Kenneth Mattison Professor and interim associate provost for engaged learning; modern Latin America, 20th-century El Salvador)
Candidate Statement
I attended a teaching-first university as an undergraduate. I taught throughout graduate school. I taught at a community college my first year out of graduate school. My current position for the past 26 years is at Furman University, where excellence in teaching is the first evaluative criteria for tenure and promotion. Teaching has been a centerpiece of my professional career, and I have endeavored to improve my pedagogical approaches through professional development, whether for introductory writing seminars or senior-research seminars. In my current administrative role as interim associate provost for engaged learning, much of my work revolves around promoting best practices in teaching and mentoring. More broadly, I believe professional historians should guide history curricula, from K–12 through postsecondary, and they should defend the integrity of academic freedom from politicized, partisan attacks that stifle evidence-driven learning.
Edward Cohn
Grinnell College (professor and director, Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations, and Human Rights; Soviet Union/Russia/central Europe, policing and surveillance)
Candidate Statement
I’m a veteran classroom instructor at a college that focuses on undergraduate education, and I have two passions: building community among teacher-historians and creating spaces to discuss and promote creative pedagogy. As a program committee member and co-chair of the AHA’s Working Group on Small Liberal Arts Colleges, I’ve recruited conference panels on everything from inclusive teaching to pedagogical engagement with video games to the use of “history labs” as a collaborative curricular model. I want to help build conversations among the entire AHA membership (including sometimes-overlooked groups like contingent faculty, grad students, high school teachers, and community college instructors), covering themes like gateway courses, community-engaged learning, fighting faculty and student burnout, and expanding enrollments and engagement among students from all backgrounds. Finally, as an Iowan, I’m worried about the politicization of history teaching and eager to advocate for the field in an era of budget cuts and legislative attacks.
Professional Division
The AHA Professional Division promotes integrity, fairness, and civility in the practice of history. Returning members are Anne Hyde, vice president, Univ. of Oklahoma (19th-century North American West, Indigenous America, race); Tony Frazier, Council member, North Carolina Central Univ. (social and legal history of blacks in 18th-century in Great Britain, Atlantic slavery and emancipation, African American); and Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, Council member, Rutgers Univ. (19th-century US, social, public).
Council Member
Amy Froide
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (professor and chair; female investors and single women, Britain 1500–1800)
Candidate Statement
As a long-term member of the AHA, I have served on book prize committees, facilitated webinars for history chairs, and served on the Nominating Committee. As the chair of the history department at UMBC, I attended the AHA’s workshop for new chairs where I have witnessed and participated in the organization’s professional development and support of department leaders. My fellow history chairs and I have gone on to support and advise one other on curricular, programmatic, and professional issues on our campuses. I am a keen supporter of the AHA’s advocacy for history teachers and our discipline. History is under siege once again, largely because of our willingness to speak truth to power. I am pleased to put my name forward for this position so that I can assist in this advocacy work and support practitioners of History—both in the classroom and in public—to freely teach everyone’s history.
Jennifer McNabb
University of Northern Iowa (professor and head; social and legal, medieval and early modern Europe)
Candidate Statement
I would bring to the Professional Division a broad perspective on our discipline gained from a variety of experiences. I’ve served as an adjunct instructor, a tenured faculty member, a department administrator, an officer of professional societies, an AP chief reader, and a supervisor of undergraduate internships as well as social studies education and public history programs. I’ve also demonstrated a commitment to preparing history students for diverse professional paths through experiential learning and coursework that encourages career exploration. These activities have reinforced my understanding of historical experts and history communicators as essential for the functioning of a healthy democracy and effective educational systems. In our rapidly shifting educational landscape and global marketplace, I anticipate an ongoing, pressing need to promote the work of historians inside and outside academia, and I would like to contribute to the AHA’s efforts of ensuring recognition of all historians’ contributions with fairness and integrity.
Research Division
The AHA Research Division works to help promote historical scholarship, preserve historical documents and artifacts, ensure equal and open access to information, and foster the dissemination of information about historical records and research. Returning members are William G. Thomas III, vice president, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln (American legal, digital scholarship); Erin Greenwald, Council member, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (French Atlantic world, colonial Louisiana); and Jana Lipman, Council member, Tulane Univ. (20th-century US, US foreign relations, US immigration, labor)
Council Member
Cemil Aydin
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (professor; global, modern Asia and Middle East)
Candidate Statement
During the last two decades, my research focused on the political and intellectual history of the modern world from an interdisciplinary global history perspective, utilizing archives in multiple languages and perspectives. In addition to my previous serving as an AHA Program Committee member, I have experience in serving various academic leadership and administrative positions, and managed large federal and private funded research projects. I paid particular attention to international research collaboration with colleagues in other countries across the world and worked with graduate and undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds. I hope to rely on my experience in protecting and defending academic freedom, moral integrity of historical profession, and access to research resources for all scholars. I also aim to support the public facing activities of historians who contribute to crucial contemporary struggles of equality, justice and freedom with their research and scholarship.
Peter Sigal
Duke University (professor; sexuality/race/coloniality, 16th- and 17th-century Indigenous Nahua and Maya societies of Mexico)
Candidate Statement
As a historian of sexuality, race, and coloniality, I focus on the Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica; race and queer communities in the United States, Europe, and Latin America; and the erotics of historical and ethnographic research around the world. My most recent work involves collaborations with artists, activists, and archivists. I have worked with multiple archives throughout Latin America, the United States, and Europe, varying from state and national repositories to local collections and personal papers. I also work with a variety of visual materials, most recently photography and film. Historians today face changing environments in the United States and around the globe: historical research is now regularly under attack; artificial intelligence presents unique opportunities and challenges; many archives face difficulty obtaining the funding that they require. The AHA must continue to take the lead in advocating for historical research, promoting collaborative innovative opportunities, and protecting (and expanding) archival resources.
Committee on Committees
The Committee on Committees nominates individuals to fill vacancies on all regular Association committees. Returning members are Julio Capó Jr., Florida International Univ. (20th-century queer Miami, transnational Caribbean-US sexuality) and Rashauna Johnson, Univ. of Chicago (Atlantic slavery and emancipation, 19th-century African diaspora, US South, urban and regional).
Slot 1
Carol Harrison
University of South Carolina (professor; religion, gender, France 1750–1914)
Candidate Statement
I am a historian of European women, currently engaged in research on 19th-century Roman Catholicism. In recent years I have become increasingly involved in the infrastructure and institutions of our profession, and I look forward to bringing the expertise I have developed to the AHA. As editor of French Historical Studies I prioritized inclusivity and transparency so that my colleagues would recognize their journal as the collective product of a community of scholars. As president of my campus AAUP chapter and, currently, of the South Carolina state conference of the AAUP, I have been impressed by and appreciative of the AHA’s advocacy for academic freedom and support for educators at all levels. I hope to bring experience from scholarly publishing and faculty activism to the Committee on Committees, helping our professional organization function smoothly and effectively serve its membership.
Jacob Soll
University of Southern California (University Professor; economic, political, intellectual)
Candidate Statement
I am a historian of early modern European intellectual, political, and economic history. I’m interested in the cultural elements of how state apparatuses and economies do and do not work. In particular, my work has recently focused on challenging long-standing myths and hagiographies in European economic thought. I have become interested in seeing European economic development through an Asian lens, which flips a number of assumptions about European and colonial wealth both in the early modern period and today. I am interested in how historical research can make an impact on current policy questions at a global level. I was on the 2012 AHA Program Committee, and served for three years on the Leo Gershoy Prize Award Committee. I have worked to respect all points of view, and to represent the interests of researchers and teachers outside of elite universities, and, consequently, to promote nonstandard narratives across the discipline and across disciplinary lines.
Slot 2
Margaret Mih Tillman
Purdue University (associate professor; modern China, childhood and family)
Candidate Statement
As a historian of China, I have uncovered archival examples of immense conflict, as well as transnational cooperation even when the actors fundamentally disagreed. Given Sino-US tensions today, I see even greater value in historical reminders of unheard voices and untrodden paths. As the Director of Asian Studies at Purdue, I’ve helped to organize international workshops meant to facilitate conversations across areas and disciplines. Together with colleagues, I helped to revive the Gender Equity in Asian Studies Group in the Association for Asian Studies, which has brought nursing stations and daycare options to that conference. I also help co-administer the private FaceBook group, “Sinologists,” which provides a platform for academic discussion among over 4,000 members across the world. By listening to colleagues’ concerns and working with community members, I hope to recognize diversity and to promote the work of historians to the general public.
Linh Vu
Arizona State University (associate professor; war dead in 20th-century China, virtue and citizenship)
Candidate Statement
I am a historian of 20th-century China, with a focus on war, memory, and citizenship. My research has made me passionate about promoting global awareness, building an informed society, and acknowledging the consequences of war. Working in archives has also made me an advocate for academic integrity and academic freedom. Moreover, my experience of growing up in Hanoi and being a first-generation student has made me aware of how to engage with the underrepresented student population. My contribution to the discipline, if elected, would be to promote diversity in the student body, among professional historians, and in research topics.
Nominating Committee
The Nominating Committee makes nominations for all elective posts in the AHA, oversees the counting of ballots, and reports the results of the election to the membership. Returning members are Carlos K. Blanton, Texas A&M Univ. (Chicana/o, education, civil rights, Texas); Amanda Moniz, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (early America, humanitarianism); Bianca Murillo, California State Univ., Dominguez Hills (modern Africa, global capitalism/economies/markets, race and gender studies); Matthew Restall, Penn State Univ. (colonial Latin America, Maya history); Kaya Şahin, Indiana Univ. (early modern Ottoman Empire, history writing, governance, religious/confessional identity, ceremonies and rituals); and Anthony Steinhoff, Univ. du Québec à Montréal (modern Germany/France, modern European religion, Wagner/operatic culture in German-speaking Europe, urban).
Slot 1
Miriam Kingsberg Kadia
University of Colorado Boulder (professor; modern Japan and East Asia, imperialism, Cold War)
Candidate Statement
I am a historian of modern Japan and East Asia. My commitment to diversity and social justice is informed by personal experiences growing up as a visible minority in a foreign culture and raising nonwhite children, as well as more than 20 years of professional dedication to public higher education and published scholarship on “race.” In recent years, I have helped to select candidates for a postdoctoral diversity fellowship and first-generation undergraduate scholarships, identified talented high school participants for college-level Critical Black Studies seminars, and worked with my local PTA to promote responsible representation in a school district where controversy over the K–12 history curriculum made national headlines a decade ago. Drawing on my long service to the AHA and to other history and Asian studies organizations, I will seek broad-minded, conscientious leaders in inclusive excellence and critical thinking to support all members of our profession in this challenging political moment.
Hiromi Mizuno
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (associate professor; cultural history of science in Japan, colonialism, environmental)
Candidate Statement
I am an intellectual historian of modern Japan, interested in the global circulation of things, capital, and people. Currently I am finishing a book about the 20th-century nitrogen fertilizer trade that weaves together agricultural, industrial, economic, and environmental histories. South-to-South/Asia-to-Asia relations are important to me in analyzing the colonial and Cold War world order. I teach courses on modern Japanese popular culture, global World War II war memories, the Green Revolution, and Cold War Asia. I love GIS map making (though still a novice) and use it in my teaching and research. I grew up in Hiroshima and care greatly about global nuclear issues, so that is another thing I incorporate in my academic and outreach activities. If elected, I would like to develop a stronger bridge between AHA and non-Americanists. I have served on various national and regional associations and conferences and would be honored to bring in the resources I have developed.
Slot 2
Hilary Green
Davidson College (James B. Duke Professor; Black education in Reconstruction, Civil War memory)
Candidate Statement
I am the James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College. After earning my PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I have taught at an HBCU in northeastern NC, an R-1 (University of Alabama), and currently at a SLAC. I am also the current chief reader for the AP US History exam. My trajectory reinforces my research interests of recovering inclusive histories of the long 19th-century United States, with specific focus on the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, history of education, and Civil War memory while encouraging diverse audiences of scholars and graduate students at all types of institutions and rank who might have increasing common trajectories in the profession. My goal is to advocate for all historians to the best of my ability, particularly those from BIPOC communities and non-R1 careers.
William Sturkey
University of Pennsylvania (associate professor; post-1865 US, race in American South)
Candidate Statement
Having taught at the University of North Carolina and now the University of Pennsylvania, I have seen a great number of campus controversies that have shaped my view of historians’ essential roles in American public life. I have also seen how bad-faith political actors threaten the communal fabric of our learning communities. I am also deeply interested in recent campus controversies over issues such as free speech and diversity. As a candidate for the AHA Nominating Committee, I am interested in protecting our guild and protecting and promoting the rights of historians and other writers to speak and publish freely. I will seek to elevate people who I think are engaged in taking on the greatest challenges we historians face in our profession, especially adjunctification and attacks on higher education.
Slot 3
Dana Rabin
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (professor and chair; Great Britain, race, 18th-century empire)
Candidate Statement
I teach and study Britain and its empire in the 18th century. I’ve written about groups excluded from certain civil rights and the demands they made for those rights as promised by British claims about the rule of law. My career has been spent at public institutions: Millersville University, Indiana State, and U of Illinois. In my term as department chair for the past five years I have confronted challenges to graduate education, shrinking budgets, and the endless pursuit of instructional units. I’ve also championed research support for faculty. As a member of the Nominating Committee my priority will be to diversify those who are nominated, both in terms of race, gender, ability, sexuality, and region as well as type of institution, kind of historical inquiry, and forms of publication. I seek to help make the AHA a place where everyone feels welcomed, valued, and comfortable. Only an inclusive and truly diverse set of voices can advocate successfully for the profession.
Christopher Tounsel
University of Washington (associate professor; modern Sudan, race and religion)
Candidate Statement
I am a historian of modern Sudan and its sociocultural position within the global Black imaginary. While my first book explores how Southern Sudanese deployed Christianity and Blackness in their political revolution, my second book approaches Sudan through a diasporic lens by examining African American engagements with the country. Throughout my teaching career, I have sought to showcase African and African diaspora peoples as creative agents rather than passive recipients in ancient and modern world history. Outside of the classroom, I am passionate about extending myself to underrepresented students interested in pursuing graduate study in history. If I am elected to serve on the Nominating Committee, I would be blessed to build upon my experience as a Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellow to foster a more diverse, inclusive, and sustainable AHA.