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The latest activity of the AHA and historians in supporting history and historical thinking.

  • AHA Member Receives Award in French History for American Historical Review Article (April 2024)

    Apr 08, 2024 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Lauren R. Clay (Vanderbilt Univ.), whose article “Liberty, Equality, Slavery: Debating the Slave Trade in Revolutionary France” was awarded the 2023 William Koren Jr. Prize for the most outstanding article in French history by the Society for French Historical Studies. Clay’s article, which was published in the March 2023 issue of the American Historical Review, “challenges many of our assumptions about the revolutionary era as well as our approaches to global history.”

  • AHA Members Awarded 2024 ACLS Fellowships (April 2024)

    Apr 08, 2024 - 

    Congratulations to the eight AHA members who were awarded 2024 ACLS Fellowships: Bobby Cervantes (Harvard Univ.), Robert Franco (Kenyon Coll.), Charlotte Kiechel (Williams Coll.), Judith Mansilla (Florida International Univ.), Catherine Mas (Florida International Univ.), Alberto Ortiz Díaz (Univ. of Texas, Arlington), Yi Ren (Harvard Univ.), and Hermann von Hesse (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). ACLS fellowships “supports scholars who are poised to make original and significant contributions to knowledge in any field of the humanities or interpretive social sciences.”

  • AHA Executive Director Appears on SpeechMatters Podcast to Discuss Divisive Concepts (April 2024)

    Apr 02, 2024 - 

    AHA executive director Jim Grossman appeared on SpeechMatters, the official podcast of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, to discuss “divisive concepts” legislation and how it creates “challenges for the teaching and learning of history that compromise democratic values and institutions.”

  • AHA Member Appears on Writing It! Podcast to Discuss Creating a Graphic History (April 2024)

    Apr 02, 2024 - 

    AHA member Nina Caputo (Univ. of Florida), along with illustrator Liz Clarke, appeared on Writing It!, a podcast from the University of Florida’s Center for Jewish Studies, to discuss their book, Debating Truth: The Barcelona Disputation of 1263, A Graphic History (Univ. of Oxford Press). The episode delves into the process of making a graphic history, the collaboration between historian and illustrator, and why graphic history is a worthwhile medium. 

  • AHA Member Interviewed in IGN about Using Video Games to Teach History (March 2024)

    Mar 18, 2024 - 

    AHA member Tore Olsson (Univ. of Tennessee) was interviewed by Wesley Yin-Poole for IGN about his use of the video game Red Dead Redemption as a teaching tool in his American history classes. “[H]istorians, we use pop culture all the time. We use film and literature and TV series, but a lot of historians have been reluctant to engage video games for various reasons. And I decided, well, no, I want to take this medium seriously, because it’s so dominant,” Olsson said. “Video games are so powerful at instilling that curiosity and passion in people. The games themselves usually can’t provide the full story, but they can at least get people fascinated and interested in learning more about it.” Olsson also wrote about teaching with video games in the December 2023 issue of the American Historical Review.

  • TIME Publishes Article by AHA Researchers and Executive Director on K–12 Instruction and the ‘History Wars’

    Mar 14, 2024 - 

    AHA researchers Nicholas Kryczka, Whitney E. Barringer, and Scot McFarlane, along with executive director Jim Grossman, wrote an article for TIME discussing the findings of the research team’s Mapping the Landscape of Secondary US History Education project, a two-year initiative investigating how social studies is being taught in K–12 classrooms. “The typical American history classroom is neither awash in white supremacy nor awoke with critical race theory,” they wrote. “Politically motivated activists may be waging a history war, but teachers are not its warriors.”

  • AHA Sends Letter of Concern about Missing Chinese Scholar (March 2024)

    Mar 12, 2024 - 

    The AHA has sent a letter to President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China expressing “concern for the fate of Professor Rahile Dawut, a scholar of Uyghur studies who has apparently been sentenced to life in prison and whose specific whereabouts are unknown.” Professor Dawut, missing since 2018, has “been detained and sentenced in connection with her peaceful exercise of the right to academic freedom” in a situation that, in addition to raising concern for Dawut’s well-being, “raises questions about the ability of intellectuals in China generally to conduct scholarship safely and freely.” The AHA urges President Xi to secure Professor Dawut’s immediate and unconditional release.

  • AHA Member Authors Book on Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood (March 2024)

    Mar 01, 2024 - 

    AHA member Davida Siwisa James has authored Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill (Fordham Univ. Press), which traces four centuries of the West Harlem neighborhood where Alexander Hamilton built his home in 1802. The book recounts the landmark architecture, Harlem Renaissance gatherings, and many luminaries who lived there. Untapped New York Insiders will host Siwisa James’ Virtual Book Launch on March 27. 

  • AHA Member Awarded the Lewis Mumford Prize for Best Book in Planning History (March 2024)

    Mar 01, 2024 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Mike Amezcua (Georgetown Univ.), who has been awarded the Lewis Mumford Prize by the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) for his book, Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification (Chicago Univ. Press). The Mumford Prize is awarded biennially to “the best book on American city and regional planning history.”

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