Members Making News: 2019 Archive

  • AHA Member Contextualizes Paid Maternity Leave in New York Times Op-Ed

    Dec 06, 2019 - 

    AHA member Mona Siegel, professor of history at California State University, Sacramento, published an op-ed in the New York Times drawing attention to female labor activists' century-old battle for paid maternity leave around the world.

  • AHA Member Discusses Indigenous History on NPR Podcast

    Dec 03, 2019 - 

    Anderson Hagler, AHA member and PhD candidate at Duke University, will be featured on an episode of NPR's The Academic Minute as he analyzes how American Indians are negatively portrayed in modern cinema and historical archives. November is Native American Heritage Month.

  • AHA Member Discusses Impeachment Procedures on NPR

    Oct 07, 2019 - 

    Donald Ritchie, AHA member and emeritus historian of the Senate, detailed the procedures for impeachment and trial of a president on an episode of NPR's All Things Considered.

  • AHA Member Amanda Seligman Publishes Op Ed in Washington Post

    Sep 26, 2019 - 

    Amanda Seligman, AHA member and professor of history and urban studies at the Universityof Wisconsin-Milwaukee, published an article in the Washington Post that shed light on Mothers Against Senseless Killings (MASK),a Chicago-based community activism group dedicated to occupying public spaces with positive loitering. Seligman also traces Chicago's historic roots as a city of activism and change.

  • Historians Call for Creation of Archive Housing Records from Opioid Lawsuits

    Sep 17, 2019 - 

    On September 12, 35 medical historians filed with a federal judge to create a $30 million permanent archive to house millions of records produced in cases of opioid litigation. The coalition cited a precedent relating to lawsuits against the tobacco industry in decades prior, and insisted the legal documents are imperative to conducting historical research on the origin, handling, and impact of the national opioid crisis. Funding for the projects, the historians proposed, would come from the defendants.

  • AHA Member Receives Highest Student Award at Loyola

    Sep 12, 2019 - 

    Hope Shannon, AHA member and Career Diversity Fellow at Loyola University Chicago, was awarded a 2019 President's Medallion. Each year, this award is bestowed in recognition of outstanding scholarship, leadership, and service to one student from each of the schools within the university. Congratulations to Hope!

  • Sanchez to Represent AHA at USC Inauguration

    Sep 04, 2019 - 

    George Sanchez, professor of American studies & ethnicity and historyat theUniversity of Southern California, will represent the AHA at the September 20, 2019,inauguration of Carol L. Foltas theuniversity's12th president.

  • Kruse Discusses Urban Segregation in New York Times as Part of #1619 Coverage

    Aug 16, 2019 - 

    On August 14, the New York Times published a piece by Kevin Kruse, AHA member and professor of history at Princeton University, as part of its 1619 Project to examine the legacy of slavery in America. In How Segregation Caused Your Traffic Jam, Kruse contextualizes the current debate over planned public transit extensions in Atlanta and traces decades of systemic segregation policies to existing racial inequality.

  • Smoller to Represent AHA at Presidential Inauguration at University of Rochester

    Aug 16, 2019 - 

    AHA member Laura Ackerman Smoller, professor of history and department chair at the University of Rochester, will represent the AHA at the Friday, October 4, 2019, inauguration of Sarah C. Mangelsdorf, the 11th president of the University of Rochester.

  • Mihm Reviews Fellow Member’s Publication in NYT

    Jul 18, 2019 - 

    Stephen Mihm, AHA member and associate professor of history at the University of Georgia, recently reviewed The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America by Margaret O'Mara, Howard and Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington and a member of the AHA. In the piece for the New York Times, Mihm praised his colleague's persuasive work in which O'Mara chronicles the rise of Silicon Valley and the region's relationships with state and federal governments, competing corporations, taxpayers, immigrants, and other key players.

  • AHA Member Authors Housing Crisis Op Ed in the New York Times

    Jul 18, 2019 - 

    In an opinion piece published by the New York Times, Lizabeth Cohen, AHA member and professor of American history at Harvard University, discusses the multifaceted housing crisis befalling low-and middle-income Americans. Cohen contrasts today's inaction with the demand for and success of federal housing intervention policies following World War II.

  • Bobadilla Discusses US Immigrant Detention Camps

    Jun 21, 2019 - 

    AHA member and 2015 Perspectives summer blog contest winner Eladio Bobadilla (Univ. of Kentucky), weighed in on the debates over terminology of the Trump administration's immigrant detention centers at the United States southern border. In a post on the Latino Rebels blog, Bobadilla examines why terming these centers "concentration camps" is a powerful and useful historical allusion.

  • AHA Members Awarded 2019 ACLS Project Development Grants

    Jun 14, 2019 - 

    AHA members Mary Harvey Doyno (California State Univ., Sacramento) and Jesse Tarbert (Loyola Univ., Md.) are recipients of 2019 ACLS Project Development Grants, which provide support and advance the research of humanities faculty at teaching-intensive colleges and universities.

  • Nicaraguan History Professor Released

    Jun 12, 2019 - 

    The AHA is pleased to report that Professor Ricardo Baltodano Marcenaro, a historian of the Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua who was imprisoned in Managua earlier this year, has been released under the auspices of Amnesty Law voted on Saturday, June 8 by the Nicaraguan National Assembly. In January 2019, the AHA sent a letter to Daniel Ortega Saavedra, president of the Republic of Nicaragua, protesting Baltodano's imprisonment.

  • AHA Member Pens Op-Ed on the Importance of Historians’ Work

    Jun 12, 2019 - 

    In a Washington Post op-ed responding to historical errors made by popular journalists, Karin Wulf, executive director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture and member of the AHA's Nominating Committee, emphasized "how critical the specialized toolbox of historians is to getting the past right."

  • Elizabeth Todd-Breland Appointed to Chicago Board of Education

    Jun 12, 2019 - 

    Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has named Elizabeth Todd-Breland, assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, to the Chicago Board of Education. In this role, Todd-Breland will work to establish policies, standards, and initiatives that will ensure all students of Chicago Public Schools have access to high-quality education regardless of their income, address, or background.

  • Six AHA Members Elected to 2019 Class of American Philosophical Society

    Jun 06, 2019 - 

    The AHA happily congratulates six of its members who were recently elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society: David Cannadine, Annette Gordon-Reed, Martin Jay, David M. Rubenstein, Patrick Spero, and Romila Thapar. Since 1743, only 5,676 members have been elected to the APS, the oldest learned society in the United States. APS members represent the humanities, social sciences, the arts, and professions, and are leaders and in public and private affairs.

  • AHA Member Receives CAORC Travel Award

    Jun 03, 2019 - 

    Anna Weerasinghe, AHA member and PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, has received a Multi-Country Research Fellowship and the Mary Ellen Lane Multi-Country Travel Award from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. The fellowship supports advanced regional or trans-regional research in the humanities, social sciences, or allied natural sciences for US doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars, and the award is granted to the highest-ranking fellow. Weerasinghe will be utilizing the funds to complete her dissertation, Gender, Medicine, and Law in Early Modern Portuguese India.

  • AHA Members Receive Fellowships for Doctoral Dissertation Writing

    May 30, 2019 - 

    The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has selected AHA members Nimrod Ben Zeev (Univ. of Pennsylvania),  Craig Johnson (Univ. of California, Berkeley), Louis Lu (Harvard Univ.), and Amy Zanoni (Rutgers Univ.) as four of its of 23 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for 2019.  Each 2019 fellow will receive $25,000 to support the final year of dissertation writing for projects addressing questions of ethics and religion across various global regions.

  • AHA’s Special Projects Coordinator Discusses Immigration History & Policy on NBC

    May 21, 2019 - 

    Julia Brookins, AHA special projects coordinator, authored an opinion piece for NBC News about the discourse surrounding current immigration policy. As a historian of US immigration, Brookins contextualizes the changing conceptions of what it means to be an American immigrant and reminds readers that #EverythingHasAHistory.

  • AHA Member Honored as Inaugural ACLS/Mellon Community College Faculty Fellow

    May 10, 2019 - 

    The Association is pleased to recognize Antonio Ramirez, assistant professor of history and political science at Elgin Community College and AHA member, who was named a 2019 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellow along with six other history faculty. This is the program's first year of providing support for research projects from humanities and social science faculty who teach at two-year colleges. 

  • Update on Detained Historian Hatoon al-Fassi

    May 07, 2019 - 

    Following more than 10 months of protested detention, Dr. Hatoon al-Fassi was released from prison in Saudi Arabia on May 2, 2019, and has been allowed to return home to her family. Dr. al-Fassi's release has been characterized as "temporary;" the Middle East Studies Association continues to call for her full exoneration, as well as for the release of the other women's rights advocates who remain in detention. 

  • AHA Members Receive Women's Studies Fellowships

    May 02, 2019 - 

    The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has selected AHA members and PhD candidates Hannah Frydman (Rutgers Univ.) and Michaela Kleber (Coll. of William and Mary) as two of its ten Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellows in Women's Studies for 2019. The competitive award supports the final year of dissertation writing for doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences whose work addresses women's and gendered issues in interdisciplinary and original ways.

  • History Graduate Students Receive 2019 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships

    Apr 26, 2019 - 

    On April 24, the American Council of Learned Societies named its 2019 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellows, selected from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants. Twelve AHA members received the honor for their dissertations spanning an impressive array of subjects, time periods, and localities. As fellows, these graduate students receive a year of funding to focus on completing projects that form the foundations of their scholarly careers.

  • Historians Among 2019 Carnegie Fellows

    Apr 24, 2019 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Marcia Chatelain, William J. Connell, and John D. Garrigus, and to other historians named 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellows. The fellowship program provides support for scholarship in the social sciences and humanities to produce publications that offer fresh perspective on pressing challenges of our time.

  • Historians Elected to American Academy of Sciences

    Apr 19, 2019 - 

    On April 17, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the election of its new members for 2019, including nine historians. The new class of more than 200 members recognizes the outstanding achievements of individuals in academia, the arts, business, government, and public affairs. Congratulations!

  • Historians Win Pulitzer Prize

    Apr 19, 2019 - 

    The AHA is excited to congratulate two historians for receiving the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. David W. Blight, AHA member and Class of 1954 Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in the category of history for his book, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Jeffrey C. Stewart, professor of black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was honored with the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in the biography category for The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke.

  • Historians Receive Inaugural Mellon/ACLS Fellowships

    Apr 19, 2019 - 

    Four historians were among the 12 recipients for the first class of 2019 Mellon/ACLS Scholars and Society Fellowships. In collaboration with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies has inaugurated these annual fellowships to provide faculty who teach and advise PhD students opportunities to serve as ambassadors for humanities scholarship beyond the academy and deepen their support for doctoral curricular innovation on their campuses. 

  • Article Published in AHR Receives Accolades

    Apr 18, 2019 - 

    Holly Brewer, AHA member and Burke Chair of American History and associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, received the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies' 2019 Srinivas Aravamudan Award for her article "Slavery, Sovereignty, and 'Inheritable Blood': Reconsidering John Locke and the Origins of American Slavery." The article, first published in the American Historical Review in 2017, also received an Honorable Mention for the 2019 James L. Clifford Award.

  • AHA Member to Participate in Texas Summer Institute for Secondary School Teachers

    Apr 16, 2019 - 

    Miguel A. Martinez, AHA member and social studies teacher at Northwest Early College High School, has been accepted as a Summer Scholar through the University of Texas at El Paso's Summer Institute, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. This two-week long program for secondary school teachers will focus on incorporating borderlands and multicultural narratives into American history and identity through the development of creative storytelling methodologies in teaching philosophies.

  • AHA Member Wins Dissertation Fellowship

    Apr 12, 2019 - 

    AHA member Jillian Vaum (Univ. of Pennsylvania) is one of 11 graduate students to be honored with a 2019 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art. Her dissertation, Facing Freedom: Tracing African American Emancipation in Antebellum Portraiture, was selected by the ACLS and Henry Luce Foundation for promising research in object- and image-based US art history. Each fellow receives a stipend of $34,000 to support one year of dissertation research and writing, as well as up to $4,000 for travel and research during the 2019-20 academic year.

  • AHA Members among 2019 SHFG Winners

    Apr 09, 2019 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members J. Samuel Walker and Matthew R. Pembleton for receiving awards from the Society for Historians in the Federal Government. Walker received the 2019 Individual Member Award for his recent publication, Most of 14th Street is Gone, while Pembleton's book, Containing Addiction: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Origins of America's Global Drug War, won the 2019 Henry Adams Book Prize.

  • Historians Receive 2019 NEH Grants

    Apr 05, 2019 - 

    On March 28, 2019, the NEH announced that it would provide $28.6 million to support 233 humanities projects nationwide. "These new NEH-supported projects will help shore up the nation's most valuable assets: its history, literature, historic sites, regional traditions, and cultural institutions," declared NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede. Seventeen of these recipients are AHA members, and the Association extends a warm congratulations to all of these grant recipients. A full list of grantees is available.

  • ACLS Awards 2019 Fellowships to AHA Members

    Apr 02, 2019 - 

    The American Council of Learned Societies announced its list of fellows for 2019. Out of the 81 awardees, 24 fellows are members of the Association. The awards, ranging from $40,000 to $70,000, will support scholars for six to twelve months of full-time research and writing. For the full list of fellows, visit the ACLS website. Congratulations to our members!

  • AHA Member Publishes Opinion Piece in New York Times

    Mar 12, 2019 - 

    Tiya Miles, professor of history at Harvard University, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and AHA member, discusses the intersection of the African American historical narrative, gun ownership, and politics in an op-ed in the New York Times.

  • AHA Member Honored as Regents' Professor

    Mar 01, 2019 - 

    On February 7, Donald L. Fixico (Mvskoke/Seminole/Shawnee/Sac & Fox), Distinguished Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University and AHA member, was honored and promoted to the rank of Regents' Professor. This prestigious distinction is held by less than 3 percent of all faculty at Arizona State University. 

  • AHA Members Weigh in on Parental Rights

    Feb 28, 2019 - 

    On February 8, AHA members Dorothy Sue Cobble (Rutgers Univ.) and Mona Siegel (California State Univ., Sacramento) published an editorial in the Washington Post linking the recent push for paid parental leave in America to labor feminists' battle to secure the rights of women workers at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

  • AHA Member Receives Digital and Public History Fellowship

    Feb 27, 2019 - 

    Andrew Gomez, assistant professor of history at the University of Puget Sound and AHA member, earned a 2019-20 Whiting Public Engagement Grant to continue his multifaceted digital, oral, and public history project Race in the City of Destiny. The program funds and encourages humanities faculty who embrace public engagement in the profession.

  • Former AHA President Awarded Prestigious Prize

    Feb 25, 2019 - 

    Kenneth Pomeranz, University Professor of Modern Chinese History at the University of Chicago, AHA life member, and former AHA president, was awarded a 2019 Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University for his work on macro history and East Asia. The tremendous honor recognizes interdisciplinary achievements of outstanding scientific, technological, or socio-cultural significance. Pomeranz shares the "Past Time Dimension" award with UCLA historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam.

  • AHA Member Receives Dr. John Hope Franklin Award

    Feb 13, 2019 - 

    Diverse Issues in Higher Education awarded the 2019 Dr. John Hope Franklin Award to Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and African American Studies at Harvard University and AHA life member. The award, which recognizes contributions to higher education, will be presented on March 11, 2019, during the 101st centennial meeting of the American Council on Education (ACE) in Philadelphia.

  • AHA Member Wins Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize

    Feb 11, 2019 - 

    David Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University, AHA member, and former AHA councilor, was awarded the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his book Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. This annual award honors a work that enhances the general public’s understanding of the Civil War era, and the prize committee praised Blight for “the most comprehensive and multi-dimensional biography of Frederick Douglass ever written.”

  • AHA Member Comments on Conservative Right and Academia

    Feb 05, 2019 - 

    On January 31, Kimberly Phillips-Fein, associate professor of history at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University and AHA member, published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education examining the evolution of conservative criticism and distrust of the university system. 

  • Lehfeldt Discusses Importance of Storytelling in History Teaching

    Jan 09, 2019 - 

    Liz Lehfeldt, Mandel Professor in Humanities at Cleveland State University and former AHA vice president, Teaching, responded to the declining number of history majors with her thoughts in a January 9 Inside Higher Ed article, "Why Study History?" Lehfeldt asks, "What story does our pedagogy tell about the significance of history and why students should care?"