AHA President and President-Elect Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (April 2024)

AHA president Thavolia Glymph (Duke Univ.) and president-elect Ben Vinson III (Howard Univ.) were named as two of the individuals elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024. Members of the academy are “those who discover and advance knowledge and those who apply knowledge to the problems of society.”

AHA Members Named 2024–25 National Humanities Center Fellows (April 2024)

Congratulations to AHA members Joseph M.H. Clark (Univ. of Kentucky), Mostafa Minawi (Cornell Univ.), and John W. Sweet (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), along with the other historians who have been named as 2024–25 National Humanities Center (NHC) fellows. “[The fellows] were selected from a highly competitive group of applicants representing institutions from across the globe,” said NHC president and director Robert D. Newman. “We look forward to their arrival in the fall as they each contribute their individual brilliance to creating a lively intellectual community.”

AHA Council Member Receives New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Teaching Award (April 2024)

Congratulations to AHA Council member Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan (Rutgers Univ.), who has been awarded the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance’s 2024 Teaching Award. This award recognizes “innovation and creativity in teaching New Jersey studies on the elementary, middle, secondary, and college level.”

AHA Members Author Amicus Brief for SCOTUS Case Involving the Voting Rights Act (April 2024)

AHA members Carol Anderson (Emory Univ.), Orville Vernon Burton (Clemson Univ.), and Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.), as well as J. Morgan Kousser (California Inst. of Technology) have authored an amicus curiae brief to the US Supreme Court in Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. et al. v. Secretary of State of Georgia, an appeal involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This group of voting rights historians, working with the Brennan Center for Justice and represented by Mayer Brown LLP and the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic, challenges Georgia’s claim that individuals and community groups cannot bring lawsuits to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In the brief, they describe the historical evidence that supports the power of individuals and groups to sue to protect their voting rights.

Historians Author Amicus Curiae Brief in Trump v. United States (April 2024)

A group of 15 founding-era historians represented by the Brennan Center for Justice have filed an amicus curiae brief in Trump v. United States, challenging the former president’s claim of immunity. The authors include AHA members Holly Brewer (Univ. of Maryland), Rosemarie Zagarri (George Mason Univ.), Jack N. Rakove (Stanford Univ.), Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford Univ.), Gautham Rao (American Univ.), Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.), and Joanne Freeman (Yale Univ.).

AHA Members Awarded 2024 NEH Grants (April 2024)

Congratulations to the 12 AHA members who were selected as recipients for grants to support humanities projects from the National Endowment for the Humanities. “From studies of the impact of emerging technologies on humans to new documentaries that lift up undertold stories, these projects show how the humanities help us understand ourselves and our world,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe.

AHA Members Awarded 2024 Guggenheim Fellowships (April 2024)

Congratulations to AHA members Brian A. Catlos (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder), Carol E. Harrison (Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia), Tiya A. Miles (Harvard Univ.), and Andrew M. Riggsby (Univ. of Texas, Austin), along with all of the other historians who have been awarded 2024 Guggenheim Fellowships. The 2024 fellows were “chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of almost 3,000 applicants” based on “prior career achievement and exceptional promise.”

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

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 Member Appears on Writing It! Podcast to Discuss Creating a Graphic History (April 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 Authors Book on Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood (March 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)

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.”

AHA Members Awarded 2024 ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowships and Grants (February 2024)

Congratulations to AHA members Ana Lucia Araujo (Howard Univ.), Karen Cook Bell (Bowie State Univ.), Yinghong Cheng (Delaware State Univ.), Frederick Knight (Morehouse Coll.), Danielle E. St. Julien (Xavier Univ., La.), and Darius J. Young (Florida A&M Univ.), as well as the other historians who were named as recipients of 2024 ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowships and Grants.

AHA Member Featured in Article about National Parks Tribal Liaisons (March 2024)

AHA member Jason Herbert was featured in an article from ABC 7 Denver about the work that US Forest Service tribal liaisons are doing to“bridge the gap between the federal government and Indigenous communities through the work of tribal liaisons.” “I felt like I owed tribes my due diligence to come out here and learn these landscapes that they call home,” said Herbert, named the first tribal liaison for the Pike-San Isabel National Forests & Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands region in June 2023. “I want to make sure that tribal voices are being heard within our national forest system.”

AHA Members Named to Brennan Center Historians Council on the Constitution (March 2024)

Thirteen AHA members were recently named to the Historians Council on the Constitution, a new initiative from the Brennan Center for Justice which“seeks to address the misuse of history in major constitutional debates.” As part of the Council’s work, Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.) co-wrote an article about constitutional originalism and history; Gautham Rao (American Univ.) co-wrote an article about corporations misusing history in Supreme Court cases; Holly Brewer (Univ. of Maryland) and Rosemarie Zagarri (George Mason Univ.) participated in a Q&A on the historical dimensions of Trump’s criminal immunity defense, and Brewer served on the panel for a virtual event on the same topic.

AHA Member Authors Article on Academic Freedom for Chronicle of Higher Education (February 2024)

AHA member Alex Lichtenstein (Indiana Univ.) wrote an article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the current state of academic freedom at Indiana University, comparing the university leadership’s statements about commitment to academic freedom with their actions in cancelling the planned retrospective exhibition of a Palestinian artist’s work. “As the university’s leadership must know, the‘freedom to explore topics that expand knowledge’ cannot be situational, partial, or maintained only at the convenience and comfort of campus administrators, state legislators, and donors,” Lichtenstein wrote. “It can only be defended as a universal principle, without fear or favor.”

AHA Member Awarded Two National Jewish Book Awards (February 2024)

Congratulations to AHA member Robin Judd (Ohio State Univ.), who received two National Jewish Book Awards for Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust (Univ. of North Carolina Press). Judd was awarded the JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for Best Writing Based on Archival Material and the Barbara Dobkin Award for Best Book in Women’s Studies.

AHA Member Authors Book on Early Modern Numeracy (February 2024)

By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England by AHA member Jessica Marie Otis (George Mason Univ.) was published this winter by Oxford University Press. This is the first book-length study of numeracy in early modern England and integrates ideas about and the use of numbers in religion, business, politics, material culture, print and literacy, and education of ordinary people.

AHA Member and Tikkun Olam Prizewinner Featured in Miami Herald Article (January 2024)

AHA member and Tikkun Olam prizewinner Marvin Dunn (Florida International Univ.) was featured in a Miami Herald article by Bea L. Hines about his notable work in Florida history. The article highlights Dunn’s work educating the public on the history of racist violence in Florida, such as his Teach the Truth tours, which take “high school and college students, teachers and other interested citizens to Rosewood and other Florida sites where Blacks were lynched.” The AHA’s Tikkun Olam prize, given to Dunn in 2023 as the inaugural recipient, is awarded annually to “individuals whose work has promoted literacy in public culture, with the abiding hope that such work will . . . help to repair the world.”

AHA Members Awarded NEH Grants and Fellowships (January 2024)