About "Early Latin America, in Theory"
"Early Latin America, in Theory," will focus on early Latin America, from any region and from periods dating from conquest to the Age of Revolutions. This AHR History Lab forum is intended to illuminate how early Latin America’s past bends, rejects, or exemplifies what are considered major thematics of and approaches to the early modern era. Examples of thematics might include genocide, seigneurialism, capitalism, patriarchy and Blackness; approaches might include theories or methods derived from “entangled empires,” coloniality, agency and resistance, counter-archives, and critical fabulation. Applicants are strongly encouraged to propose their own themes and approaches that inspire a reassessment of what early Latin America’s past does to purportedly universal or defining historical categories. Submissions from historians working in Latin America and the Caribbean are especially invited.
These essays will appear in the AHR History Lab. For more visit the submissions page.
About "AI in Historical Perspectives"
The general tenor of conversations around artificial intelligence (AI) leans toward novelty or rupture. Yet these sorts of “unprecedented” historical phenomenon are, very often, not unprecedented at all. Everything has a history, even AI, and historians are uniquely positioned to complicate these narratives of novelty.
Essays should frame AI not as a contemporary technology to be used or rejected but instead as a historical and historiographic phenomenon to be contextualized, interrogated, and reinterpreted. Our goal is to reframe AI within existing historiographies of labor, empire, economy, culture, science, and human agency, and in doing so, reshape our shared understanding of AI and its role in the discipline of history. By considering the contingencies and continuities of AI as a phenomenon of both continuity and disruption, we hope to provide an empirical basis on which historians who do not specialize in AI or histories of technology can build as we consider the ethical and moral boundaries of AI in historical research and teaching.
These essays (~5,000 words) will appear as a series in the AHR History Lab. For more visit the submissions page.
About "Methods for Archival Silence in Early History"
What should historians do when our sources do not tell us what we want to know? Although this may be a universal experience of historical research, the problem arises in various forms. Some silences are intentional, others unintentional. Some sources are minimal, others extensive but off-topic. Some sources are inaccessible, some have not been preserved, some were never created. Sometimes we do not or cannot know whether our desired sources ever existed, or, if they did, what happened to them. Silences cluster around certain topics, places, and periods more than others.
Historians have articulated this problem in a variety of ways. This call uses the language of archival silence and silencing developed by Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Marisa Fuentes. It could have drawn on the concept of the subaltern (Ranajit Guha, Gayatri Spivak), strategically produced silence and plausible stories (Natalie Zemon Davis), records designed for jettison (Marina Rustow), hidden transcripts (James Scott), living oral traditions (Bethwell A. Ogot), or writing off the radar (James Lockhart), to name only a few.
Faced with archival silence, historians have developed a range of methods for working in, through, and around it. Some techniques and approaches have become characteristic of expertise in early periods. Others are applied by historians across specializations. These include but are not limited to reading against the grain; creative combination of well-known sources; creative use of unusual or little-known sources; oral and other forms of non-written record; technical skills in the so-called ancillary disciplines (numismatics, paleography, codicology, epigraphy, and more); interdisciplinary approaches to method (anthropology, archaeology, literature, linguistics, and more) and to what constitutes a source (climate data, aDNA, physical objects, art, and more); critical fabulation or disciplined imagination; and reframing our questions to build on our sources’ strengths.
We anticipate publication of the special issue in 2027.
Please contact the special issue editor, Hannah Barker (hannah.barker.1@asu.edu), with questions.
’76 Objects
June 2026
Vol 131 | Issue 2
The June 2026 issue is a special issue of the American Historical Review titled, ’76 Objects. Commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, in ’76 Objects, material culture of the revolutionary era takes center stage as a method of historical inquiry. Each contribution highlights a particular object that allows readers to see the myriad political, economic, social, and cultural lived experiences of this era. Members can access the issue online through the link under AHA Publications on MYAHA.