With this issue we welcome our constituents back from their summer holidays—whether spent in the mountains, at the beaches, or in archives. (We note that the seventeenth century Dutch theologian Jansen was reported by one contemporary observer to have died “from the effluvium off old books,” but fortunately our twentieth century members are of a hardier breed!)
This is perhaps a place to note that while the majority of our membership is composed of teachers and scholars from colleges and universities, we have a strong and active component from secondary school faculties, and an important and growing population of historians practicing their craft outside of academe. As so many of our members, however, return to their classrooms, we are heartened by the impression that history course enrollments are going up in many if not most institutions. If this early trend toward a “recovery” of history continues, we can expect that the number of majors will follow suit, and that in time, position vacancies for faculty will also grow as new jobs are inevitably created!
On another cheery note, we are very pleased to inform members that our auditors have confirmed to us that we actually ended the June 30 fiscal year with a balance between revenue and expenses.
Since the last installment of these “Notes” was prepared last April, a variety of activities have continued at the headquarters preceding and during the traditional summer lull.
A number of important events took place concerning IREX, the International Research and Exchanges Board, sponsored by ACLS and by the Social Science Research Council to arrange exchanges in the humanities and social sciences with the Soviet Union. The subcommission on history and archaeology of IREX is very active on a number of fronts. Its activities are frequently dependent on AHA members. During last April and May, two distinguished Soviet historians paid a visit to AHA headquarters to discuss cooperation in the field of quantitative history and particularly on agricultural history topics. (By coincidence a large group of Chinese scholars arrived only a couple of weeks later for a visit to AHA, thereby enabling us to observe an equal time principle!)
In late June Norman Saul of the University of Kansas, who is a member of the history subcommission, led a distinguished delegation to Moscow, which held discussions with historian representatives of the Soviet Academy of Sciences regarding future cooperation on a series of conferences relating to the history of World War II in all its manifold aspects. A broad understanding was reached that will be confirmed in the discussions in Moscow next December between IREX and the Academy to negotiate the next protocol governing the coming two years’ exchanges.
In still another area, the Association’s executive director attended the annual meeting of the Truman Library and Institute’s board of directors in Independence, Missouri. Membership on this board is an honor the AHA shares with the OAH, in fitting acknowlegment of the most history-minded of recent American presidents, Harry S. Truman.
Again, during the month of May, representatives of the Association took part in two very interesting and solemn occasions, which in a sense spanned nearly eight centuries of history. On May 1 at the National Archives, a ceremony was held to open for display in the rotunda beside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution one of the early reissues of Magna Carta, obtained and displayed through the generosity of Ross Perot. The event came only a few days after the party to say farewell to the distinguished Archivist of the United States (and former member of the AHA Council), Robert M. Warner and his wife, who have returned to the University of Michigan. Bob Warner as Archivist was responsible more than any other individual for setting the Archives free to resume its original (and rightful) place as an independent US agency.
In our next issue of Perspectives, we will feature the two Congressional fellows for 1985-86, selected in early April by the Committee on the Congressional Fellowship Program from a large number of well qualified applicants. Alas, this coming year looks like the last for this fine program, which has operated for six years funded by grants from the Mellon Foundation and later the Rockefeller Foundation. During this time, fourteen post-doctoral historians will have spent a year working either on the staff of an individual Representative or Senator or on one of the House or Senate Committee staffs. The program has been beneficial to both sides. Historians have learned a great deal about how the legislative branch really operates—which often bears only faint re semblance to what the text-book alleges. Members of Congress both individually and collectively have benefitted from the historical perspective made available by our splendidly qualified fellows. This type of long-term view is often all too rare “on the Hill” with its frantic, fast paced modus operandi. Unless an unexpected angel turns up in the next few months in response to our searching, this excellent program will have to be shelved.
At the end of April, as part of its ongoing film project directed by Professor John O’Connor, the AHA conducted a working meeting to discuss intensively the subject of the moving-image media in history. Located at the Library of Congress and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the assembled group of historians, leavened with filmmakers and cinema studies specialists, screened historical films and reacted to presentations on varying topics. A book of readings issuing from the conference is in preparation, and it also will yield an in-service program for schools and colleges on the use of films in teaching history, and a pamphlet publication.
The previous issue of Perspectives re ported on the late spring meetings of the Committee on Women Historians and the Professional Division. Too late for the issue’s deadline were the meetings of the Research and Teaching Divisions.
The Research Division met in early April. As it does each year at this time, it acted on the applications for the AHA’s Beveridge Research Grants program and it made twenty-one awards; one award was made in the area of law and history from the Littleton-Griswold fund. A number of applications were received in which relatively large sums of money were needed to complete long-term projects. For the guidance of future divisions, it was agreed to adopt the following provision in the Beveridge Grants guidelines: “Preference will be given to project proposals where Beveridge Grants clearly will aid in completing a project or completing a discrete segment of a project.” Future applicants please note!
Still on the grant front, in a postmeeting telephone conference call the division ranked American Council of Learned Societies travel grant applications in history. This is a customary service that the Association renders to the ACLS, of which the AHA is a founding constituent member, and which is delegated to the Research Division. The division does not make the grants but rank orders them as best it can, and the ACLS determines how many and which grants to make. (The executive director and Association delegate Philip Curtin also attended the ACLS annual meeting in New York in mid-April.)
In what promises to be an important annual meeting session in New York this December, the division will assemble a panel of historians, editors, and library resources specialists to discuss a crisis in scholarly publishing, namely, the apparent reluctance of some notable presses to publish historical works of obviously high merit because of inevitably low (projected) sales. On another front and as part of its continuing oversight of research and bibliographic needs, the division is developing a proposal for funding that will seek to answer the question of what, if anything, the AHA should do to fill the gap that has been left by our now obsolete AHA Guide to Historical Literature. This follows a good deal of discussion and thought if what is proving to be a very complex issue. In a related action, it agreed to support (with the OAH) an effort by Professor Warren Kuehl, president of the Association for the Bibliography of History and a member of the University of Akron’s history department, who is engaged in developing a planning study for a historical thesaurus.
The Teaching Division also met in April. It heard a progress report from its chair, John Garraty, on the search for a publisher of the planned series of pamphlets for teachers of history in the schools. The series is one of the more important contributions the AHA can make to teachers and students in the schools. The division also read a background paper on long-term teaching agenda issues from division member Gerald Eggert and recommended that it be available to future committees, as an excellent primer on the past work of the division and future directions. Concerning past and present policies, one area that has received steady support from the AHA is National History Day. For the past two years the AHA has awarded certificates of achievement to teachers who sponsor projects that win in the category of “outstanding entry from state,” at the national competition. This year, at the suggestion of division member Nadine Hata, the division inaugurated the practice of awarding certificates (to both teachers and schools) to winners at the state competitions that precede the national. These awards, at the national and state levels, are intended to recognize the tremendous contributions teachers make to NHD and, by their work and example, to the enrichment of history teaching in the schools.
The division will sponsor one regional teaching conference in the fall, at North Texas State University. In another important teaching initiative, the division is pleased to announce (with Council’s approval) that it has negotiated an agreement with the Society for History Education making the AHA a sponsor of SHE’s quarterly journal, The History Teacher. The details of the new arrangement appears in Council News.
The Teaching Division will sponsor two annual meeting sessions in 1985, one jointly with the Professional Division on school-college alliance projects, and another on the moving-image media in history. The latter session grows out of the AHA’s working meeting on history and media held at the Library of Congress last spring. Also as part of its annual meeting activities, the division will host an informal event for secondary-school teachers of history.
