In January 2023, the AHA Council approved the Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship. Taking inspiration from the Smithsonian Institution, whose mission includes “the increase and diffusion of knowledge,” the document was written to “lay the foundation for a broad expansion of what constitutes historical scholarship” and to create guidelines for evaluating its many formats.
The backbone of academic historical scholarship has long focused on the creation of “new knowledge.” For many, this work has manifested in single-authored books, journal articles, and book chapters. Yet how historians communicate narratives and arguments about the past extends far beyond these traditionally valued models of scholarship. From museum exhibits to documentary films to podcasts, historians reach the public in many ways. Our scholarship has a public impact when included in amicus briefs or newspaper op-eds. You’ll find historians’ scholarship in classroom textbooks, document collections, and countless other formats. By broadening how we define the scholarship of our discipline, we open up a world of possibilities of what history is, how we disseminate it, and the future of the discipline.
We gain much by valuing the broad range of historians’ scholarship—and we lose much if we do not. Indeed, the guidelines make clear that “remain[ing] wedded to conventional boundaries of scholarship and methods of evaluation” puts history at risk of “losing ground as a discipline in an environment with so many venues for intellectual and civic contribution.” It also risks, the guidelines state, “undervaluing important work being done within our discipline.”
Here we have gathered accounts from 12 historians about why the kind of work they do is historical scholarship. Neither these examples nor the guidelines themselves can be comprehensive. There are dozens of other approaches that our colleagues take to the work they do, and we hope to continue sharing history’s multitudes in future issues of Perspectives.
On the Power of Op-Eds
Keisha N. Blain
Becoming a Friend of the Court
Holly Brewer
Expanding Horizons
John Bezís-Selfa
Documentary Editing Builds Scholarly Foundations
William M. Ferraro
History in Translation
James Smith Allen
Putting History on a Stick
James B. Seaver
Community Research at a Museum
Kate Steir
Documenting Unrecognized Local Histories
Anna Booker
Asking the Right Questions
Holly Scott
Reaching a Different, Shared Audience
Shu Wan
History, Science, and Prophecy?
Mark Orsag
Reaching the Digital Generation
Tore C. Olsson
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