History as a Book Discipline
The cover of the book Comment Discerner Les Styles, a rare French title digitized by the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Library. This issue features the forum History as a Book Discipline, with articles by Lara Putnam, Claire Bond Potter, Fredrika J. Teute, and Timothy J. Gilfoyle. The forum is introduced by Seth Denbo, the AHA’s director of scholarly communication and digital initiatives. The Ringling Art Library digital image collection is on Flickr.
Staff
“So Much to Remember”
On February 4, Rosa Parks’s birthday, the Library of Congress opened to researchers the newest addition to its collection of…
History as a Book Discipline: An Introduction
Bookwheel, from Agostino Ramelli’s Le diverse et artifiose machine, 1588. As I read the literature on scholarly communication, participate in…
The Opportunity Costs of Remaining a Book Discipline
For more than a decade, we have declared monograph publishing in crisis.1 Do structural shifts make it all the more…
Is Digital Publishing Killing Books?
In 2013, I was on a plenary session at the AHA annual meeting where then-president William Cronon embraced the digital…
Disserations Are Not Books
Published monographs are usually a prerequisite for securing permanent membership in the history guild. Although dissertations are frequently submitted for…
The Changing Forms of History
Should history be a book discipline? It depends. By some measures, history in the Western world has always been a…
The Pursuit of a PhD
Whether one is a hovering, “helicopter” mentor or more of a “free-range” style adviser, we share a responsibility to our…
Data Storytelling and Historical Knowledge
The role that data plays in our society is changing. Institutions and corporations collect vast amounts of information about us.…
Strengthening the Intellectual Framework of a National Museum
For the first time in years, the Help Wanted sign is out at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History,…
On Assessment
To the Editor: I respond to the “Assessment” section in the January 2015 Perspectives on History. During my short career…
Teaching and Researching Roe v. Wade
To the Editor: I still cannot believe that it was in Perspectives that I read “Teaching and Researching Roe v.…
Mohammad Ebrahim Bastani-Parizi (1925-2014)
Mohammad Ebrahim Bastani-Parizi was born on December 24, 1925, in Pariz, a small village located at an elevation of 7,500…
AHA Member Spotlight: Bonnie Effros
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
AHA Members among Recipients of 2015 Carnegie Fellowships
Carnegie Corporation of New York has announced the inaugural class of its new major annual fellowship program. Thirty-two Andrew Carnegie Fellows…
The Lone Historian and the 3.2%
As readers of this blog series are probably aware, in 2013 the AHA published “The Many Careers of History PhDs,”…
AHA Members among Newly Named Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
On April 22, seven historians were elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the most prestigious…
Historical Markers, Onions, and Montgomery
This past weekend, I attended the Society for Military History annual meeting in Montgomery, Alabama. Though it’s true that everything—and…
Gateways to Completion
The world of analytics and data is an important part of the education landscape. However, most faculty have not felt…
The Publics of History
History is in a state of crisis, losing readers and public influence, historians David Armitage of Harvard and Jo Guldi…
AHA Member Elizabeth Fenn Awarded Pulitzer Prize for History
Elizabeth A. Fenn, associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder, has received the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for…
Reaching out to the Public as Historians
How can we contribute to broader discussions in which people might benefit from history? How might our professional training as…
AHA Member Spotlight: Susan M. Hartmann
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Draft Guidelines on the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship
Digital scholarship is having an impact on the discipline of history. Scholars give papers based on digital tools and methods…
Decolonization, Humanitarianism, and a Vocabulary Problem
When I started working at the National History Center of the American Historical Association about a year ago, I expected…
Compiling an Open History Textbook
Joseph Locke and Ben Wright wrote the article “A Free and Open Alternative to Traditional History Textbooks” for the March…
AHA Member Spotlight: Lynn Rainville
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
AHA Career Contacts
This blog post is part of a regular series to inform the AHA Today readership and AHA membership about Career…
Intelligence Services and Civil Liberties
How have democracies tried to balance the desire for personal privacy and the demand for state security? This timely and…
Applications for the World History Institute Due April 24
The Alliance for Learning in World History is hosting a summer program for middle school and high school teachers of…
Interning at the National History Center
About a week before the fall semester of my sophomore year of college began, I received a series of e-mails…
La Tuta and Z-42
In the past two months, Mexican authorities have publicized the capture and arrests of two drug bosses: Servando “La Tuta”…
Developing Creativity within a History Internship
From the very beginning, I always had trouble believing I was a creative person. I was the child who always…
Discussion Spurs Change in Legislation
In late November, chairs of departments around the Commonwealth of Virginia received notice that we had to complete “conflict of…
Unexpected Forms of Adoration
Throughout Christian history, the Virgin Mary has been depicted as a young mother nurturing her child, and as an older…
The AHA Appoints Allison Miller New Editor of Perspectives
The American Historical Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Allison Miller as editor of Perspectives on History. With…
One Four-Minute Speech at a Time
We have all been to conferences where presenters exceeded the time limit, or failed to effectively convey their research and…
Selma and the International History of American Civil Rights
This post is one of a series on the film Selma and examines the film and the impact of the civil rights…
National Archives Invites You to Discuss Prioritizing Declassification
Have you used declassified US government records for your research? Are there still-classified records that you’d really like to see?…
AHA Member Spotlight: Jennifer Lisa Koslow
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Of Selma and History
This is one of a series of blog posts written by historians and filmmakers on the film Selma. Earlier this…