Class Divide
When Charles Upchurch first assigned Marx’s Communist Manifesto in his 19th-century European history survey course, he got some unexpected feedback from one of his students: “less Marx, more Adam Smith.” Upchurch took the student’s exhortation to heart. As the students then discovered, the invisible hand of the free market—invoked by this pair of illustrations—makes up only part of Smith’s economic philosophy, which often prioritized societal welfare over the market. Upchurch found that after working their way through Smith, students were much more willing to engage with the ideas of Marx. As he writes, he’d found a way to “bridge previously disconnected viewpoints.” In this issue, Perspectives highlights history classrooms where instructors are shaking things up.
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Featured Articles
From the AHA
No One Is a Stranger: Immigration Historians Mobilize to Educate and Advocate
The e-mails started flooding historian Erika Lee’s inbox the week after the election of Donald J. Trump. Lee, who is…
Academic Presses Explore Open Access for Monographs
It is widely known that the market for academic books in humanities fields is shrinking. It might come as a…
Advocacy Briefs: AHA Celebrates Successful Outcomes, Prepares for Future Challenges
Earlier this year, the American Historical Association learned of two successful outcomes related to advocacy efforts undertaken in partnership with…
Townhouse Notes March 2017
In the last issue of Perspectives on History, the AHA’s director of scholarly communication and digital initiatives, Seth Denbo, made…
Diversity and Segregation
As part of a 2013 AHA Roundtable in Perspectives about the Supreme Court ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas…
Building a Foundation for the Future
This interview is the first in a two-part series featuring AHA Equity Award winners Albert Camarillo (Stanford Univ.) and the…
Ida Blom (1931–2016)
Historian of Women and Gender; AHA Honorary Foreign Member Ida Blom was a pioneering figure in the field of women’s…
Doris Silk Goldstein (1927–2016)
Scholar of European Intellectual History; AHA 50-Year Member Doris Goldstein died after a brief illness on May 23, 2016, in…
H. Paul Varley (1931–2015)
Historian of Japan H. Paul Varley died at the age of 84 on December 15, 2015. A professor emeritus at…
On “Dear Future Historians”
To the editor: I was disturbed by Allison Miller’s message to future historians (“Dear Future Historians,” December 2016) regarding the…
On “Political History: An Exchange”
To the editor: Regarding “Political History: An Exchange” (January 2017), my question would be “Why only US political history?” In…
“Are We Teaching Political History?”
Oh, what a difference a year makes. During a session at the 2016 annual meeting—mulling over the role historians should…
AHA Member Spotlight: Jeffrey Wayno
Jeffrey Wayno is a CLIR-DLF Postdoctoral Fellow for Data Curation in Medieval Studies at Columbia University. He lives in New York…
Interdisciplinary Summer Workshop on the Lochner Era
The Institute for Constitutional History, along with the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, is pleased to announce a workshop for university-level…
Before BuzzFeed: Going Viral in 19th-Century America
In 2005, David Foster Wallace told the graduating class of Kenyon College a joke: “There are these two young fish…
AHA Member Spotlight: Maria Bashshur Abunnasr
Maria Bashshur Abunnasr is an independent scholar, historical consultant, and oral historian. She lives in Beirut, Lebanon, and has been…
Creating Circumstances
In 1929, it was socially acceptable for women to smoke at home and in certain public spaces, such as a…
Want to Write for the AHA? Apply Today to Become a Summer Blogger!
A key skill for 21st-century historians, whether they work in the professoriate, public history, government, publishing, or beyond, is the…
Memory and Peace in Colombia
Colombia has maintained a reputation as a country of forgetting since the world fell in love with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s…
Contact Congress Immediately Regarding FY 2018 Federal Budget
This morning the Trump administration released its “America First” budget blueprint. We are not surprised by either the breadth or…
“Education Embargo”: Scholars at Risk Hosts Discussion on How Immigration Bans Restrict Knowledge
President Donald J. Trump’s new executive order on immigration was supposed to go into effect today. The new order was…
AHA Member Spotlight: Kenneth C. Ward
Kenneth C. Ward is the Maury A. Bromsen Curator of Latin American Books at the John Carter Brown Library. He…
More Human than Alien: Researching the History of UFOs
In the summer of 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold described seeing nine bright objects flying in close formation at remarkable…
AHA Condemns Second Draft of Executive Travel Ban
Facing extensive criticism and litigation of his first executive order restricting entry into the United States, President Donald Trump has…
Why Study Russian History?
Last fall, Virginia Tech students taking History 3604: Russia to Peter the Great engaged in a sustained discussion on “why…
The Teaching Historian: Introducing the March Issue of Perspectives
Most issues of Perspectives include at least one feature related to teaching and learning. The best of the genre, we…
AHA Member Spotlight: Rajbir Singh Judge
Rajbir Singh Judge is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis. He currently lives in Patiala, Punjab, and…
A Flag, a Dinner Bell, and a Hand-Dug Well
When I began my directorship of the Little House on the Prairie Museum south of Independence, Kansas, the promise and…
AHA Protests Detainment of French Historian Henry Rousso
On February 28th, AHA president Tyler Stovall sent a letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security protesting the recent detainment…
“Boots on the Ground”: US Soldiers and the Strains of Overseas Deployment
On January 16, 2017, the New York Times printed an arresting image of US Marines arriving in Norway, the first…
Election 2016: How Did We Get Here and What Does it Mean?
Midway through the first plenary of the 2017 AHA annual meeting, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz suggested that he was invited…
2017 AHA Nominations
Compiled by Liz Townsend The Nominating Committee for 2017–18, chaired by Jana Lipman (Tulane Univ.), met in Washington, DC, on…