Political History Today
The cover shows landless dalits (oppressed castes) demonstrating in Salem, Tamil Nadu, India, in favor of land reforms. December 2005 photograph by P. Goutham, © THE HINDU. Reproduced with permission. The weaving of dalit politics into India’s (and of humanity’s) political history is discussed in two of the essays in this thematically focused issue of Perspectives on History.
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From the AHA
History Faculty Salaries Fall Behind Inflation and the Rest of Academia
Average salaries for history faculty in four-year colleges and universities increased by just 0.5 percent over the academic year 2010–11—the…
Eric Foner Receives the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History
Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, and a former president of the AHA (for 2000),…
Histories of Politics after Political History: Reflections from South Asian Historiography
The past four decades have witnessed a seeming paradox within South Asian historiography: political history has faced a decline, while…
Optimism and Political History: A Perspective from India
Several years ago, I assigned E.H. Carr’s What Is History? to a group of undergraduate history majors for a seminar…
Plural Perspectives on a Protean Creature
There was a time, not so long ago, when all history was political history. The oft-repeated dictum that “history is…
The Business in Between: U.S. Foreign Relations and Domestic Politics
The Challenge of Internationalization The historiography of American foreign relations, like other fields, has its share of ongoing methodological debates.…
Diplomatic History and the Political Science Wars
Diplomatic History Now Diplomatic history in the United States has faced a challenging academic environment in recent decades. During a…
“On Such a Full Sea Are We Now Afloat”: Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations History across the Water’s Edge
As scholars of U.S. foreign relations—of “U.S. International”—history well know, the adage “politics stops at the water’s edge” ranks high…
Researching Representation: The Case of Early Modern Europe
The principle ofquod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur (“what touches all must be approved by all”), which underpinned much of…
The History of Feminism Is Political History
Is “real solemn history” constituted of “the quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page…and hardly…
Political History after the Cultural Turn
Traditional political history is dead and is still dying. Over two decades ago, Lynn Hunt observed, “Social history has overtaken…
The Interdisciplinarity of Political History
American political history has traditionally been a field that has thrived from its conversations and collaborations with other disciplines. The…
Revisiting the Early American Republic: The New Nation Votes Database Enables a New Political History
In the 1960s and 1970s, the quantitative turn in the field of history created a whole new set of possibilities…
Political Resources Waiting to Be Mined
It felt like throwing a party where no one came. Soon after its establishment in 1975, the Senate Historical Office…
Research Resources for Diplomatic History
During the past 20 years diplomatic history has enjoyed something of a renaissance, regaining popularity after suffering a decline along…
Using Digital Resources to Teach U.S. Policy in the Middle East
Teaching students to locate, read, and analyze primary sources is a critical challenge in any history class. The challenge is…
Putting the People Back into Politics: Teaching Political History with Images
Outwardly, President Obama’s election changed things for my students. They now proudly referred to the president with the possessive “my”…
Searching out the Sacred in U.S. Political History
Seven years have passed since eminent historian Jon Butler urged his contemporaries to solve “the religion problem in modern American…
Violence in Political History: The Challenges of Teaching about the Politics of Power and Resistance
Take any entry level history course and the narrative is essentially the same: so and so conquered so and so,…
The Digital Revolution and Teaching about Memory and Political History
For those who study and teach political culture the internet has changed everything.1Historians trained in the last generation or so…
The Imperative of Public Participation
Take risks. Get out there in public and talk about history and why it matters.1 As the two of us…
Board Says No to Casino on Hallowed Ground
On April 14, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board rejected a proposal to bring casino gambling to the doorstep of Gettysburg…
What Does the Fiscal 2011 Budget Hold for the History and Archives Communities?
On April 12, 2011, the House Appropriations Committee released a list of proposed cuts in federal programs for the remainder…
John Philip Dawson (1928-2010)
Historian of the French Revolution John Philip Dawson III, professor emeritus of history at Brooklyn College, City University of New…
Harry Rosenberg (1923-2010)
50-year member of the AHA; first chair of Colorado State University History Department Harry Rosenberg was born on March 22,…
Donald George Quataert (1941–2011)
Historian of late Ottoman history Donald Quataert (1941–2011), Distinguished Professor, State University of New York, and internationally known scholar of…
Paul Kenneth Longmore (1946-2010)
Influential figure in disability history; member of AHA Task Force on Disability Paul Kenneth Longmore, professor of history and director…
Elisabeth Glaser (1954-2010)
International historian; former fellow at German Historical Institute Elisabeth “Lisa” Glaser, a 20th-century international historian, died on September 23, 2010,…
Nora Faires (1949-2011)
Historian of women’s studies and borderlands; winner of two AHA prizes Nora Faires died on February 6, 2011, at the…
Historians among 2011 ACLS Fellows and Grant Winners
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announced its 2011 fellows and grantees today, Tuesday, May 31st. Almost $15 million…
American Historical Review – June 2011
Note: AHA members should be receiving their print versions soon. The online version will also be available soon, and when…
New Report Finds U.S. History Majors Highest Earners in Humanities
A new report, from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, on median salaries for undergraduate majors…
Vote on the 2017 AHA Annual Meeting Location
Vote on the location of the 2017 AHA Annual Meeting in this survey. The selection of a site for the…
National Jukebox
The Library of Congress’s National Jukebox site is like the Pandora of the early 1900s. Visit and you can instantly…
A New Nation Votes: Election Data from 1787 to 1825
The May issue of Perspectives on History contains a series of articles on political history today (read more in our…
British Request for Oral History Records Raises Complex and Difficult Questions
An archive of oral history recordings housed at Boston College and focused on the Irish Republican Army has been subpoenaed…
James Percoco Inducted into National Teachers Hall of Fame
James A. Percoco, AHA award recipient and U.S. history teacher at West Springfield High School in Virginia, has been inducted…
A Historian’s Historian
Note: This article is an appreciation of Drew Faust on the occasion of her Jefferson Lecture tonight. “A Historian’s Historian”…
Perspectives on History – May 2011
The online version of the May 2011 issue of Perspectives on History is now available to AHA members (sign in to member services to gain…