Featured Articles
Advocacy Roundup: Federal Records, Funding for Education, and the Congressional History Caucus
Late spring and summer brought numerous public policy opportunities and challenges to the National Coalition for History (NCH). The sheer…
Between Tolerance and Persecution
Cairo’s Jewish Quarter Becomes the Setting of an Arabic TV Drama Media in both the Middle East and the West…
AHA Council Approves Guidelines for Evaluation of Digital Projects
At its June meeting, the AHA Council approved the “Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship by Historians.” The…
The AHA Joins Scholars at Risk as an Affiliated Member
In September 2014, in Mexico, 43 students were kidnapped from a teachers’ college. That same fall, two Japanese universities received…
After “Happiness”: Understanding the Textual and Interpretive History of the Declaration of Independence
Is it a comma or a period? This was the central question on June 23, when historians, archivists, and history…
Advocacy Briefs
This summer the American Historical Association continued advocacy work around issues that affect higher education and the study of history.…
Roman Vows to the God Mercury, Preserved in Silver
In antiquity, Roman generals gathered up objects made from precious metals and melted them down to pay their troops. Since…
Meet the AHA’s New Staff Members
Allison Miller became the new editor of Perspectives on History in June. She is responsible for assigning and editing articles…
2015 Jameson and NASA Fellowships Awarded
The American Historical Association is pleased to announce the recipients of the J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship in American History and…
Q&A with Lindsey Martin and Jennifer McPherson
Career Diversity for Historians at the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico The AHA’s Career Diversity for…
Preserving American Foreign Relations Records
The Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation Releases Its 2014 Report The controversy over the preservation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail…
Assessing Dual Enrollment
In January 1990, I started taking a course called American History through the Novel and Film at Simmons College in…
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Dual Enrollment in Perspective
In 2013, President Obama outlined a series of proposals to increase higher education access, promote accountability, and expand reporting on…
No Ordinary High School Class: Dual Enrollment from a Teacher’s Perspective
What is the value of a dual enrollment (DE) course? As a history teacher who offers DE courses, I believe…
Noble Intentions: Can Dual Enrollment Be Reformed?
In many ways the state of Indiana and Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) have a model dual enrollment (DE) program, known…
Open Road: Dual Enrollment Signifies Possibilities, Not Lack of Rigor
The boundary between K–12 and higher education is rapidly changing as a result of dual enrollment (DE), an umbrella term…
Townhouse Notes
History refused to amble along languidly this summer. In my first weeks at the AHA—I becamePerspectives editor in June—the Supreme…
Access and Opportunity
My education as an academic outsider began early. Attending high school in the Florida Panhandle, this fisherman’s daughter took a…
Rewriting the Revolution: The Decolonization Seminar Helps Forge a New Field
It is a wonderful thing to witness the birth of a new historical field. I’ve had the privilege to be…
F. Hilary Conroy (1919–2015)
Historian of Modern East Asia Francis Hilary Conroy passed away peacefully at his home in Media, Pennsylvania, in January at…
Caroline Cox (1954–2014)
Historian of Colonial America Caroline Cox passed away on July 11, 2014, after a courageous yearlong battle with cancer. She…
George Harmon Knoles (1907–2014)
Historian of the US Distinguished Stanford professor of American history George Harmon Knoles passed away on August 27, 2014, at…
Mark Leff (1949–2015)
Historian of US Politics and Policy Mark Leff passed away on February 22, 2015, surrounded by his family. One of…
Jonathan K. Ocko (1946–2015)
Jonathan K. Ocko, professor of modern Chinese history and head of the department of history at North Carolina State University,…
On “Standing with Historians of Japan”
To the Editor: In the March 2015 issue of Perspectives on History, the American Historical Association published a letter from…
On “History as a Book Discipline”
To the Editor: The essays that comprise the “History as a Book Discipline” feature in the April 2015 issue offer…
Career Diversity for Historians
To the Editor: After reading about the AHA’s career diversity initiatives in the first pages of the April issue ofPerspectives…
Collaboration & Career Development
Collaboration in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has been rare, at least until the relatively recent rise in digital…
What Happens in Texas will Not Stay in Texas
Several profoundly important questions emerged during the Texas Conference on Introductory History Courses. How important is the introductory survey course?…
Ecological Explorations of Shaolin: Placing the “Ol Dirty Bastard Environmentalism” of the Wu-Tang Clan
Five years ago, as I began writing an environmental history of Staten Island, one of my advisors who grew up…
AHA Member Spotlight: Frank A Blazich Jr.
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Modeling Bermuda and Making History Work
This summer, I opted to swap Chicago’s mild heat for the scorching Bermudan sun. The 18th-century Bermudan sun, to be…
Texas Conference on Introductory History Courses: An AHA First!
The AHA and its local partners, the Texas State Historical Association and the history department of the University of Texas…
My First Year in Graduate School
To celebrate a new academic year, we solicited reflections from three early-career historians on their first years in new positions.…
AHA Member Spotlight: Melissa Jane Taylor
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Announcing the 130th AHA Annual Meeting
Join us in Atlanta on January 7-10, 2016, for the 130th AHA annual meeting: four days of the latest scholarship,…
Conserving the Berthouville Treasure
As Shatha Almutawa reports in the September issue of Perspectives on History, a humble French farmer’s 1830s discovery of a…
Sunshine and Frustration
“Sorry, We’re Closed,” read the sign on the door of the small Albertan museum I had traveled hours to get to and planned…
Natsuki Aruga Selected as Honorary Foreign Member for 2015
Since 1886, the American Historical Association has honored foreign scholars distinguished both by their own work in the field of…
Dual Enrollment, Black Histories, an Arabic Soap Opera, and More in the September Issue of Perspectives on History
The September issue of Perspectives on History has arrived in the mailboxes of AHA members and is also available on our…
AHA Publishes Guidelines for Evaluation of Digital Scholarship
With greater numbers of historians making contributions to scholarship through digital means, the discipline must grow to encompass the variety…
Beyond our Borders: Sharing the Undocumented Past with the Public
By now, two full years into graduate training and with two research summers under my belt, I have conducted a…
AHA President Vicki L. Ruiz named National Humanities Medalist
Each year the President of the United States celebrates the work of our nation’s humanists at a White House ceremony,…
Needle in a Haystack
I spent this summer on a research journey to find Union Civil War soldiers committed to insane asylums. This research…