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AHA Member Spotlight: Rick L. Woten
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Change over Time Written in the Historic Architecture of Barbados
Typical historical research is not sweaty business. In fact, as I began this, I was shivering in the reading room…
Teaching the End of Empire
In the summer of 2013, I had the incredible fortune to participate in the National History Center’s 8th International Seminar…
Oxford University Press to Distribute AHA Publications
The AHA is pleased to announce that as of June 2016, Oxford University Press (OUP) has taken over distribution of…
The Aftertaste of Empire
“I’m not getting curry powder at all. Being a Brit, we eat a lot of curry, and I don’t taste…
Archiving the Internet: How Historians Can Help #SaveTheWeb
Imagine you’re a historian of the 21st century living and working in the 23rd century. You have an archive containing…
2016 AHA Research Grant Winners
Each year, the awards several research grants with the aim of advancing the study and exploration of history in a…
AHA Announces 2016 Career Diversity for Historians Departmental Grants
The AHA is pleased to announce the awardees of its second round of Career Diversity for Historians Departmental Grants. Each department…
Madness and a Thousand Reconstructions: Learning to Embrace the Messiness of the Past
What can a sex scandal at an asylum tell us about Reconstruction-era politics in the Deep South? Why did a…
African American History
“Do everything!” That was the exhortation from Nell Painter that closed the Future of the African American Past conference, jointly…
AHA Member Spotlight: Laura Schlosberg
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Cultural Encounters and Material Exchanges in the Venetian Archives
One of the strangest and most fascinating source encounters I have experienced so far while working in the Venetian archives…
Actions by the AHA Council, January to June 2016
Through e-mail conversation from January 12, 2016, to May 24, 2016, and at meetings on June 4 and 5, 2016,…
Who’s Afraid of Being a Generalist?
After two years of endless academic job applications, Skype interviews, and harrowing job talks, I was exhausted from reinventing myself…
Historians in the News
“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” This is the question on which citizens of the…
AHA Member Spotlight Eric G. E. Zuelow
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Visiting the Past and the Places in Between: Buildings and Landscapes as Historical Documents
In 1953, L.P. Hartley wrote that “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Historians and lay…
Outer Space Exploration in Divided Germany
Outer space travel during the Cold War is most often associated with the Space Race, when the United States and…
The Rise of Dalit Studies and Its Impact on the Study of India: An Interview with Historian Ramnarayan Rawat
Last month, controversy erupted again in California over the portrayal of the South Asian subcontinent in history textbooks. Among the…
AHA Member Spotlight: Lauren Apter Bairnsfather
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Announcing the Winners of the 2016 AHA Today Blog Contest
The AHA is pleased to announce the winners of our 2016 AHA Today Blog Contest. Over the course of the…
On Being a Historian Today: The Importance of Digital Literacy
This post marks the fifth in a series on what we’ve come to call the Career Diversity Five Skills—five things graduate…
AHA Member Spotlight: Lance R. Blyth
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
The Gift Thieves: Interpreting a Scandal in Early Modern Venice
This is the third post in a series by , one of this year’s AHA Today blog contest winners. His…
Conflict in Africa
“The purpose of foreign policy is to promote national self-interest, not the well-being of others.” This provocative statement from the…
AHA Endorses Scholars at Risk Statement on Turkey
The , as a member of Scholars at Risk, and also as a scholarly body concerned with and committed to…
AHA Member Spotlight: Mark Andersen, CFA
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
The Other Drayton Hall: South Carolina Plantation Architecture in the Documentary Record
In 1861, former South Carolina governor William Bull burned down his house because he was worried that the Yankees might…
America’s Quest to Change China
The United States has held great ambitions for China for a very long time. Prior to the 1949 Communist revolution,…
Now That’s What I Call History: Introducing the AHA Summer Mixtape
Mixtapes contained tiny archives. In the heyday of the portable cassette—which overlapped with King Vinyl before the great extinction-by-compact-disc of…
AHA Member Spotlight: Alex Zukas
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Far from the Harlem Crowd
In 1945, Augusta Savage, a sculptor and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, traded the hustle of Harlem for…
Adapt and Overcome: What to Do When Your Archival Research Hits a Dead End
At the close of the Civil War in 1865, Dr. Robert Kells—then the superintendent of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum—warned…
Changing Course
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Because I spent most of my time surrounded by teachers,…
AHA Member Spolight: Alan Berolzheimer
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
The Politics of Pepper: Deciphering a Venetian-Mamluk Gift Exchange
At the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, just a few feet from Piazza San Marco, where thousands of tourists come…
The Surprisingly Short History of American Secrecy
Amid the recent hubbub about leaks and whistleblowers and Hillary Clinton’s rogue server, it has been easy to forget what…
Drug Traffickers and the Freedom of Information Act
I admit it: I stalk dead drug traffickers in libraries, archives, newspapers, databases, films, photos, literature, and documents. One of…
AHA Member Spotlight: Carin Berkowitz
Carin Berkowitz is the director of a center and fellowship program for the history of science at the Chemical Heritage…
Thinking Like a Historian in Scrubs
Twenty seven years ago, I was a newly declared sophomore history major. I’d fallen hard for labor history. I wanted…
Trans-ing History on the Web: The Digital Transgender Archive
When College of the Holy Cross professor K.J. Rawson first imagined what would become the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA), he…
AHA Member Spotlight: Eric Zolov
Eric Zolov is an associate professor at Stony Brook University. He lives in Forest Hills, Queens, and has been a…
Hero, Villain, or Anti-Hero? Archival Records and Dealing with the Contradictions of the Past
I was wrapping up the second to last chapter of my MA thesis when I received a call from a…
Teaching with #DigHist: Introducing a New Series on Using Digital Projects in the Classroom
In the past two decades historians have entered the digital age, designing a host of exciting projects that use technology…
Welfare Reform and the Politics of Race
Twenty years ago this month, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).…
AHA Member Spotlight: Nathalie Belkin, Archivist
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Searching for the Quotidian in the Archives
This is the final post in a series by , one of this year’s AHA Today blog contest winners. His posts…
What I Do: Stephanie Young, Policy Analyst
As part of the Career Diversity for Historians initiative, the AHA is producing and making available short videos of historians…
How the Culture of “Welfare Reform” Changed the US Army
August 22, 2016, will mark the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s signing of the 1996 welfare reform act, the law…
AHA Member Spotlight: Kibibi V. Mack-Shelton
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Historical Hat-Trick: Using Documents, Architecture, and Archaeology at George Washington’s Mount Vernon
This is the final post in a series by , one of this year’s AHA Today blog contest winners. Her posts “read”…
Historians Leading the Way to the Future of PhD Education
The National Endowment for the Humanities announced today the awardees of its Next Generation PhD: Planning and Implementation Grants. The…
Mapping Indigenous LA: Uncovering Native Geographies through Digital Storytelling
Indigenous history is everywhere, and yet too often overlooked or ignored. In Los Angeles, a coalition of academics, archaeologists, activists,…
Thanks, Prohibition! How the Eighteenth Amendment Fueled America’s Taste for Ice Cream
This past May, my classmates and I were discussing the latest fad in summer indulgences: wine ice cream. Ice cream…
AHA Member Spotlight: Richard A. Baker, Former US Senate Historian
AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our…
Scalawags and Scandal-Mongers: Intra-party Rivalry and the Complex World of Reconstruction Politics
On a warm afternoon in late February 1871, Dr. William M. Compton found himself in what he would later call…
James Baldwin on History
Today is James Baldwin’s birthday. Historians might appreciate his observation in 1965: James Baldwin. 1968. Credit: Allan Warren CC BY-SA…
What I Do: Ramona Houston, Entrepreneur and Activist-Scholar
As part of the Career Diversity for Historians initiative, the AHA is producing and making available short videos of historians…
A Historian in the Stacks
Unlike most graduate students, when I started my history PhD at the University of Southern California, I knew I did…