A Conversation with Sarah Weicksel

Daniel Story
So thank you, Sarah for talking with me.

Sarah Weicksel
Absolutely.

Daniel Story
It’s always nice to chat, and now we’re doing it on the record, which is wonderful. And for a while now, AHA has had this kind of tagline, or hashtag even: “everything has a history.” And I thought maybe we could just begin with the history of the latest executive director of the AHA, because if everything has a history, it surely has to apply to you too. So if it’s okay with you, I wonder if you could maybe just take us on a quick whistle stop tour along your journey, the latest chapter of which is executive director of the AHA.

Sarah Weicksel
Absolutely, yes. I suppose everything does have a history. Every person has a history, and I also like to say, as will become clear, why every object has a story to tell too. So I was born and raised in central California. I grew up on a small family farm. My family grew grapes for wine and raisins and almonds before they were popular, and I was the first person in my family to go to a four year college. And I found myself at Yale University in the early 2000s and felt completely out of my element. I had gone from, you know, farm and small town to suddenly bustling New Haven streets and cars everywhere and in classrooms where I was struggling to read things like the Iliad or, you know, Herodotus, meanwhile, my classmates were debating how good the translation of the text we were reading was because they had taken, you know, classes in the original Greek. But it was while I was at Yale that I discovered material culture, and this is where my objects come in. It helped level the playing ground for me, it was something that I hadn’t learned in high school, but neither had anybody else. And so here I was, you know, looking at how to study history and thinking about it in terms of all the complexity of the worlds in which people lived, that it wasn’t just the documents that they left behind, the things that they wrote about themselves, that shaped their worldviews, but that they were part of just as we all are, this material, built environment full of things and buildings and landscapes that shaped the way that they thought, the way that they acted, the way that they mediated conflicts with one another. So while I was at Yale, having been introduced to material culture through both history courses and art history courses, I discovered that I really wanted to be a historian who worked with objects, that rewarded a special kind of skill set. And so I went from there to the winter tour program in American material culture, and that is a place where I learned the ins and outs of museum work. I learned how to date and authenticate a wide array of object types ranging from silver to furniture to textiles, and how to condense really deep historical research into short labels that would accompany objects in an exhibit. I learned how to be a historian who, you know, researched, and how to teach with those sorts of materials. And from there, I went on to a PhD program in history at the University of Chicago, where I worked on 19th century United States history. Once I finished my degree, I became a research associate at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, and then was at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wolf Humanity Center as a postdoc, which was really quite amazing, because that year, the theme that the Humanities Center was focused on was stuff which is perfect for a person who studies history with things,

Daniel Story
Yeah.

Sarah Weicksel
And, you know, getting to be part of a community of people from around the region, and then other postdocs who came, you know, from across the country, and Penn faculty and graduate students was a really invigorating environment. When my postdoc ended, I went to work for the National Museum of American History as a project historian on the philanthropy initiative, which was a relatively new collecting area the history of philanthropy for the museum. Some of the things that I was doing were going through the collection and identifying objects that could help us tell the story of philanthropy in the United States from not you know, not only the points of view of philanthropists, but also helping to understand the working conditions that created needs for philanthropic work, looking at the points of view of people who found themselves being the objects of generosity, the subjects of generosity. And I was also doing work on oral histories and transcription of those kinds of materials, working on exhibitions, whole host of things around 18th, 19th, and 20th century history. So really stretching all of my historical skills and my ability to work with objects, and then I came to the American Historical Association, as the director of research and publications. Essentially, I was in charge of the operations of the American Historical Review, overseeing perspectives on history and a number of different projects that can fall within the topic of research, but the former executive director Jim Grossman, he also always really encouraged staff to play to their strengths and what they could bring to the AHA and its membership. One of those things that I could bring to the AHA was my background in museum work and in teaching with material culture. So I did a NEH funded project called teaching things material culture in the history classroom, which is designed to help teachers in high school and college classrooms to bring historical artifacts in. And I hope, in the end, be able to help inspire students in the same way that I was inspired to think of a little bit differently about how to do history when I was an undergraduate myself. So after five years in that role, I now find myself as the executive director.

Daniel Story
Yeah, and hitting on the theme of material culture, you also have another thing coming up in the near future, right? Your first book

Sarah Weicksel
Yes, it is coming out in January.

Daniel Story
A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era.

Sarah Weicksel
Feels like a long time coming. It’s very image heavy. It has 78 half tones in it. And I send my apologies and great thanks to everyone who worked on the layout of that book

Daniel Story
At the University of North Carolina Press.

Sarah Weicksel
Yes. You know, I mentioned that one of the things that interested me about material culture was how people used it to mediate conflicts between one another and well, here’s one of the ultimate conflicts in 19th century US history, the American Civil War. And I had originally not intended to work on this topic at all. I actually and folks who knew me when I was in the monitor program will attest to this. I originally did not really enjoy working with textiles. It was something that I typically tried to avoid, and I started off working I really love furniture, like I love furniture. I love silver. I still do, but I started working on a project about looting in the American Civil War. As I was really interested in how people dealt with the loss of things, and as I started doing the research, I realized that I was constantly coming across people talking about clothes, clothes that were stolen from them, clothes that were destroyed. People being angry about their clothing. Lots of letters being sent back and forth addressing clothes, and I felt compelled, as a historian who very much follows their sources, to shift the question that I was asking to understand just what was it about clothes that made it so intense and that there could be so much vitriol around clothes at this particular time? And what I, you know, ultimately learned was that during the Civil War, clothing became central to the ways that people waged war and how they experienced its cost. So I look at how through their clothes that they made, wore, mended, lost, and stole, Americans expressed their allegiances, showed love, confronted their social and economic challenges. In some cases, subverted expectations and ultimately how they perserve their history. So, you know, it’s kind of a project that focuses on the life cycle of an object, the making, the wearing, the destroying, and the saving of clothes.

Daniel Story
Fascinating. Yeah, maybe we’ll circle back around to this question of material culture, or perhaps it will weave itself all the way through our conversation. Yeah, so here you are now as executive director of AHA. Can you give me sort of your best like cocktail party response to what is the AHA anyway? What is the American Historical Association?

Sarah Weicksel
Well, the American Historical Association was founded in 1884 and it was chartered by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies in the United States. And the association has been many things over the years. It was founded in a moment when the historical discipline, along with other disciplines, and along with other professions, was becoming professionalized, and was a place that was intended to bring historians together, to present work, and to think about how to professionalize the discipline. In those early years, it was an exclusionary place. I’m someone who would not have been a member of the AHA in its early years. So the association’s role in the 21st Century has really focused on that mission of promoting historical studies in the United States, but it’s also expanded to be a bit more international in terms of its membership and its concerns. It’s a really different Association than the one that I joined when I was in graduate school. It is much more than the conference that people think that it is because,

Daniel Story
Yeah.

Sarah Weicksel
Admittedly, I too thought that, quote unquote, the AHA, was just a large conference that you went to in January,

Daniel Story
Annual meeting that happens every year, right? In January, right?

Sarah Weicksel
Yeah. And today, the AHA is much more vibrant. And I even then quickly learned that it was much more than that conference, that it was a place that I, as you know, a first generation student could go to and help me to navigate the professional world of history. I could go to the AHA’s website and provide professional guidelines and articles that really help demystify the pathways to and responsibilities of being a historian. Today, the AHA’s resources are more vast, its programming is more accessible, and its history advocacy work is more central, and for that, I have to thank my predecessor, Jim Grossman, who worked tirelessly for 15 years to really create a strong foundation upon which to build in the years ahead. I envision us as a big tent organization where, not only academic historians, which have admittedly been the majority of our membership for decades, are welcome, but also, you know, we have many K 12 members, public historians, historians who work in other professions, historians who work in the federal government, and also people who just simply enjoy learning about the past, people who you know were undergraduate history majors and want to, you know, keep up on the latest things happening within the historical world. That means that the AHA has to be a place that really welcomes in people with diverse experiences and backgrounds, where they can engage and disagree and learn from each other. So I was talking with my daughter, who at the time, was seven. She’s eight now. I had just finished working on the final edits of my book, and I had been working on perspectives articles, I’ve been corresponding with potential authors for a special issue of the AHR, finalizing details for an NEH Teacher Institute. I was doing all the things, and she said to me, “How come you don’t act like a historian much anymore?” I was really taken aback and slightly offended, I was like, “What do you mean? Why don’t you think I act like a historian?” And I think she could read like, uh-oh. She said, “Oh, never mind.” And then I started thinking about it and realized that earlier in the day, she had asked me if I was like a substitute teacher, because I had been teaching a course at American University that semester, and that I realized that what she wanted to know was, why don’t I teach anymore? And I asked her, “Is that what you mean?” And she said, “Well, yeah, don’t historians have to teach.” So I don’t know where she got that idea. You know, she’s been in the exhibits that I co-curated at the National Museum of American History. She knows a lot about the different kinds of work that I do, and when she has explained my job to people, she describes it as investigating the mysteries of the olden times, which I think sounds way cooler than a lot of things that historians do, but that was a really, you know, kind of light bulb moment for me that who we believe is and is not a historian actually gets ingrained in people really early on, and that being a historian does not need to be synonymous with any one single thing. There are all kinds of ways of being a historian, and we have to really work hard to overcome the idea of a historian as a particular type of job. For me, I think, you know, or in my daughter’s case, I think that for her, the other historians that she has in her daily life are full time teachers, her second grade teacher, who got her super excited about Ancient Greece and Ancient China and India, was a history major. Her girl scout troop leaders are both social studies teachers, and so she sees other historians teaching, because it wasn’t even like she was thinking, a historian is a professor. Historians are teachers. So I talked to her about how we teach in so many different kinds of ways, but also, you know, it made me think about, how do we as historians do the work of helping younger generations understand the diversity of the work of historians, and I came to the conclusion, as I know many of us have like we have to actively value the diversity of historians in their work. We have to value that work as a community, and we have to be inclusive of people who are employed in a wide range of professions. We have to make sure that we’re not creating a closed community to which a person has to become accepted, but rather we have to be a welcoming space. And it’s a space that you have to be able to, you know, ask a question that you think is simple, and one where you can explore a new topic without fearing that that’s going to make people think that you’re, you know, any less of a historian, or something along those lines. But it also means opening up the AHA to people who are outside of the typical roles that historians have often served in. You know, beyond academics, beyond K 12 teachers, beyond museum professionals to engage with the public who actually really thinks what we do is pretty cool, and who are innately interested in history and helping them to see the AHA as a voice of historians, voice for historians, and a place that they too, can come to, you know, nerd out at a conference or read articles and perspectives or attend a webinar and learn something about something that’s happening in our history behind the headline series.

Daniel Story
Historians in a broad range of contexts and roles and activities, and even beyond that, people who wouldn’t even call themselves historians or think of themselves as historians, but who are interested in and engaging with history in different ways.

Sarah Weicksel
Yeah, exactly. It’s a challenge, you know, and it’s, it’s one that I think will take a long time, but I also think that historians are fully up to that challenge. We just have to, you know, work together to be more inclusive, first amongst ourselves and then in, you know, remembering what it was that sparked our interest in being a historian? What was it that sparked your imagination? You know, what was a cool topic that you studied in school or that you read about in a novel, or, I don’t know, you liked watching Disney’s Duck Tales and thought that it was, you know, cool to watch cartoon characters go back in time and learn things about the past. You know, what was it that inspired you and remembering that there’s a lot of members of the public that are inspired by lots of interesting things in history, it just didn’t result in them becoming a historian.

Daniel Story
And this kind of speaks to the question of what is, or what should be, the role of history in public life kind of writ large, right? It’s no secret that we are living in a moment, and maybe it’s more than just a moment that is, you know, seeing all kinds of attacks on not just history, but freedom of speech, scholars, historians and many others, are seeing their world constricted. And I wonder what AHA is doing now, but also what it’s been like for you as a newcomer to the role of executive director to come into that in this moment.

Sarah Weicksel
Well, as one of my former BA thesis advisees said to me, well, heck of a time to get that job, huh? Like, yep, it sure is. It’s, it is a challenging moment to transition. I feel very lucky that I had been at the Association for five years before, and so I’m very familiar with the lay of the land, both where there are, you know, opportunities, but also where there are a lot of challenges that we have to overcome. You know, I’m constantly drawing on my background in public history and in museum interpretation to think about communicating with not just Fellow Scholars, but also with the general public about the importance of history that is accurate, and that, you know, is fully representative of the United States, because that’s really one of the things that’s most under attack right now, is what is our national story, and who has the ability to tell it, who gets to teach it, and what do people get to learn. It’s extraordinarily important, and an area that, you know, the AHA has been weighing in on for years now with, you know, variety of state legislature that was attempting to restrict what historians could and couldn’t teach in the classroom. And, you know, in thinking about like the Smithsonian, for instance. As you said, we started off, everything has a history. So when it was founded in 1846, the Smithsonian was tasked with scientific research, which, of course, it continues today, but it was also tasked with becoming the official caretaker of the US National Museums collections. So like many museums, it started off as something of a curio cabinet, but in the late 19th century, the National Museum started formally collecting and exhibiting objects that would document and narrate the national story. That national story is one that belongs to all of us. The Smithsonian and other federal sites have to tell the story of every American and all that is currently under threat. We’re working to ensure that a full and complex history of the US continues to exist and that it continues to expand. And we’re arguing for the independence of the Smithsonian the National Park Service, all of which should be free from political intervention that should be guided by the standards of the discipline of history, not by, you know, political whims.

Daniel Story
I wonder in this moment what you might say to, you know, a history teacher in, say, a middle school or high school in a state, in a part of the country that is seeing some of these more aggressive attempts to limit what they can teach. What would you say to them and are there things within the AHA’s resources that you would want to sort of point them to?

Sarah Weicksel
Think the thing that I would immediately say to them is, you’re not alone. We are here to support the work that you do in teaching good history. We understand the kind of pressure that they’re under. We understand in part because we just completed a two year study called American lesson plan, which surveyed what’s being taught in secondary schools about US history. I have a much better understanding of what the landscape of that looks like. Every state’s a little bit different. We did a deep dive into eight of those states. We looked at all 50 states’ social studies standards, so we have a great deal of data and research to provide support for arguments for why good history needs to be taught. We also have programming that is specifically geared towards high school teachers to help them in terms of the professional development that they often want but don’t have the time or resources to pursue. That’s something that we’re constantly making an argument for. We also are constantly tracking state legislation and federal legislation. I’m working with our council to implement some really action oriented approaches to the AHA’s work and to helping activate the membership to feel prepared to go in and advocate on behalf of the discipline. Not everyone is in a position that they’re able to do that, but we want to make sure that those who are able to speak up have the tools and language that we know can be successful. A multi pronged attack on history really requires a multi pronged approach in combating it, and so that’s really how we’re approaching things.

Daniel Story
Are there any other things on the horizon for AHA, in the next few months that you’re particularly excited about you want to highlight?

Sarah Weicksel
We have just kicked off, just in early November, a new project which I’m really excited about, and that is called the AHA Community Action and Resource Exchange Network, or AHA CARE. So we know that many historians are looking for ways to tackle the current moment. We also know that many historians are in search of community. We know that people are looking for strategies and solutions to all sorts of different kinds of problems, from how to teach particular topics to things related to employment. Public historians are trying to work through how to curate within this particular environment and then even, you know, beyond, like the current environment in which we find ourselves living, there’s all the daily things that historians are working through, like the challenge of identifying research funding and how to navigate graduate school and all sorts of things like that. And so this CARE program is supposed to bring together historians to discuss shared intellectual and professional issues and concerns, allow them to exchange ideas, to collaborate on strategies and solutions, and ultimately to really strengthen the discipline through this. So we have established these groups as working groups that are going to be member organized and member led, they’re going to convene on regular basis to discuss and study the issues that they’ve identified, to establish and pursue explicit goals. And, you know, think about how to share their insights with the broader historical discipline and all that will be supported by the AHA staff and council, you know, providing a space by which they can come together, both from a online community perspective, but also we hope be able to convene in person at the annual meeting or in other places, so that you know, we can help build community and help historians feel more connected to the association. The association is its members, and we all need to be working together and supporting one another in the work that we do. And we have a great deal to learn as AHA staff from our membership, and we also have a lot of information as AHA staff that we know that our members can benefit from. And so I hope that this will be one place where that kind of exchange of ideas, exchange of resources, can be a way to help strengthen the association itself. So that’s one thing I’m looking forward to. Another new initiative that I’m excited about is called Doctoral Futures, and it’s a collaboration between the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the Society Biblical Literature, all of which are working together with the ACLS to explore what the next step is in terms of graduate education reform. The AHA, as many listeners will be familiar with, was very active in career diversity. Had a large program that we ran for several years, and that has ended, but this is kind of the next natural step that comes out of career diversity, thinking about how do we connect with the different stakeholders at universities to help departments make changes that are going to serve their students really well, that are going to keep the humanities vibrant, and to enable students to imagine the variety of careers and the really fulfilling work that they can do in all sorts of professions. So this is a humanities focused project, not just a history focused project. And our committee is convening folks around the topic of, you know, post degree pathways. So we’re thinking about, you know, some of the work that should be done in graduate school to prepare you for skills that you’ll need beyond your degree, thinking about internships, but also exploring what kinds of resources and programmatic changes need to happen to help people to be successful as they move into a variety of careers. Yeah, so we’re really excited that we’re getting this work underway now in the fall of 2025 and it’s a three year project, and we’re looking to be able to produce a variety of potential actions that universities and departments can take that will help to strengthen humanities degrees at the universities. The other thing I’m really looking forward to is the special issue of the journal that is going to come out for 2026

Daniel Story
That’s precisely what I was hoping to circle back to later in the conversation, and here we are.

Sarah Weicksel
It is called 76 Objects, as we know Daniel, and it is a special issue on material culture. I have the privilege of being the guest editor of that. You know, working with some amazing people at a wide range of institutions who have written short essays on all sorts of different objects, from a piece of shoe leather that was, you know, uncovered by archeologists digging in Philadelphia in a privy, to, you know, Charles Jefferson’s chess set, to a plow, to a plane that was used by a Craftsman. And really thinking about kind of the international scope of the American Revolutionary moment, and helping people to see what kinds of stories you can uncover by looking at individual objects. And it’ll also include multiple essays that help to provide larger context and theoretical approaches to the study of material culture of this era, and then, of course, some teaching toolkits that will help to bring these materials into both high school and college classrooms.

Daniel Story
That’s really exciting. And I’ll also add that, that special issue will be the focus of the final episode of this season of History and Focus, so I’m excited about producing that one with you, Sarah.

Sarah Weicksel
I am very excited about it as well and I am excited about thinking through the tough challenge of not only taking material culture of the 3D variety into the 2D format, but also the challenges of bringing it to the podcasting format.

Daniel Story
That’s right, yeah. I always say that when you jump mediums, some of the most interesting, creative things can happen. So we shall see.

Sarah Weicksel
Yes. I mean, when I was, you know, working on my book, knowing, you know, a lot of it would not be full color, having to think through how do I describe this thing to make it as vibrant as this object that’s sitting in front of me? It was real challenge, so, we’re gonna have to work through that Daniel.

Daniel Story
Yeah, yeah. And we will, we will. Thank you, Sarah, for talking with me and thanks for the work that you’re doing in this important and challenging moment.

Sarah Weicksel
Well, thank you for having me Daniel, and for doing all of the work on History in Focus that you do, and in making this an exciting place to come and listen to new historical work and to a variety of things about the work of the AHA.