The online version of the January 2011 issue of Perspectives on History is now available to AHA members (sign in to member services to gain full access). Nonmembers can preview a portion of each article during the first month of the issue’s release.  After one month, the content will be freely available to all. Nonmembers can now access the December issue of Perspectives on History.

Introduction
Last month Barbara D. Metcalf said “Hasta la vista and Farewell” to her time as AHA president. This month, Anthony Grafton begins his term with a column on criticism of history in academia in “History under Attack.” Meanwhile, AHA Executive Director James Grossman again looks to how historians can and should engage in public discourse in “Citizenship, History, and Public Culture.”

History Jobs and Departments
Robert B. Townsend reports on how the history job market sagged in the 2009-10 academic year, but after looking at the number of recent job ads he offers hope for recovery. He also offers sobering news of economic troubles in history departments in his article “History under the Hammer.”

News
In AHA news, Lisa Forman Cody presents the Nominating Committee’s report on the The 2010 AHA Election, while AHA members are reminded of the 2011 call for nominations. There is also a call for proposals out for the 126th annual meeting of the AHA, which will have the theme “Communities and Networks.”

Other news includes Lee White’s article on changes at the National Archives and his regular Washington news briefs column. From our affiliates, the American Society for Legal History is calling for papers for their 2011 annual meeting.

Awards
The Conner Prairie Interactive History Park has received a National Medal for Museum and Library Service, we announce a new AHA prize for South Asian History, and the last John Edwin Fagg Prize will be presented at the 2011 annual meeting.

Articles
This month’s issue also offers a range of articles on international history (see Gabrielle M. Spiegel’s introduction and Nikolay Koposov’s article on post-Soviet Russia), teaching history to inmates, historians and the law, the art of writing history, and digital history (in scholarly journals and online).

Find all of this, as well as Michael Altschul, Norman Arthur Graebner, Paul H. Hardacre, and Tony Judt remembered in the In Memoriam column.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.