Attend the AHA Business Meeting today from 4:45–6:00 p.m. in the Sheraton, Chicago Ballroom X at the 126^th annual meeting to hear reports from members of the AHA’s Council, divisions, and committees.

Read on for more about today’s sessions, films, and receptions at the 126th annual meeting.

Locations and Times
Below are the Saturday hours for various annual meeting areas. Find the complete overview of location hours for this week, as well as hotel floorplans, online.

• Registration, Sheraton, River Exhibition Hall B, 8:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m. (today is the last day registration will be open)
• Job Center, Marriott, Grand Ballroom, Salon I, 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
• Exhibit Hall, Sheraton, River Exhibition Hall, 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
• Shuttle between the four meeting hotels, 7:30 a.m.–midnight
• Messaging and Internet Center, Marriott, Grand Ballroom, Salon 1, 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
• Quiet Rooms, Sheraton, Ohio Room and Marriott, Great America Room, 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

Sessions
Below are just a few of the sessions taking place today.

• Historians and the Obama Narrative
  9:00–11:00 a.m.
  Sheraton, Chicago Ballroom VII
  Participants in this panel have written on, lectured about, and researched President Obama’s political career through the lens of race and American political traditions
• Crowdsourcing History: Collaborative Online Transcription and Archives
  11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
  Sheraton, Chicago Ballroom IX
  This experimental session will feature five-minute “lightning talks” by a number of scholar-technologists who are studying and working on crowdsourcing projects.
• Radical Enlightenment: A Session in Honor of Margaret Jacob
  11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
  Sheraton, Sheraton Ballroom V
  This presidential session will celebrate the pioneering scholarship of Margaret Jacob (UCLA). Distinguished specialists in the period, including former collaborators, will address some of the themes that Professor Jacob has made her own.
• Historical Networks of Global Capitalism: China and Europe Compared
  2:30–4:30 p.m.
  Marriott, Miami Room
  This panel brings together experts to discuss their latest findings and the implications of those findings for our understandings of the Chinese and European economies, past and present.
• Thinking the Twentieth Century: In Memory of Tony Judt
  2:30–4:30 p.m.
  Sheraton, Sheraton Ballroom V
  AHA President Anthony Grafton chairs this session presented in memory of Tony Judt. The panel of speakers includes John Dunn, Peter E. Gordon, Marci Shore, Robert Silvers, and Timothy Snyder.

Film Festival

• The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History
  12:00–2:00 p.m.
  Sheraton, Sheraton Ballroom I
  This film has won the AHA’s 2011 John O’Connor Film Award. This film explores the short life of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis, which became a potent national symbol of failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatize public housing residents.
• On These Shoulders We Stand
  5:00–7:00 p.m.
  Sheraton, Sheraton Ballroom I
  On These Shoulders We Stand is an illuminating historical account of gay life and activism in Los Angeles, told by the people who lived it. The film chronicles gay life from the 1950s into the early 1980s, interweaving first-person accounts from 11 elders of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Los Angeles with seldom-seen archival materials to tell the story of two cities, one with a substantial, vibrant gay community, and the other, a city obsessed with rendering that community invisible or imprisoned. Project director Glenne McElhinney will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterward.

Receptions

• Public Historians’ Reception
  6:00–7:30 p.m.
  Sheraton, Missouri Room
  The AHA’s Professional Division cordially invites public historians and anyone with an interest in public history to join them for informal conversation with colleagues.
• Committee on Minority Historians’ Reception
  6:00–7:30 p.m.
  Sheraton, Mayfair Room
  The Committee on Minority Historians cordially invites minority scholars, graduate students, and others attending the 2012 annual meeting to a reception in the Sheraton’s Mayfair Room.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.