Film is a main focus in the March 2008 issue of Perspectives on History. James Sheehan contributes the third installment of the “Film and History” series with his article on “Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion.” Then, read about Secrecy, “a new film by Harvard University professors Peter Galison and Robb Moss about government classification debates,” that was featured at the January 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Also, hear about the Historians Film Committee and their panel, “Wars of the Worlds: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond: Science in Film, Television, and History," at the Annual Meeting. And finally, also Annual Meeting-related, take a look back at the 2008 AHA Film Festival.

From AHA President Gabrielle M. Spiegel comes the article “A Triple "A" Threat: Accountability, Assessment, Accreditation,” which reports on a panel on higher education policy that she chaired at the 122nd Annual Meeting. Participants in the panel included “arguably three of the best informed educational leaders in the country,” and focused mainly on the Spellings Report, while touching on related topics like the No Child Left Behind Act.

A good deal of AHA news and business is highlighted this month, including pieces on changes to the AHA’s constitution ratified by members, data on the 2008 Job Register, the 2008 Committee Structure, recent Council decisions, and a list of the 2008 AHA Awards and Honors (complete with pictures of prize winners).

For teachers, two articles stand out this month: “The Promise and Pitfalls of PowerPoint” by Michael Flamm (which has been linked to around the blogosphere), and Ann Imlah Schneider’s “Internationalization of Training for K–12 Teachers:
What Historians Can Do.”

Lee White of the National Coalition for History provides his monthly news briefs, as well as two articles: “Pushing the Pace on the Founders’ Papers” and “History and Archives in Proposed Fiscal 2009 Budget.”

Visit the March 2008 issue of Perspectives on History, for all of this plus affiliate news and “In Memoriam” pieces.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.