The theme for the 1988 meeting is "History as Inquiry and Practice," and the Program Committee has put together an impressive array of sessions that emphasize the many dimensions of the discipline. The meeting will open with a special plenary session on Tuesday, December 27 entitled Perspectives on History. This session will bring together Theodore Hammerow, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lawrence Levine, and Joan Scott for what promises to be a lively debate on the state of historical scholarship. Theme sessions that follow during the next three days will explore the status of the profession as an intellectual and practical enterprise.

Theme sessions scheduled for Wednesday, December 28 are: #18, "Social History at the end of the 1980s: A Critical International Retrospect"; #20, "New Conceptual Approaches to the Study of U.S. Foreign Relations"; #22, "Women's Studies and Women's History: The Nature of Partnership"; #32, "Politics and History: The Case of Kurt Waldheim"; #44, "After Orientalism: The Third World Writes its Own History"; #45, "The Business of History."

Scheduled for Thursday, December 29 are: #59, "Electricity in History: A Session in Memory of Bern Dibner"; #69, "History and Policy"; #70, "The Rehistoricization of the Social Sciences"; #88, "Problems and Promises of Governmental History"; #89, "Writing History and Reading History: The Effect of Literary Theory on Our Craft"; #92, "Border Crossings: New Perspectives in International History in Honor of Akira Iriye"; #94, "Visualizing History: Artifacts and Moving Images."

Scheduled for Friday, December 30 are: #98, "The Protean Historian: Maintaining Professional Identity in Non-Traditional Settings"; #116, "Local Historical Studies and the Grand Generalizations of National History"; #117, "Museums and the American City: A Comparative Perspective on Strategies for Public Interpretations"; #118, "National History and Public Memory"; #134, "Orthodoxy and Innovation: The Discourse Between Old and New in Modern Russian Social and Historical Thought"; #138, "Psychohistory and Psychohistorians: The First Fifty Years."

Except for the opening session on the 27th, to be held at the Clarion Hotel, all sessions will be held at the Cincinnati Convention Center on the second floor.

All members should have received their printed program by now, which contains the preregistration form for the meeting as well as a survey on the timing of the annual meeting. The hotel reservation form appeared in the September issue of Perspectives. Information on discount airfares to the meeting can be obtained from either American Airlines (toll free number: 1-800-433-1790, Star file number S.15554) or Delta Air Lines (toll free number: 1-800-241-6760, file number N.0122).