Resources for Educators & Students
The AHA strives to ensure that every K–12 student has access to high quality history instruction. We create resources for the classroom, advise on state and federal policy, and advocate for the vital importance of history in public education.
Teaching and learning are at the foundation of the AHA’s mission to promote historical thinking in public life. What do students learn in undergraduate history courses? How and why are history majors so successful in a variety of careers?
Graduate Education
Many historians will pursue graduate training at some stage in their career. To meet the needs of both students and graduate programs, the AHA creates resources, provides platforms, and convenes conversations about student success from application to completion.
For Academic Departments
History department chairs are on the front lines of the discipline, defending historians’ work and supporting their professional lives at all stages of their academic careers. The AHA strives to strengthen this work and provide resources and opportunities that make chairs’ work easier and valued. The AHA provides resources and hosts a variety of events and opportunities to benefit department chairs and build community, including webinars, sessions at the annual meeting, and an in-person workshop.
Why Study History
History informs our understanding of everything, and historians' voices are essential in conversations about current events. The AHA provides resources on the importance of historical thinking in public life.
AHA Resources
Teaching Things: Material Culture in the History Classroom
Teaching Things: Material Culture in the History Classroom is a new, National Endowment for the Humanities–funded project at the American Historical Association. The digital Object Library helps teachers identify material culture sources for classroom use and includes ready-made resources and materials that teachers can use to craft lesson plans to fit their curriculum. Teaching Toolkits offer plug-and-play resources featuring object-based lessons across fields, time periods, and geographic spaces.
Vetted Resources
Vetted Resources compiles in a central location materials and tools that have been professionally vetted by historians, offering instructors access to high-quality materials that meet professional standards
The AHA has made primary sources available for research purposes, along with AHA archival reports and documents.
Standards & Guidelines for the Discipline
As a leader for the historical discipline, the American Historical Association supports the work of historians in all fields and professions by setting guidelines and standards for excellence in professional behavior, research, and teaching.
AHA Resource Library
The AHA’s Resource Library includes hundreds of resources developed or vetted by the AHA and our partners. Our resources range from classroom syllabi, to archival documents from the Civil War, to standards and guidelines for the discipline, and much more.
Recent Resources
September 7, 2024
Travel and Trade in Later Medieval Africa
September 7, 2024
Numismatics: Coins, East Africa, and Religious Exchange
September 6, 2024
Sacred Cloth: Silk in Medieval Western Europe
#AHRSyllabus
The #AHRSyllabus is a collaborative project designed to help teachers and students look "under the hood" at how historians in the early 21st century do the work of history. Each contribution to the syllabus features a practical hands-on teaching module that foregrounds innovative uses of historical method in the classroom.
Teaching How Official History Is Made: State Standards as Primary Sources
Current Events in Historical Context
History, the Past, and Public Culture: Results from a National Survey
This project aspired to take America’s historical pulse by assessing public perceptions of, and engagement with, the discipline of history and the past. The AHA partnered with Fairleigh Dickinson University to develop and implement a national survey that explored the public’s definition of the term “history,” where audiences access history.
A Bibliography of Historians' Responses to COVID-19
In 2020-21, the AHA compiled a professionally vetted bibliography of historians’ responses to COVID-19 as a resource for the public, teachers, and scholars seeking historical perspectives on the current crisis and its local and global impacts. The bibliography includes commentary and publications by historians in both scholarly and popular periodical literature; recorded lectures and webcasts; and digitized primary source materials from past epidemics and pandemics.
The History of Racism and Racist Violence
In response to ongoing racist violence in the United States, we have compiled a list of AHA resources on the history of racism and racist violence. Teachers can use them in classrooms to help students understand the history of the present; journalists can draw on them to provide historical context for current events; researchers can draw on them to inform future scholarship.
The Assault on the Capitol in Historical Perspective: Resources for Educators
We know teaching the events of January 6, 2021—which are not a “moment,” but the product of a long history—presents a familiar, yet unusually urgent, challenge: how can students use historical knowledge and thinking to understand current crises? Here are some resources that might help, published by the AHA on January 7, 2021.
Upcoming Events
AHA Annual Meeting
We hope to see you at the 138th annual meeting of the AHA, which will take place from Friday to Monday, January 3–6, 2025, in New York City. Whatever your career stage or path, there is a place for you at our annual meeting.
Regional Conferences on Introductory History Courses
Our regional conferences endeavor to strengthen the community of practice focused on introductory history courses, both in secondary and higher education.
AHA Learn
Are you interested in the latest conversations about teaching and learning? Join us for our regular series of online programs that are free and open to the public.