Departments

;

historiography

  • SOURCE: TIME
    9/15/2022

    The Promise and Peril of the "Third Reconstruction"

    by Peniel E. Joseph

    At a time when the nation is balanced precariously between advocates for multiracial democracy and white nationalists, it is important to understand the history and the incompleteness of the expansion of freedom and democracy during Reconstruction. 

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    9/13/2022

    Historicizing the Legitimacy of LGBTQ History

    by Marc Stein

    The AHA's newsletters reveal a protracted and frequently bitter debate about the boundaries of the discipline as scholars in the early 1970s worked to establish gay and lesbian people and communities as subjects of study. 

  • SOURCE: Humanities
    9/5/2022

    All History is Revisionist

    by James M. Banner Jr.

    "The collective noun for a group of historians is an “argumentation,” and for good reason. At the very dawn of historical inquiry in the West, historians were already wrestling over the past, attacking each other."

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    8/24/2022

    History is Always About Politics

    by Joan W. Scott

    The tradition of the discipline has cast politics as an object of study, but deliberately ignored the way that writing history is tangled up with who wields power and how.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    8/23/2022

    Two Cheers for Presentism

    by David A. Bell

    Now that the dust has settled over the AHA President's controversial essay, it's time to consider more carefully how the present informs the work of historians, and how to do "presentism" right. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    8/20/2022

    India in a Different Voice

    by Maya Jasanoff

    Learning Hindi during a sabattical presented a researcher with the chance to engage with Indian history outside of the frame of English, and to grasp the power struggles pushing the country toward authoritarian nationalism today. 

  • SOURCE: Public Seminar
    7/25/2022

    Michael Hattem on the Creation of "American History"

    Michael Hattem discusses his book which argues that the creation of a particularly American historical memory was a nation-building project that began from the first moments of independence. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    7/15/2022

    How to Be an Honest Historian

    by Imani Perry

    "At this historic juncture, teaching history through the study of human relationships is paramount. But that requires all of us, even people who are politically strident—as I admit myself to be—to engage in an earnest and open dialogue about what constitutes a good society and fair treatment. And it also means stomaching some disturbing thoughts."

  • SOURCE: Foreign Policy
    7/1/2022

    Is the Ukraine War the Start of a New Period of History?

    by David A. Bell

    The idea that the Russian invasion will be seen as a turning point by future scholars is tempting given the immediate seriousness of events. But two years ago, people were saying the same thing about the COVID pandemic.