American Historical Association

From #AHAPerspectives in 2022: "I am 94 years old, and a few years ago, I decided to write a memoir," wrote Peggy Liss. "It took on a life of its own when material things—furnishings, clothing, and food—intruded as organizing topics."

A group of 15 founding-era historians represented by the Brennan Center for Justice have filed an amicus curiae brief in Trump v. United States, challenging the former president’s claim of immunity. The authors include AHA members Holly Brewer (Univ. of Maryland), Rosemarie Zagarri (George Mason Univ.), Jack N. Rakove (Stanford Univ.), Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford Univ.), Gautham Rao (American Univ.), Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.), and Joanne Freeman (Yale Univ.).

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 recent crises? Here are some resources that might help.

Congratulations to AHA Council member Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan (Rutgers Univ.), who has been awarded the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance’s 2024 Teaching Award. This award recognizes “innovation and creativity in teaching New Jersey studies on the elementary, middle, secondary, and college level.”

An increase in the number of tenure-track job listings that ask for expertise in both Latin American and Latinx history poses existential and practical challenges. Celso Thomas Castilho and Sara Kozameh explore the data and what comes next in #AHAPerspectives.

A father’s trading card collection provides a window on a dark era in human history in David K. Wessel’s #EverythingHasAHistory for #AHAPerspectives.

AHA researcher Scot McFarlane will testify on behalf of the AHA to the Maine Department of Education regarding the state’s current social studies standards. In a public hearing in Augusta on April 29, McFarlane will share prepared remarks. “Maine’s social studies standards … emphasize skills with little specificity about content. This is a missed opportunity. State-level social studies standards can help teachers engage their students by placing local, state, and regional history in a context that connects to national and global themes,” his testimony states. “Good, history-rich standards can guide parents, teachers, and school administrators as they prepare future generations of Maine students for success in a complex and interconnected world.”

Congratulations to AHA members Joseph M.H. Clark (Univ. of Kentucky), Mostafa Minawi (Cornell Univ.), and John W. Sweet (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), along with the other historians who have been named as 2024–25 National Humanities Center (NHC) fellows. “[The fellows] were selected from a highly competitive group of applicants representing institutions from across the globe,” said NHC president and director Robert D. Newman “We look forward to their arrival in the fall as they each contribute their individual brilliance to creating a lively intellectual community.”

AHA members Carol Anderson (Emory Univ.), Orville Vernon Burton (Clemson Univ.), and Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.), as well as J. Morgan Kousser (California Inst. of Technology) have authored an amicus curiae brief to the US Supreme Court in Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. et al. v. Secretary of State of Georgia, an appeal involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This group of voting rights historians, working with the Brennan Center for Justice and represented by Mayer Brown LLP and the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic, challenges Georgia’s claim that individuals and community groups cannot bring lawsuits to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In the brief, they describe the historical evidence that supports the power of individuals and groups to sue to protect their voting rights.

In #AHAPerspectives, read a Long Overdue tribute to William Hansberry, historian of Africa at Howard University, who died in 1965.