From the Archives: Starting Graduate School - July 14, 2008
The summer season is half over and it’s time to start preparing for the fall semester. For many, that will mean starting the first year of graduate study in history. The transition from undergraduate to graduate work can be difficult – for me, graduate courses felt like walking into the middle of an ongoing conversation and struggling to get caught up. On the AHA web site, we have a couple resources that rising graduate students may be interested in as they start their journey. Consider it a summer reading list.
From the Archives – K-12 Teaching - July 07, 2008
The AHA’s commitment to and involvement in K-12 history is over a hundred years old (see 1898 report The Study of History in Schools). This post highlights a number of Perspectives on History articles, AHA Today blog posts, and other resources that may be of interest to history teachers in elementary and high schools.
From the Archives: Why Can’t Historians Write? - March 24, 2008
A review in the Washington Post last Sunday reiterated the now tired claim that postmodernism in its various guises is responsible for poor writing in the discipline. While the constellation of methods gathered under that label rarely promote lucid prose, the latest addition to our online archives—a 1926 report about The Writing of History—shows the profession mulling over many of the same issues 80 years ago.
From the Archives: Reel History - January 27, 2008
The Perspectives on History article series on history and film—“Masters at the Movies,” which debuted in September 2007 and continued this month—brings to mind a special theme issue of Perspectives on film that appeared in April 1999. The articles in that issue were edited by Robert Brent Toplin, who has returned for the new “Masters at the Movies” series. This edition of “From the Archives” highlights the film articles from the April 1999 issue of Perspectives, and a few other noteworthy essays from issues prior.
From the Archives: Preparing for the Job Register - November 27, 2007
In little more than a month, hundreds of historians will descend on Washington, D.C. in search of the perfect job. With the hopes of making preparations a little less worrisome, here are some articles that have appeared in Perspectives, the Annual Meeting Supplement, and other AHA publications in recent years, all of which provide helpful advice on how to prepare for the Job Register.
From the Archives: GI Roundtable Revisited - July 24, 2007
The GI Roundtable series was a project sponsored by the War Department to provide citizenship training and diversion for GIs during the Second World War. Visit the AHA Archives and learn about the creation of the series.
From the Archives: The National Park Service - July 10, 2007
In a Perspectives article from January 2000, historians Laura Feller and Page Putnam Miller described the 220 cultural sites sponsored by the National Park Service (NPS) as “sources of educational experiences, vessels of historical memory, and sometimes places that loom large in questions about personal and national identity.” Feller and Miller remind us of the NPS’s role in preserving and disseminating history, but they also contend that NPS experiences actually shape how people understand the past and their relation to the past.
Dog Days in D.C.: Some Things Never Change - July 07, 2007
Illustrating how the more things change, the more they stay the same, we present this brief editorial written 147 years ago today by the Providence Evening Press’ Washington correspondent…
From the Archives: Reflections on a PhD in History - June 12, 2007
What is required of a student pursuing a history PhD? How many history PhDs should universities grant? Once a PhD is obtained, what’s next? Scholars have struggled with these questions since the birth of professional history. Below, culled from the AHA’s archives, are past articles from scholars who’ve reflected on many of these issues. Find all of theses reports, as well as links to the AHA’s presidential addresses, annual reports, and the GI Roundtable series in the History and Archives section of the AHA web site.
From the Archives: History and Technology - May 09, 2007
As yesterday’s blog post noted, the May issue of Perspectives has a theme: “History and the Changing Landscape of Information,” or more simply “history and technology.” After reading the May issue’s articles, it’s enlightening to look back at when Perspectives tackled this issue before, in February 1998 and 1999. Some articles include statements that humorously remind us how far we’ve come, while others ask questions that are still relevant to the discipline.