Doing Public History U.K. Style - February 04, 2008
Doing Public History, a new web site and electronic journal, attempts to “promote public debate about the nature and role of history in Britain.” The site notes the relative lack of public discourse about the past in the U.K. when compared to the United States and Australia, where national debates about the role of the past are common. It calls for a sustained discussion about the relationship between the academic historian and the public.
The Feds and IRBs: Your Opportunity to Weigh in - November 05, 2007
The federal government is inviting comments on policies that lead to the intrusion of institutional review boards (IRBs) into oral history research. This provides a rare opportunity for members of our profession to register their objections.
Finding the Right Word: New AHA Policies for Adding and Deleting Membership Categories - August 22, 2007
As the dustup last fall about the deletion of “psychohistory” from our membership taxonomy indicated, inclusion on the AHA’s list of membership categories can be highly political—serving in many eyes as a mark of standing in the discipline.
Unfortunately, this sets up two competing problems. The taxonomy needs to be open to the emergence of new areas in the discipline, but it also needs to be functional in a variety of contexts—for members trying to identify themselves, historians trying to find a specialist for a meeting panel, or members of staff trying to offer a coherent profile of the membership.
Public History Defined? - June 04, 2007
At its annual meeting in Santa Fe, which took place April 12 to 15, the Board of Directors of the National Council on Public History announced that it had crafted a definition of public history as: “a movement, methodology, and approach that promotes the collaborative study and practice of history; its practitioners embrace a mission to make their special insights accessible and useful to the public.”
History Teachers Association in Europe Asks for Better Leave Policy - May 13, 2007
In a statement issued on Wednesday, May 9, 2007, the board of EUROCLIO, the European Standing Conference of History Teachers’ Associations, called upon national authorities and school principals in Europe to provide a better leave policy to enable history teachers to travel abroad to receive professional training and participate in conferences.
Off the Record… - May 06, 2007
We at the AHA spend a lot of time wondering about what happens after a job ad appears in Perspectives and the applicants and potential employers finally come together either at the Job Register or on campus. The Academic Careers Wiki gives a unique view of the whole process.
Guidelines for Job Offers in History - March 20, 2007
In case you missed it, the recent March issue of Perspectives contains an important statement on Guidelines for Job Offers in History, created by the Professional Division and approved by the Council at the 2007 Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
History Salary Growth Lags Behind other Disciplines - March 14, 2007
The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) recently released the latest salary figures for faculty members. Overall, college and university professors saw their median salaries rise 3.8% in the 2006-07 academic year, compared to 3.4% last year and 3.2% in the year prior. Median salaries rose higher for public institution faculty (3.9%) than they did for faculty at private institutions (3.7%).
AHA Council Decides on Public Policies and Professional Issues - January 11, 2007
In addition to the resolutions adopted at the annual business meeting, the governing Council of the American Historical Association adopted a number of other policy and professional resolutions at its meeting this past weekend in Atlanta, Georgia.
A Wake Up Call for the Humanities - December 20, 2006
Even though some of the specifics differ from our discipline, the new Modern Language Association report on scholarship for tenure and promotion offers a wake up call about the health of the humanities in higher education.
What Is a History Major Worth? - November 30, 2006
The answer, it turns out, may be a bit more than you think. Money.com recently reported that the history majors from the class of 2006 earned an average of $33,071 (a 4.2 increase over the year before). That was more than 5 percent above the average for students who majored in the fields of English, sociology, and psychology…
Future Past - November 04, 2006
As part of the preparations for our Working Group on the Future of the AHA, the staff scanned and posted a number of previous committee efforts along the same lines.
Thinking Ahead - October 29, 2006
The Working Group on the Future of the AHA will be meeting at the end of this week, so this would be a good time to offer your thoughts on where you think the AHA (and by extension, the profession) is headed. Bill Chafe’s article in this month’s Perspectives goes into more detail about how the committee will work, and what they hope to accomplish.
Draft Ethics for Public History - October 19, 2006
Members of the National Council of Public History, and anyone interested in the development of public history, will be interested in a new draft Code of Ethics and Professional Standards.