This week, the American Historical Association previewed a forthcoming report on the number of full-time history jobs. The post is entitled “Another Tough Year for the Academic Job Market in History”—which is a bit misleading, since it documents the continuation of a decade-long collapse. In the last hiring year (2016-2017), employers advertised only 289 tenure-track faculty positions and 212 other full-time jobs in the AHA Career Center. During that same year, to judge by the recent past, American universities probably granted more than 1,000 new doctorates in history.
Tag Archives: American Historical Association
IOTAR50: Paper Politics
French Pamphlets, Newberry Library
All praise to the humble pamphlet, upon which *may* rest the ideological origins of the American Revolution. Frequently buried by history as loose “Bundells of Pamphlets in quarto,” it’s a genre that almost shouldn’t be. Printed on flimsy paper and easily battered by salt spray or avid readers, the popular pamphlet became a clutch genre for British and American revolutionaries to send ideas around the Atlantic World. These publications, along with newsbooks, hardened into the “paper bullets,” that, according to scholar Joad Raymond, flew on and off the page in early modern England’s press.
Even as the genre evolved into weekly newspapers, he writes, “readers recognized the rules of the form.” Pamphlet culture, a dynamic arena for anonymous critics to take an eloquent swipe at matters of church and state, quickly blossomed abroad. Unbound and unfettered, pamphlets seeded colonists with a new political consciousness. Whether 10 pages or 50, these slim booklets amplified republican politics and revolutionary prose. Pamphlets, as Robert G. Parkinson observes, became the “lifeblood” of the American Revolution. “They instructed the colonial public that political and personal liberty were in jeopardy because British imperial reformers sought to strip them of their natural rights, especially the right to consent to a government that could hear and understand them,” he writes. Today, let’s look at that instructional aspect of pamphlet culture, and how Bernard Bailyn’s interpretation of revolutionary tracts has reshaped what we do in public history. Continue reading
Where Historians Work: Q&A with Emily Swafford of the AHA
Welcome to the first installment of our “Where Historians Work: The View from Early America” series. Today, The Junto features a Q&A between Katy Lasdow and Dr. Emily Swafford, Manager of Academic Affairs for the American Historical Association in Washington, D.C.[1] Emily shares her experiences seeking out varied career options after graduate school. She also provides AHA resources for readers who wish to become more involved in the conversation about career diversity, whether as part of their own job searches, or within their graduate history departments.
Continue reading
Where Historians Work: The View from Early America — Welcome to the Series!
In February 2017, The Junto sent out a call to historians working outside the professoriate to join us in a conversation about career diversity for early American history PhDs.[1] The response was exciting and full of interesting conversations with curators, scholars, archivists, librarians, and public historians who have chosen to pursue their passion for research, writing, and teaching in a variety of settings and occupations.
Starting tomorrow, and over the coming weeks, The Junto will feature Q&A’s between Columbia University PhD candidate and Public Historian Katy Lasdow, and a range of participants.
Star Wars, Food Diplomacy, and Second Book Projects
Over the winter break I was back in Austin, catching up with grad school friends and reveling in a week’s worth of breakfast tacos. Part of this week included a trip to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Rogue One, because we all know work/life balance is important. For the uninitiated, the Drafthouse is a magical movie theater where you can view new movies while eating and drinking. They’re famous for their all-day Lord of the Rings marathon, complete with second breakfast and elevenses. So I was pretty excited to see what themed food and beverages the theater managed to create using inspiration from the Star Wars cannon. Remember how I said work/life balance is important? Well it is, but sometimes I have trouble switching off.[1] Continue reading
Early America at AHA 2016
It’s hard to believe that this is our fourth annual roundup of panels and presentations about early America and the Atlantic World at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Convening this year in Atlanta beginning today (January 7) and running through January 10, the program this year offers a theme of “Global Migrations: Empires, Nations, and Neighbors.”
People go to the AHA for many reasons, and we wish all of you a good conference experience (most especially those of you interviewing for jobs). As we have for the past few years, below you’ll find a guide to many of the panels that include our colleagues and readers who work on topics related to early America and the Atlantic world. We’ve done our best to capture as many panels of interest to our readership, in the spirit of “vast Early America,” as Omohundro Institute Director Karin Wulf put it earlier this week. But we also surely missed a few panels of interest, so please feel free to suggest other possibilities in the comments.
With that said, scroll down for a day-by-day rundown, with links to the program description for each panel. (You can also browse the full program, of course.)
Reviewing Digital History
Today, The Junto interviews Dr. Jeffrey W. McClurken, Professor of History and American Studies & Special Assistant to the Provost for Teaching, Technology, and Innovation at University of Mary Washington. McClurken (Ph.D., John Hopkins University, 2003) is Contributing Editor for Digital History Reviews, Journal of American History. Continue reading
The Junto Guide to Early America at #AHA2015
Happy New Year from all of us at The Junto! We hope you had a restful and enjoyable holiday break. For historians, the turn of the calendar to 2015 means that many of us are en route to the AHA Annual Meeting in New York City. Having grown up in the area, I’d like to welcome you all to New York, where the bagels and pizza are really just better, and we stand “on line” for coffee, not “in line.”
The Week in Early American History
Happy New Year, dear readers! Hope you had a merry Christmas. Did you watch the ball drop in Times Square? The technology dates back to the early 19th Century, when the Royal Navy ruled the waves and captains needed a way to periodically recalibrate their ships’ chronometers. In the New Netherlands, Dutch colonists spent New Year’s Day going over to each other’s houses for nieuwjaarskoeken. We here at The Junto, meanwhile, have been busy collecting all the links of note you may have missed over the holidays. Continue reading
On to Washington!
Happy New Year! Like the British Army two centuries ago, historians are descending on Washington this week in massive numbers (though likely with somewhat better results for the White House and Library of Congress) for the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. It’s an exciting time for the profession overall as discussions and meetings take place, and a harrowing time for those attending for job interviews. And apparently we’ll all get to see how badly the region handles winter weather.[1]
The Junto 