From the EditorLetters to the EditorFrom the PresidentScale in History: Interpreting the Theme of the2017 Annual MeetingPatrick Manning

From the Executive Director“Safe From” and “Safe For”: Academics,University Culture, and “Campus Carry”James Grossman

News

Holocaust Museum Project Engages CitizenHistorians to Gain Better Understanding of WhatAmericans KnewSeth Denbo

AHA Welcomes New Staff MemberAllison Miller

Advocacy Briefs: Action on “Campus Carry,” OralHistory, and K–12 History Education

AdvocacyFrom the National Coalition for History: CongressRestores Funding for K–12 History EducationLee White

ViewpointsCan the South Asian Academic Speak fromAbroad? Colonialism and Anticolonialism in Modi’sAmericaPriya Satia

Perspectives on Culture

Why Is William Bradford Smiling? Ric Burns’s ThePilgrimsKarin Wulf

FEATURESBackward Compatible: Gamers as aPublic History AudienceRobert Whitaker

The Past, Conditionally: AlternativeHistory in Speculative FictionCarl Abbott

Classroom Soundtrack: InspiringHistorical Analysis through MusicAlex Hidalgo

AHA Activities

Awards, Prizes, and Honors Conferred at the130th Annual Meeting

Career PathsFrom Academia to ETS: Two Historians Reflecton Transitioning to the Private SectorJeremy Neill and Michael Hill

AHA Career Center

On the Cover

cratch a historian, and chances are you’ll

Scratch a historian, and chances are you’llfind a connoisseur of some form of

popular culture. Scratch a connoisseurof popular culture, and you just might

find someone with a passion for history.As historians think about ways to bring ourexpertise to public conversations, we can’tafford to ignore music, television, videogames, and other media that employhistory. This month’s feature stories andPerspectives on Culture column refuse tocondescend to popular culture—anapproach we think is worth emulating.Image: D J Shin, via Wikimedia Commons,CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Newsmagazine of the

400 A Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003-3889202.544.2422 • Fax 202.544.8307E-mail: perspectives@historians.orgWeb page: www.historians.org/perspectives

Perspectives on HistoryEditorAllison MillerContributing EditorSarah FentonCoordinator, Professional Data and Job CenterLiz TownsendAssociate Editor, Web Content and SocialMediaStephanie KingsleyAssociate Editor, PublicationsKritika AgarwalEditorial AssistantSadie BergenMarketing and Public Relations ManagerJane Green

American Historical AssociationExecutive Director

James R. GrossmanDirector, Meetings and AdministrationSharon K. TuneDirector of Scholarly Communication and DigitalInitiativesSeth DenboAssociate DirectorDana SchafferCoordinator, Committees and MeetingsDebbie Ann DoyleMembership ManagerPamela Scott-PinkneyAssistant Membership ManagerMichelle HewittControllerRandy NorellSpecial Projects CoordinatorJulia BrookinsManager of Academic AffairsEmily SwaffordProgram CoordinatorAmanda MonizStaff AccountantBetsy OrgodolAdministrative Office Assistant

Matthew KeoughProgram AssistantElizabeth ElliottPerspectives on History (ISSN 1940-8048) is publishednine times a year, monthly September through May, bythe American Historical Association, 400 A St., SE,Washington, DC 20003-3889. (202) 544-2422. Fax (202)544-8307. World Wide Web:www.historians.org/perspectives. E-mail:perspectives@historians.org (editorial issues) orppinkney@historians.org (membership and subscriptionissues). Perspectives on History is distributed to membersof the Association. Individual membership subscriptionsinclude an amount of $7.04 to cover the cost ofPerspectives on History. Institutional subscriptions arealso available. For details, contact the membershipdepartment of the AHA. Single copies of Perspectives onHistory—if available—can be obtained for $8 each.Material from Perspectives on History may be publishedin Perspectives Online (ISSN: 1556-8563), published bythe American Historical Association atwww.historians.org/perspectives. For information aboutinstitutional subscriptions, seewww.historians.org/members/subscriptions.htm.

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I

FROM THE EDITORTownhouse Notes

’m fairly certain that in every course I’vetaught, I led a discussion about what

history is by saying “the past is a foreigncountry” (the opening line of a novel by L.P. Hartley). The point, of course, was tourge class members to resist assuming thatthe people whom we were to study werejust like them. Learning to check thistendency is one of the many skills essentialto historical reasoning and, more broadly,critical thinking.Lately, however, I’ve been thinking that

the meaning of this truism might not beself-evident to students from day one, and

might require continual reflectionthroughout the term.Recent months have witnessed the revival

of nativism, expressed in mainstreamoutlets (including presidential campaigns)as calls for mass deportation ofundocumented immigrants, bans onrefugee resettlement, and a centralizedregistry for American Muslims. Thediversification and internationalization ofUS higher education might also alter theimport of foreign, depending on contextand audience, particularly for studentswho are from populations that areconstantly told that they are “not fromhere” and therefore “not like us.” In mixedclassrooms, the inclination for some US-born students to refer to Americans of thepast collectively as “we” (at least whenthese people were behaving in ways that

appear to align with virtues of today) canbe jarring to others.Is “foreign country,” then, a universally

inviting way to refer to the past today? Andif it isn’t, do we cede too much to bigotrywhen we reconsider using the wordforeign, fearing being overwhelmed by itsnegative connotations?

Calling the past a foreign country meanssomething positive to me as a native-bornAmerican who’s always been curious aboutcultures other than my own. But foreigncan have other meanings to some

students, whether they associateforeignness with the decline of the UnitedStates (as I do not), or with being told thatthey are “un-American” (as I never havebeen told).Were I teaching today, I would initiate a

discussion of course members’ desires toidentify with the past, including my own.Making the past different requires an opendiscussion of how to make it different, andthis process might vary, depending onstudents’ ability to see themselves in thebasic narrative in the first place.I’d hope that as the conversation evolved

over the semester, students would teachthemselves and each other aboutdifference across time. Ultimately, sincethe honest study of history is foundationalto democracy, I’d hope that their

perception of difference would inspirecuriosity, not fear or feelings of exclusion.

—Allison Miller, editor

I

LETTERS TO THEEDITOR

To the editor:

read the article “Black HistoriesMatter” (Perspectives on History,September 2015) with interest.

Unfortunately, the marginalization of theblack experience in the teaching anddepiction of American history is neithernew nor isolated. There is no time orcritical event in the history of this countrythat does not have its African Americancomponent. However, the racial exclusivityof American history in books, film, andacademia is the norm, not the exception.Recently, such a “historical” film series(The Roosevelts: An Intimate History)

contained a segment covering the late 19thand early 20th centuries that pretendedthat the establishment of Jim Crow in thefederal government and navy, the revival ofthe KKK, and the authorization of“separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson bythe Supreme Court never happened. Alsoabsent were the accomplishments ofGeorge Washington Carver and the braveryof the all-black regiments at San Juan Hillduring the Spanish-American War, anevent that was instrumental in the makingof Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation. Thesepivotal events were ignored, just like themissing slave quarters on the recreatedMonticello Plantation.The danger of not including all races in

the depiction and teaching of history—notjust relegating them to a “Black (etc.)History Month”—is that people develop a

skewed view of present conditions andpeople in this country. There areinfluential people who have a very limitedknowledge of the history of this countrymaking decisions that affect us all. Thetragedy in South Carolina resulting in theuproar over flying the Confederate flag onpublic grounds is only the most recentexample of this phenomenon. Theteaching and depiction of inclusiveAmerican history is as important to thefuture of this country as anything else.W.E.B. Du Bois’s seminal work Black

Reconstruction in America should be requiredreading in any reputable collegiateAmerican history curriculum. Portions of itshould be taught at the high school level.Any documentary, monument, or eventpurporting to be an authentic depiction ofevents or eras in American history should

A

include the roles all people played,including those who were affected bythose events.

Larry Adams Hillside, NJTo the editor:

HA president Vicki Ruiz’s well-intentioned “Charm School, fromApplication to Interview to

Campus Visit” (October 2015) serves tofurther infantilize the graduate school andjob search experience. Do adults of thisage (some of whom arrive in grad schoolafter earlier careers in journalism, the law,secondary-school teaching, and otherwise—see, for example, Ian J. Drake, “Second-Career History PhDs: Don’t AbandonYour Past” in the same issue) really need tobe told to “remove all inappropriate socialmedia posts, including cat videos”? If so,

how did they get into grad school to beginwith? Further advice on interview attireand cautions about food stains on clothingseem appropriate for first-day kindergartenadmission, not as advice for serious adultsentering the academy who are alreadygrown-ups. Finally, “remember that youare on stage” is bad advice. You are ahuman being dedicated to humanisticinquiry and conversation with futurecolleagues and students dedicated toseeking imperfect truth. And if suchhonest behavior does not get you the job,so be it. We are not “on stage.” We are onearth.

Ty Geltmaker Los AngelesTo the editor:

n 2006, Waskar Ari, a citizen of Boliviaand a Georgetown PhD, was denied an

Iacademic visa on ideological grounds.

Linda Kerber, Barbara Weinstein, andJames Sheehan (then AHA president,president-elect, and past president)

wrote to Condoleezza Rice in forcefuldisapproval. While their letter condemnedideological denials, it did not oppose themore common—and arguably moreunethical—forms of discrimination used todeny entry to scholars.Academics are frequently denied entry

based on age, social and economic status,and nation of origin. Many unethicaldenials stem from the Visa WaiverProgram, which allows scholars withspecific citizenships to enter forconferences, job interviews, and othernonimmigrant reasons, with a passport.Scholars outside that privileged cohort

must pass an in-person exam (at an

embassy or consulate) for the same right ofentry. Fees ($160, plus an issuance fee ofup to $12) are not reimbursed, regardlessof whether a visa is granted or denied.Exams generally last 30–90 seconds, andin some nations 75 percent of applicantsare rejected.“Because officers have a limited time in

which to make a decision,” notesadjudicator Jessica Vaughn, “they mustrely on known or assumed patterns ofbehavior, or profiles, to help them decideto issue or refuse a visa.” Some officials areforthright on denials: “It is very difficultfor a young, single adult to qualify for avisa,” says Vaughn, “and nearly impossiblefor someone who is unemployed.”

Citizenships: Visa required to attendannual meeting:

Europe (EuropeanEconomic Community)

0%

Australia, New Zealand,Canada

0%

Asia 96%

Latin America (save PuertoRico)

98%

Africa 100%

Muslim-majority nations 100%

Tope Bada, a Nigerian visa consultant,commented: “The visa applicant has nosay. They expect you to pay your visa fee,queue up like a lamb to the slaughter, andtake whatever decision is handed down toyou without any contention or question.”Ari was fortunate to have the support of

AHA officers who questioned the StateDepartment publicly. Why is it that Bada’s

clients, many of whom are in the samecircumstance, don’t? It appears that Ari’scase received attention as a function of hisconnections to social circles in the USacademy. (Weinstein and Kerber bothlearned of the case through colleagues, notAri personally.) This circumstance raisesthe issue of fairness for scholars deniedvisas who lack the social capital of aGeorgetown PhD.I wrote to the signers of the 2006 petition

to inquire why their letter of support wasso selective. Barbara Weinstein said theletter was constructed as such because “theAHA is not primarily an advocacyorganization.”That academics with certain citizenships

are charged up to $172 and obliged totravel great distances (sometimes to othercountries) to take exams so that they may

attend the AHA annual meeting is notonly unacceptable from an advocacystandpoint, it’s also a serious academicfreedom issue. Héctor Huyke, professor ofphilosophy at Universidad de Puerto Rico,said of Latin American academics in theUnited States, “No tienen voz. Por eso susideas no cuentan.” (They have no voice.Because of that, their ideas don’t matter.)If all Mississippians, left-handed people,

single fathers, or any targeted demographic(like a nationality or group thereof) wererequired to take an exam and pay a fee toattend the annual meeting, there would bean uproar.AHA’s support of scholars denied visas is

exceptionalist and arguably elitist, and itfails to address the scale of theinstitutionalized discrimination.Supporting one elite scholar in a sense

obfuscates the gravity of the problem: onecase is not representative, but many in theacademy simply aren’t aware that the visasystem treats academics differently basedon citizenship or that fees are outrageousand scaled by nationality, or that visaexams are studies in profiling.I don’t believe the signers of the 2006

letter (or AHA presidents since) tacitlysupport denying entry to academics whodo not enjoy visa waivers or that theybelieve conference participation should bede facto more difficult for some non-UScitizens than others. A public statementsaying as much would take less time tocompose than the e-mails I’ve exchangedwith former AHA presidents recently.AHA presidents, sitting and past, should

petition the government to:◆ Abolish the Visa Waiver Program.

◆ Initiate visa policies that treat scholars(and all people) equally regardless ofcitizenship.

◆ Make academic (and all other) visaadjudications transparent.Until visa policies treat scholars equally,the AHA should:

◆ Publish a standing letter to thegovernment in opposition to visa denialsbased on ideological, age, national-origin, economic, and social-statusgrounds.

◆ Implement waivers of up to $172 forvisa-applicant scholars who attend theAHA annual meeting.

◆ Encourage universities to compensatevisa-applicant candidates up to $172for campus interviews.

◆ Invite scholars who require visas to

◆ Invite scholars who require visas topresent conference papers via Skype.

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera Universidad de PuertoRico

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Scale in HistoryInterpreting the Themeof the 2017 AnnualMeeting

Patrick Manninghe AHA’s annual meeting is perhaps thebiggest regularly scheduled historicalconference on our planet. Presentations at

Tthe January 2016 meeting in Atlanta, just

completed, addressed an immenserange of historical topics andaudiences. For the Denver

meeting (January 5–8, 2017), the 15members of the Program Committee(under chair Anand Yang of the Universityof Washington and co-chair Edda Fields-Black of Carnegie Mellon University) willselect the best proposals from all thosesubmitted by the February 15 deadline.In addition to the wide range of topics,

each year the program highlights a theme—a particular emphasis for discussion. Forthe 2017 annual meeting, the selectedtheme is “Scale in History.” I mustemphasize that focus on the theme is notrequired of proposals and gives noadvantage in consideration for acceptance.Nevertheless, this column is to invite you

at once to propose a session or poster forthe 2017 program and refer to scale inhistory as an explicit element of the papersor poster in your proposal.By “scale” is meant the varying scales of

geography, time, and topic, as well as theoverall level of social aggregation inhistorical interpretation, from micro tomacro. Thus, a panel might include threepapers, each addressing a given issue atvarious scales. One paper might show localinfluences on regional history; the nextmight show regional influences on localhistory. A poster might convey graphicallythe interplay of scales for the selectedtopic.The term scale is not fully established in

the historical vocabulary. Historians don’thave a formal way of referring to thevarious levels of historical experience or to

their interactions. In other words, “local—regional—global” helps convey the idea ofscale but is not sufficient for identifyingthe various types of scale. The purpose ofhighlighting scale at the 2017 AHA annualmeeting is to see whether this themeresults in more explicit treatment of scaleand whether such discussion is beneficialto the discipline of history. The theme ismeant to stimulate discourse on theadvantages and characteristics of historicalwork at various scales, to trace interactionsbetween the more specific and moregeneral scales, and to help develop alanguage for discussing scale in history.

Wikimedia CommonsOf course, historians address scale verycommonly, but not usually in explicitterms. It is a commonplace that nationalhistory has long held primacy in historicalstudies. Even in national history, however,regional or local examples often serve torepresent the national experience. Theterm microhistory has enjoyed a certaincachet in recent years—the 2002 AHA

meeting included a prominent panelfeaturing representatives from the fields ofmicrohistory and big history.Examples of temporal scale might include

examining a given topic within a decadeand then over several decades. Columbus’s1492 voyage to America had one sort ofimplication in its first decade and quite adifferent set of consequences a centurylater. In topical terms, one might discuss aspecific topic as linked or contrasted witha more general range of related topics.That is, one might contrast watercolorpainting with visual art more broadly.You may find that historical hypotheses

can be expressed in terms of scale. Forinstance, the notion of “emergentproperties” has gained wide attention,especially in big history: the idea thatsocial characteristics at a given level

unintentionally produce a socialcharacteristic at a larger scale—as with theemergence of states out of familystructures. In this case, the impetus is fromthe smaller to the larger scale. In contrast,Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued thatcausation could go in the oppositedirection, and that national action couldaffect the structure of African Americanfamilies. Thus, we can explore historicaldebates not only within scales but as theylink one scale to another.Your session or poster proposal for the

2017 AHA annual meeting in Denver willsurely focus on your principal concerns inresearch, teaching, professional issues, andhistorical debate. But I hope you will alsoput some extra effort into articulating theissues of scale in your analy sis andwhatever historiographical review is

appropriate to your session. In the wake ofthe annual meeting, we may be able to seewhether an explicit focus on scale serves toclarify some of our interpretations.

Patrick Manning is president of the AmericanHistorical Association.

FROM THEEXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR

“Safe From” and“Safe For”Academics, UniversityCulture, and “CampusCarry”

LJames Grossman

ast month the American HistoricalAssociation joined with 28 otherscholarly societies in a statement

that opposes legislation designed tofacilitate the carrying of guns on collegecampuses—commonly known as “campuscarry.” Despite variation from state tostate, the general purpose of suchlegislation is to make it difficult, if notimpossible, for institutions of highereducation to prohibit licensed gun ownersfrom carrying concealed weapons oncampus.Published in this issue of Perspectives on

History, the joint statement derives from aconcern that the presence of concealedweapons on campus is both chilling toacademic freedom and a threat to physical

safety. Standing in front of a classroom orfilling out a grade sheet, instructorsconfront the possibility of studentdissatisfaction; in an environment wherestate law has combined with local culturenot only to legalize but also to legitimatethe presence—and hence the use—oflethal weapons, the implications of thisdissatisfaction escalate. Conflict overevaluation and interpretation is an aspectof teaching that comes with the territorybut should never include even thepossibility that a concealed weapon is partof the equation. Additionally, and perhapsmore importantly, students ought to feelsafe to engage in heated discussionswithout worrying about whether a stronglyheld opinion, a short temper, and aconcealed weapon might combine in adeadly way. Neither faculty nor students

can ignore the reality of college campusesas mostly open spaces, accessible toanyone, especially on foot or bicycle. Thecurrent revival of campus activismcoincides with elevated gun violence acrossa wide spectrum of public venues,including all levels of educationalinstitutions. It therefore makes no sense totie the hands of administrators chargedwith maintaining a safe environment forintellectual inquiry.Indeed, the recent wave of student

protests offers an important context for theconsideration of the idea of a “safe”campus. Academia plays a particular rolein American life, as a site of learning andan institutional home for research. Both ofthese require freedom to take risks,freedom to experiment. Whether thatexperimentation takes place in the

classroom, the laboratory, or arenas ofpolitical protest, administrators need theauthority to shape rules that preventindividuals from bringing guns into the“safe spaces” of the academy, in order toprotect the ideas of all.The idea of “safe space” has itself become

controversial lately. What should not becontroversial is that higher educationought to offer an environment safe fromcertain things—most especially lethalweapons—in order to be safe for otherthings, especially the process of learning.There is no evidence that guns enhancelearning. There is considerable evidencethat an atmosphere of open inquiry, freefrom the threat of physical danger,provides a fertile terrain of inquiry.

Academia plays a particular role inAmerican life, as a site of learningand a home for research. To protect

these incubators of new ideas,administrators need the authority toshape rules that prevent individualsfrom bringing guns into these “safe

spaces.”

In making this statement, the AHA is nottaking a position either on gun control as alarger issue or on the interpretation of theSecond Amendment. While we encourageour members in any state considering“campus carry” legislation to speak outagainst such legislation, we also encourage

all historians to bring historical perspectiveto the broader debate itself. Everything hasa history, including the SecondAmendment, gun culture, the gunindustry, and violent crime. Intelligentpublic policy, whether through legislation,administrative actions, or jurisprudence,requires appropriate and informedattention to historical context.

James Grossman is executive director of theAHA. He tweets @JimGrossmanAHA.

NEWS

Holocaust MuseumProject EngagesCitizen Historians toGain BetterUnderstanding ofWhat AmericansKnew

Seth Denboeventy-three years ago, on December 4,

S1942, a newspaper in Battle Creek,

Michigan, then a town of 40,000people 120 miles west of Detroit,ran a short piece with the headline

“Million Jews Slain in Poland, Is Charge.”The United Press report from New Yorkdeclared:

At least 1,000,000 Polish Jews havebeen executed in the “humanslaughter houses” set up by the Nazisin Poland, it was asserted recently byHenryk Strasburger, finance ministerof the Polish government-in-exile.

What the rest of the world knew aboutthe persecution and murder of the Jews isa longstanding question in Holocauststudies. In the US context, much of whatwe know about the reporting of theHolocaust comes from large urbannewspapers. The regional and local papers

from which many Americans received theirnews remain largely unexplored.A new project launched in November by

the United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum (USHMM) is working to fill thisgap. History Unfolded: US Newspapersand the Holocaust(newspapers.ushmm.org) aims to build asearchable online archive of articles aboutthe Holocaust that appeared in regionaland small-town newspapers across theUnited States. By involving high schoolstudents, lifelong learners, and academicsas volunteer participants in the process ofdiscovery and digitization, the museumhopes to greatly increase our understandingof the transmission of information aboutthe Holocaust across the country. Initially,the museum is seeking bibliographicinformation and images of articles related

to 10 events during the years 1933–45.Starting with news of the opening of theDachau concentration camp in 1933, theinitial list includes events that happened inGermany and occupied Europe, as well aspolitical news from the United States, suchas the notorious speech given by CharlesLindbergh in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1941,and the establishment of the War RefugeeBoard in 1944. Once the project is fullyunderway, the list will expand toapproximately 30 newsworthy events.The Battle Creek Enquirer report of

Strasburger’s account of genocide wasuncovered by students in a local highschool class that assisted the museum inpiloting the project. David Klevan, theproject education lead, says that whileinitial efforts have focused on workingwith high school teachers to involve

students, anyone who is interested inparticipating can contribute. Volunteerscan add information about the articlesthey find on microfilm or in printcollections in their local libraries andhistorical societies via a website thatcollects bibliographical information as wellas page images. Copyright considerations,however, mean that the museum has notincluded full transcription of the articles aspart of the project.So far, over 60 secondary school teachers

and community college professors haveexpressed interest in participating in theproject, as have a number of libraries,historical societies, and museums aroundthe country. History teachers who led pilotgroups report that students whoparticipated felt a deeper connection tothe events of the era than they had

previously. For example, a high schoolteacher from Staunton, Virginia, describedhow, in addition to finding articles aboutthe Holocaust, students found reports oflocal events while reviewing newspapermicrofilms. This prompted spontaneousdiscussions among students about thingsthat had occurred in Staunton at the sametime as major world-historical events, andenabled them to localize a history fromwhich they had previously felt removed.The teacher found that students wereparticularly invigorated by this blend ofthe local and the global. Undergraduatesfrom George Washington University whowere involved in the project also found itexciting to do work that had “real world”applications.

Harris & Ewing Collection (Library of Congress)Charles Lindbergh (center right) at a US naval hangar:The USHMM project is asking citizen historians toconduct research on a variety of historical topicsrelated to the Holocaust, including Lindbergh’s

The museum intends to use the materialsgathered by volunteers to develop a majornew exhibition on Americans and the

related to the Holocaust, including Lindbergh’sfamous 1941 speech in Des Moines, Iowa.Holocaust, scheduled to open in 2018.While the details have yet to be workedout, Elissa Frankl, the project lead,envisions using the collected materials toallow visitors to search for their own townsand display what was reported in theirlocal newspapers.The USHMM had never before tried to

use the web as part of exhibitiondevelopment and education. “In the past,”Klevan says, “it was much more commonto think about the educational elementsafter an exhibition was complete, ratherthan as part of the conception andplanning.” Building an educationalelement that involves learners in exhibitdevelopment also uses digital engagementto create a community around the work ofthe museum.

Mia Ridge, who recently completed a

Mia Ridge, who recently completed adissertation on crowdsourcing, or “citizenhistory,” at the Open University inEngland, explained in a paper given at theInstitute of Historical Research in Londonthat crowdsourcing is increasingly gainingpopularity with cultural heritageinstitutions because it has “helped digitizeand enhance millions of catalog recordsand primary documents.” Ridgeemphasized, however, that it wasimportant for these projects to provide“volunteers with opportunities toundertake meaningful tasks inenvironments with inherently rewardingactivities or goals.”Barriers to participation in the USHMM

project are greater than with projectswhere the materials are already digitized.In an era when many historians (both

professional and amateur) have grown usedto the convenience of being able to accessvast amounts of digitized materials on theweb, project participants in this work haveto travel to libraries and archives, scanthrough microfilms, and manually createrecords. While this barrier may discouragesome, it offers participants a rich set oflearning opportunities, as well as thepossibility of participating in the creationof a new and valuable tool forunderstanding how and what Americansknew about Nazi atrocities.

Seth Denbo is the AHA’s director of scholarlycommunication and digital initiatives. Hetweets @seth_denbo.

NEWS

AHA Welcomes NewStaff Member

Allison Millerhe American Historical Association ispleased to welcome Kritika Agarwal as our

Tnew associate editor, publications. Kritika

comes to the AHA from theUniversity at Buffalo, SUNY (UB),where she recently completed her

PhD in American studies. Kritika’sdissertation provides a social, legal, andcultural history of cases in which UScitizens of Asian descent were legallydivested of their US citizenship throughadministrative processes ofdenaturalization and expatriation. It arguesthat by subjecting Asian Americans tocitizenship loss, the state engaged in formsof “citizenship control,” through which itdefined norms of good citizenship anddisciplined those who refused to comply.Kritika’s interest in immigration history

and Asian American studies comes fromher background as an immigrant in theUnited States. She comes to the AHA with

a range of instructional and administrativeexperiences: in addition to teaching classesin the core curriculum, American studies,and Asian American studies, she alsoworked as an international student adviserat UB, providing immigration and culturalsupport to the university’s large and diverseinternational student body. She alsorecently served as a member of theStudents’ Committee of the AmericanStudies Association and is currently on theAcademic Council of the South AsianAmerican Digital Archive.Kritika received her MA from the

University of Texas at Austin and her BAin journalism and English from AngeloState University in Texas. In her new roleat the AHA, Kritika will be writing andediting articles for Perspectives on History aswell as overseeing the AHA’s blog, AHA

Today. Follow her on Twitter@kritikaldesi.

Allison Miller is editor of Perspectives onHistory. She tweets @Cliopticon.

I

NEWS

Advocacy BriefsAction on “CampusCarry,” Oral History, andK–12 History Education

n November, the American HistoricalAssociation joined 28 other scholarlysocieties in opposing legislation

designed to facilitate the carrying of gunson campus. The Association encourages itsmembers in any state considering suchlegislation to bring the perspective ofhistorians and educators to the debate.(See sidebar for complete statement and

list of signatories.)The Research Division of the AHA

Council also issued a Public Statement onOral History and Human SubjectsRegulation in November. Reflecting itslong-standing commitment to ethicalhistorical inquiry, the AHA has been onthe front lines of scholars’ efforts to urgethe US Department of Health and HumanServices (HHS) to exempt oral history frominstitutional review board screening. TheAHA strongly supports HHS’s recentproposal to exclude oral history from thescrutiny devoted to other areas of humansubject research. (See sidebar for completestatement.)In December, the Association issued a

legislative “action alert” to encouragemembers to contact their congressionalrepresentatives to urge them to reauthorize

the Elementary and Secondary EducationAct. Replacing the controversial No ChildLeft Behind Act, the new law—the EveryStudent Succeeds Act (ESSA)—restoresfunding for history and civics education,slashed to zero by Congress five years ago.The ESSA passed the House and Senate

by lopsided majorities, a much-neededboon for K–12 history and civicseducation. President Obama signed thebill on December 10, 2015. The AHAthanks its members for responding.

American ScholarlySocieties’ Joint

Statement on “CampusCarry” Legislation

The undersigned learned societies are

deeply concerned about the impact ofTexas’s new Campus Carry law on

freedom of expression in Texasuniversities. The law, which was passedearlier this year and takes effect in 2016,allows licensed handgun carriers to bringconcealed handguns into buildings onTexas campuses. Our societies areconcerned that the Campus Carry law andsimilar laws in other states introduceserious safety threats on college campuseswith a resulting harmful effect on studentsand professors.American Academy of ReligionAmerican Anthropological AssociationAmerican Antiquarian SocietyAmerican Association for the History of

MedicineAmerican Folklore Society

American Historical AssociationAmerican Musicological SocietyAmerican Philosophical AssociationAmerican Political Science AssociationAmerican Studies AssociationAmerican Society for AestheticsAmerican Society for Environmental

History American Sociological AssociationAssociation for Slavic, East European, and

Eurasian StudiesAssociation of American GeographersCollege Art AssociationLatin American Studies AssociationLaw and Society AssociationMedieval Academy of AmericaMiddle East Studies AssociationModern Language AssociationNational Communication AssociationNational Council on Public History

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Oral History AssociationSociety for American MusicSociety of Architectural HistoriansSociety of Biblical LiteratureSociety for EthnomusicologyWorld History Association

Public Statement onOral History andHuman Subjects

Regulation (November2015)

he US Department of Health andHuman Services and other federal

agencies have proposed a rule to excludeoral history from federal regulations

designed to protect human subjects. TheAmerican Historical Association supportsthis proposed exclusion and appreciatesthe department’s consideration of self-regulation by historians. Individuals in anydiscipline who plan to do oral historyinterviews should follow the practices andethical codes developed by the OralHistory Association (seehttp://www.oralhistory.org/about/principles-and- practices/). These principles and codesaim to protect the interests of narrators(e.g., by requiring informed consent) whileencouraging the creation of invaluablehistorical records.

A

ADVOCACY

From the NationalCoalition for HistoryCongress RestoresFunding for K–12History Education

Lee Whitefter nearly a decade of false starts,President Obama has signed a neweducation law (PL 114-95) to

replace the controversial No Child LeftBehind Act, which was passed in 2001.On December 9, the US Senate voted 85–

12 to approve the conference report to abill (S. 1177) to reauthorize theElementary and Secondary Education Act.On December 2, the House had approvedthe report by a vote of 359–64.Most importantly for the historical

community, the new law—the EveryStudent Succeeds Act (ESSA)—restorestargeted federal funding for K–12 historyand civics education. The NationalCoalition for History (NCH), the AHA,and the coalition’s member organizationshave engaged in advocacy efforts for nearlyfive years to achieve this goal. Given theretrenchment of federal funding for a hostof programs in the bill, restoration offunding for history education is a majoraccomplishment.In fiscal year (FY) 2012, Congress

terminated funding for the Teaching

American History (TAH) grants programat the Department of Education. Themove also eliminated appropriationsearmarked for civics education and federalfunding for National History Day, anationally recognized program thatincreases student participation in historicalstudies across the country. As a result,since FY ’12 there has been no federalfunding provided for history or civicseducation.ESSA includes four sections that provide

funding streams for K–12 history andcivics education. Two sections arespecifically earmarked for those subjectsand two sections establish grant programsin which the subjects are eligible forcompetitive funding.Within ESSA, Subpart 3: American

History and Civics Education authorizes an

allocation of 1.4 percent of the amountappropriated for all national activitiesrelating to preparing, training, andrecruiting high- quality teachers, principals,and other school leaders for each fiscal yearthe act is in effect (FY ’17 through FY’20). It is important to note that theseamounts will still need to be fundedthrough the annual appropriations process.The maximum allowable allocations are$6,564,000 each for FY ’17 and FY ’18,$6,568,000 for FY ’19, and $6,848,000for FY ’20. (These funding amounts areprovided by the Committee for EducationFunding.)Two programs stand to benefit

substantially from Subpart 3. Presidentialand Congressional Academies forAmerican History and Civics (section2232) would receive not less than 26

percent of the amount available, and otherNational Activities (section 2233) wouldreceive up to 74 percent.Section 2232: Presidential and

Congressional Academies for AmericanHistory and Civics—This sectionestablishes intensive academies for teachersand students to learn more about historyand civics. The secretary of education shallaward up to 12 grants annually on acompetitive basis to fund the academies.

1. Presidential Academy—Each year,the Presidential Academy shall selectbetween 50 and 300 teachers ofAmerican history and civics frompublic or private elementary schoolsand secondary schools to attend aseminar or institute that providesintensive professional developmentopportunities. The program will be led

by a team of primary scholars and coreteachers who are accomplished in thefield of American history and civics. Itwill be conducted during the summeror other appropriate time and will bebetween two and six weeks induration. Teachers will receive astipend to attend the seminar orinstitute.2. Congressional Academy—Each yearthe Congressional Academy shall selectbetween 100 and 300 outstandingstudents of American history and civicsto attend a seminar or institute. To beeligible to attend, a student must berecommended by his or her secondaryschool principal or other school leader.The student must be a secondaryschool junior or senior in the academicyear following attendance at the

seminar or institute. The program willbe conducted during the summer orother appropriate time and will bebetween two and six weeks induration. Students will receive astipend to attend the seminar orinstitute.

Entities eligible to conduct thePresidential and Congressional Academiesinclude institutions of higher education,nonprofit educational organizations,museums, libraries, and research centerswith demonstrated expertise in historicalmethodology or the teaching of Americanhistory and civics. Eligible entities mustprovide matching funds equal to 100percent of the amount of the grant.Section 2233: National Activities—The

purpose of this section is to promote newand existing evidence-based strategies to

encourage innovative instruction inAmerican history, civics and government,and geography; learning strategies; andprofessional development activities andprograms for teachers, principals, andother school leaders. The grants emphasizeinstruction, strategies, activities, andprograms that benefit low-income studentsand underserved populations.ESSA authorizes the secretary of

education to award competitive grants toeligible entities (such as institutions ofhigher education and nonprofit or for-profit organizations) with demonstratedexpertise in the development,implementation, and strengthening ofprograms to teach traditional Americanhistory, civics, economics, and geography.Grants will be awarded for developing,implementing, and disseminating for

voluntary use innovative, evidence-basedapproaches to American history and civiclearning that demonstrate innovation,scalability, and accountability. Grants maybe for professional development. Grantsare for a three-year period with theopportunity for a one-time two-yearrenewal.There are two other potential funding

streams for history and civics. The lawprovides funding to the states to makegrants to local education agencies (LEAs)for a broad range of programs.Section 4107: Well-Rounded Educational

Opportunities—This section providescompetitive funding to LEAs to developand implement programs that providestudents with a “well-rounded education.”One allowable use of grant funds is for“activities to promote the development,

implementation, and strengthening ofprograms to teach traditional Americanhistory, civics, economics, geography, orgovernment education.” LEAs may partnerwith other LEAs, institutions of highereducation, nonprofit organizations,community-based organizations, andbusinesses in developing these programs.Section 4611: Education Innovation and

Research—This section creates a newresearch and innovation fund that allowsLEAs, in conjunction with nonprofitorganizations, to apply for funding tocreate, implement, replicate, or take toscale entrepreneurial, evidence-based,field-initiated innovations to improvestudent achievement and attainment forhigh-need students. Innovations inteaching civics, history, and social studiesare eligible for grants. This could be the

source of much-needed funding for theevaluation of programs.So what happens next?First, the programs authorized in the law

have to be funded by the appropriationscommittees in the House and Senate. TheNCH will be sending alerts in February,when the FY ’17 appropriations processbegins, asking everyone who cares abouthistory, civics, and social studies to contacttheir senators and representatives to urgefull funding for these programs created aspart of the ESSA legislation. Despite thefact that the grant programs now exist, westill must push to have them fully funded.Second, over the course of 2016, the

Department of Education will prepareprogram guidelines and competitivecriteria for the grant programs outlined inESSA. That way, once the funding is made

available, the department will be ready toissue calls for proposals.Finally, the competitive funding awards

will likely be made, and moneysdistributed, for the first time in the secondhalf of calendar year 2017. The change inadministrations in January may push thetimetable further back.The restitution of federal funding for K–

12 history and civics education is reason tocheer, and we should recognize theimportant role that advocacy played inensuring that K–12 history continues toplay an important role in our children’seducation.

Lee White is executive director of the NationalCoalition for History.

VIEWPOINTS

Can the South AsianAcademic Speakfrom Abroad?Colonialism andAnticolonialism in Modi’sAmerica

Priya Satiaoday’s India produces news of peacefulprotesters killed, mob lynchings of Indianssuspected of violating beef bans, andshootings of rationalists (critics of idol

Tworship and superstition). Publicopinion in India and abroad isincreasingly aghast at the regime ofPrime Minister Narendra Modi of

the Hindu-nationalist BJP party. Indianwriters, artists, and scholars have returnedprestigious government awards to protestthe government’s promotion of violenceand a politics of hatred. Scholars of Indiaabroad have joined in these actions—mostrecently, a letter of protest by 50 Indianhistorians was echoed by an open letterfrom their overseas colleagues. But thisinternational solidarity revealed anotherfacet of the regime’s intolerance: it turnsout that in Modi’s India, the South Asianacademic cannot speak from abroad. Andthis has important implications for howthe global academy, anchored as it is in theUnited States, thinks about its role in

politics around the world.Modi is popular, in and outside India.

Last fall, tens of thousands of IndianAmericans in the United States receivedhim enthusiastically during his high-profilevisit to Silicon Valley, where he also metwith the CEOs of Google, Facebook, andother major corporations to promote hisDigital India initiative. He also facedprotests from many South Asianminorities, for many of whom the UnitedStates is a refuge from an India in whichnational community is routinely forgedthrough violence against minorities.Academics also stirred controversy: some130 US-based faculty working on SouthAsia–related matters from differentdisciplines and institutions signed an openletter registering their concerns about thepotential privacy abuses of Digital India,

particularly in light of Modi’s record ofpolicing dissent and curbing religiousfreedom.I signed the letter, following it up with an

op-ed in the Huffington Post. I and theother signers of the letter immediatelyreceived a stream of hate mail accusing usof sabotaging India’s development andthreatening to blacklist us (even whileironically asserting Hindus’ particular“tolerance”). To these self-appointeddefenders of India, many writing fromaddresses outside India, those speakingcritically from perches at Americanuniversities wittingly or unwittingly do thework of Western imperialism inundermining India’s progress.Most of the scholars who signed the letter

about Digital India have unquestionablyanticolonial credentials. Many position

themselves as scholarly ambassadors ofIndia, seeing their role in the Americanacademy as partly one of correctingcenturies-old Western misperceptionsdeeply embedded in scholarship on theregion. Moreover, the universities theyspeak from are hardly exclusively“Western” but have long since evolved into“global” institutions in terms of studentbody and faculty. Indeed, many of them—Oxford, Cambridge, UC Berkeley,Columbia—served as critical sites ofanticolonial intellectual ferment andorganization in the last century, attractingkey figures in the making of independentIndia, from Mahatma Gandhi andJawaharlal Nehru to the founders of theGhadar movement and B. R. Ambedkar,none of whom seemed any lesspatriotically Indian for their sojourn

abroad. These universities, elitist thoughthey were and are, also promotedintellectual and political connectionsamong anticolonialists from different partsof the world, and proved critical to the“third world” bonds of the 20th century.

S. Lin, Alliance for Justice and AccountabilityProtests against Indian prime minister Narendra Modiat San Jose’s SAP Center, September 27, 2015

Leaving aside the matter that Modi’sfollowers eagerly denigrate figures likeNehru for their relative secularism, the

view that humanists at Americanuniversities are tools of imperialism seemsabsurd given the continual evidence(including events of last fall) thatAmerican humanities departments remainbastions of antiracism and anticolonialism.But, as a letter to me from one angryGujarati man revealed, the 2003 invasionof Iraq provides critical legitimacy to thatseemingly paranoid view, proving thatWestern media can propagate enoughmisinformation to generate support forregime change wherever the United Stateslikes. “Western media” and its scholarlyauthors seem sinister in a new way. ToModi supporters, any criticism of him riskstriggering an American call for regimechange in India. There are no critics, onlysaboteurs. It does not matter whether theacademic abroad is ethnically Indian and

bearing an assuredly Hindu name, likemyself. Because I am employed byStanford University, Modi’s social mediaminions consider me an agent of Americanimperialism.So where does this leave us? Can a South

Asian scholar of South Asia in the Westspeak critically about India without itbackfiring? Presumably, Modi’s supporterswould be content for such scholars tocontinue to speak out against Westernmisperceptions of India’s history andreligions. But what if they stray fromcriticizing the colonial to the postcolonialrecord, while, say, commenting on stateuse of caste or linguistic categories orpolicing powers? After all, Modi himself isall about pulling India out of its colonialhangover.

Still, I am sympathetic to the notion that,

Still, I am sympathetic to the notion that,even for the most well-meaning scholar, aposition in the West might distort hercriticism of India and fuel old Westernhabits of denigrating the subcontinent.Much of Western media’s coverage ofmuch of the world is problematic, andultimately it is up to Indians in India tosort their political future—the wave ofprotests by writers and scholars in Indiahas clearly had enormous impact.Meanwhile, those of us in the West cancontinue to correct the record on SouthAsia’s past in our Western context.But for these distinct roles to be

maintained, two conditions must hold.First, Indians within India must beallowed to speak, so they can shape theirpolitical future. The scholars in Americanuniversities spoke up during Modi’s visit

partly to point out how the regime hasroutinely quashed dissenting views withinIndia. It compiles blacklists, threatensnongovernmental organizations focused onhuman rights and the environment, andperiodically shuts down Internetcommunications (even while promotingDigital India). As long as Indianrationalists can be gunned down forexpressing their ideas, Indians abroad mustcontinue to speak along with those whoare speaking at home—not least becausethe bonds of scholarship and art transcendnational borders in too many ways to drawa clear line between those at home andabroad, practically speaking.The second condition is that Modi must

contain his own political acts within India.When he brings Indian politics out ofIndia, he must expect the debate to follow

him. Despite his anticolonial rhetoric andsuspicion of Western media, he seemsincapable of resisting the pull of the West.This is partly because of the cult-likesupport for him and his right-wing Hindunationalism among many Indians abroad;the Modi phenomenon is as internationalas the protests against him. That globalenthusiasm is fueled by Hindus’ own bitterexperiences as minorities abroad. Modi’strip to Silicon Valley sought to capitalizeon this celebrity and wounded nationalpride. And this makes his concern aboutSouth Asians’ criticism in Western mediaentirely illegitimate. His own trip was a PRevent for the consumption of Western asmuch as Indian media, to detract fromcriticism of his policies at home. Hissupporters have no problem with his use ofthe media to manipulate Indian politics

from the West (while expectingunquestioning assent from South Asianswho receive him there). They have noproblem with his allowing Facebook to usea Government of India initiative topromote the controversial Facebookproduct internet.org. Who indeed is thestooge of Western imperialism in thispicture?The problem with Modi’s Western

strategy, apart from this odorous corporatesponsorship, is that the West is home notonly to fervent Hindu nationalists but tovictims of their majoritarian ideology. Aslong as the Indian government continuesto treat its citizens in a manner that forcesmany of them to seek refuge in places likeCalifornia, an Indian PM abroad mustexpect to hear harsh words when heventures to their adopted homeland. They

are the disowned; they do not have theoption to go back to India to speak. Sothey will speak here. The only way tosilence their public shaming of today’sIndia in Western media is for Indians inIndia to abandon Hindu chauvinism andbegin to make restitution for the past. ThePM’s trip showed that today, Indiansabroad who hold even mildly contrarianviews are no longer immigrants, but exiles,castoffs, refugees. It is a new India, indeed.

Priya Satia is professor of history at StanfordUniversity. She is the author of Spies inArabia: The Great War and the CulturalFoundations of Britain’s Covert Empire inthe Middle East (Oxford University Press,2008) and is completing a new book, Empireof Guns.

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PERSPECTIVES ONCULTURE

Why Is WilliamBradford Smiling?Ric Burns’s The Pilgrims

Karin Wulfike so much about “colonialAmerica,” the importance attachedto the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving is

properly located in the 19th century.Abraham Lincoln only declared the lastThursday of November a national holidayin 1863, though there had been scattered

Thanksgiving days in North Americabefore this, including the approximation atPlymouth, when the Pilgrims hosted theirWampanoag neighbors for a harvest feastin 1621. “Thanksgiving” as we know itcame about in large measure due to thetireless advocacy of 19th-century author,editor, and New Englander Sarah JosephaHale, who in 1837 began to write aboutthe importance of a second nationalholiday (July 4 being the first). Incombination with a rising generation ofNew England historians and antiquarians,these regional partisans attached thehistory of a small band of religious radicalsto an ideal of American national originsand celebration.Despite this hardly hidden history, we are

annually reminded to unlearn the Pilgrimmythology. On cue arrives The Pilgrims

from Ric Burns, which premieredThanksgiving week on PBS’s AmericanExperience. The film’s promotionalmaterials promise that it will “tell the truestory of the Pilgrims, a small group ofreligious radicals whose determination toestablish a separatist religious communityplanted the seeds for America’s founding.”Burns relies heavily on two recent popularhistories, Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower(2007) and Nick Bunker’s Make Haste fromBabylon (2011). This is “a story universallyfamiliar in broad outline, but almostentirely unfamiliar to a general audience inits rich and compelling historicalactuality.”There is an obvious ambivalence at the

heart of this film. Burns wants to exposethe reality of the Pilgrims’ experience,which is decidedly not the American origin

story, even while he capitalizes on itsoutsize place in American history. JillLepore of Harvard University gives awaythe game early on in the film when shenotes that what is astonishing about thePlymouth story is the way that centeringthe account of this small group of“religious nutters” (so termed by PaulineCroft of Royal Holloway, University ofLondon) for so long marginalized otherhistories, including those of NativeAmericans and the more than 10 millionenslaved Africans. Responding to thehistorical construction of the Pilgrims is atleast as important as recounting the historyof their colonial venture. The Pilgrimsdoesn’t do this, however. The film is reallytelling three stories. First, it is an accountof a small separatist congregation from theEnglish village of Scrooby, an even smaller

group of which migrated first to Hollandand then to a colony on Cape Cod.Secondly and more briefly, The Pilgrims isthe tale of their often but not alwaysviolent encounters with the native peopleof New England. Third and mostprofoundly, it is the history of a single text,William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation,which frames the film.Bradford was not the leader of the

Scrooby separatists, nor was he the firstgovernor of the Plymouth colony or itsonly chronicler. But it was Bradford’s OfPlymouth Plantation, a deeply personaljournal about the Pilgrims and thePlymouth colony’s first three decades, thatcame to dominate 19th-century NewEngland historians’ accounts. Unlike someother contemporary depictions of theEnglish colonies in North America,

Bradford’s history was not published, letalone popular. The manuscript circulatedin the late 17th and 18th centuries amonga small group of early historians of NewEngland, then disappeared in the yearsfollowing the Revolution and was finallyfound in England.

Tim Cragg/PBS

A version was published in 1857, and theoriginal was returned to Boston in 1897, togreat acclaim. Its restoration was greeted,Kathleen Donegan of the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, tells us, as “ascriptural event.” In the wake of the post–Civil War assertions of New England as theseat of American identity, Of PlymouthPlantation helped cement Plymouth as theAmerican origin story. Plimoth Plantationopened as an outdoor historical museum in1947. This critical piece of the myth’sconstruction—how 19th- and then 20th-century New Englanders asserted thecentrality of Plymouth to the founding ofAmerica—gets a quick five minutes at theend of The Pilgrims.The late Roger Rees, a distinguished stage

actor perhaps best known to Americanaudiences as the love interest of Kirstie

Tim Cragg/PBSRoger Rees as William Bradford in Ric Burns’s Pilgrims.

Alley’s character on the sitcom Cheers,portrays Bradford—mostly by reading fromOf Plymouth Plantation. With stringy hair,straggly beard, and haunted eyes and toneof voice, Rees prompts viewers tounderstand that the Pilgrims struggled andsuffered a great deal. We don’t see muchof any other historical figures, and thenmostly around corners, through windowsand behind fauna, and in fuzzy crowdscenes. We also don’t see much religiousfervor. (During a family viewing of ThePilgrims, I was asked why “being religiousmeans staring off into the middle distancewith misty-eyed melancholy.”) Actually,we don’t see much energy at all. In thissedately paced film, even running happensin slow motion.The violence and intensity of early

colonial New England is mostly left to the

deep bench of commentators to narrate.Donegan, the author of Seasons of Misery:Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in EarlyAmerica (2014), becomes The Pilgrims’sShelby Foote, its interpretive center. Shetells us what the enormity of death, firstfrom plague and then in war, meant forNative Americans and, though in numberspale by comparison, for the colonists. Shetells us what William Bradford would not,which is, within a few years ofcolonization, the meaning of beheading anIndian and putting his head on a pike atPlymouth, where it would remain fordecades. She suggests that Thanksgiving,which is so much about bounty andcommunity today, was in its first Plymouthiteration a cover for incredible loss and theutter absence of human fellowship.

Nineteenth-century NewEnglanders’ assertions of Plymouth’s

centrality to the founding ofAmerica get a quick five minutes at

the end of The Pilgrims.

Ric Burns was not the only one whooffered to reintroduce us to the Pilgrimslast Thanksgiving. The NationalGeographic Channel teamed with Sony toproduce a two-part, four-hour drama,Saints & Strangers, which the AP called “theGame of Thrones version of the firstThanksgiving.” What is mostdisappointing about these and other effortsthat reinforce the importance of thePilgrims even while they wink and nod tothe mythology, is the subject position they

require the reader/viewer to take. “We” arestill oriented from the east, coming west.The story is still the Europeans’ story. Theprotagonists are still the colonizers.Donegan remarks at the very end of ThePilgrims that “somewhere, WilliamBradford might have smiled,” and thoughshe is referring to the triumphal return ofhis manuscript history of Plymouth toBoston in the late 19th century, andthough throughout the film he is portrayedas resolutely morose, one suspects she isright.

Karin Wulf is director of the OmohundroInstitute of Early American History and Cultureand a professor of history at the College ofWilliam & Mary.

FEATURES

Y

BackwardCompatibleGamers as a PublicHistory Audience

Robert Whitakerou would be hard pressed to find alarge public audience as interestedin history as video game players.

Games with historical settings make upsome of the most popular video gametitles, particularly in the action-adventureand strategy genres. Moreover, gamersoften use development tools to add orimprove historical material in previouslyreleased games (called modifications, or

mods). Yet this enthusiasm for historyoften lacks any connection to historicalscholarship. Most game developmentstudios use history as mere windowdressing, and the few studios that doresearch the past often use in-houseresearch teams that do not employ aprofessional historian. Players who createmodifications base their additions on aquick reading of Wikipedia rather than usethat decidedly un–gamer-friendly place,the library. Should we assume that thislack of connection between gamers andscholarship means gamers lack interest inthe work of historians, or might we see itas due to the absence of a compelling wayto deliver scholarship to players?I have been grappling with this question

for the last three years. As a gamer andhistorian, I have always looked for

opportunities to bring the two fieldstogether. I admired many of the historicalvideo games I played, but I feltknowledgeable criticism could greatlyimprove them. I also believed thepopularity of historical games meant thatplayers themselves would welcome thistype of analysis. I began to test thesetheories in fall 2012 with a series of essaysabout historical video games for thewebsite Not Even Past. I enjoyed writingthese essays, but I became frustrated withmy inability to accurately describe theexperience of playing these games for myreaders, particularly academics withoutgaming experience. At the same time, Iwanted to provide nonacademic playerswith the best historical analysis possible. Iknew that despite my years of study therewas no way I could authoritatively discuss

every single historical topic portrayed inthese games.

Adventures in time: The popular web series History Respawned featuresacademic historians analyzing the context and accuracy of video games.

I hemmed and hawed about what to doabout these problems throughout thesummer of 2013 until I settled on the ideaof attempting a “let’s play” video seriesfeaturing historians, to be called HistoryRespawned. “Let’s play” is a popular genreof Internet video in which gamersbroadcast footage of themselves playing agame while providing commentary. Thesevideos offer viewers an excellent sense ofthe gaming experience, but they often lackcritical analysis. I decided that I wouldcapture footage of myself playing historicalvideo games, and then overlay that footagewith a recorded conversation between meand a historical expert on the time periodin question. My goal was to provide theviewer with background informationwithout being entirely dismissive of thegame’s use of history, and to keep the

conversation at a level that would beaccessible to a wide audience.Furthermore, I decided to focus the serieson the most popular video game titles inorder to give my videos the biggest possibleimpact.The release of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black

Flag in November 2013 provided anexcellent opportunity to put these ideasinto practice: the game was well reviewedby critics and incredibly popular withplayers, and it dealt with the so-calledgolden age of piracy, a period of historyconstantly drowning in publicmisperception. When the first HistoryRespawned video with Bryan Glass (TexasState Univ.) on Assassin’s Creed IV debuted,however, I worried that the gaming publicwould find the content too academic orthat they would be turned off by the

length of the video (46 minutes: brisk byacademic standards; glacial by anyoneelse’s). Bryan and I felt that we would beincredibly lucky if the video received a fewhundred views. Instead, the episode gotthe exact opposite reaction. Not only wasthe response to the show overwhelminglyenthusiastic, but the comment section forthe video was filled with hopes that futureepisodes would be longer and includemore in-depth historical analysis. Thevideo reached over 11,000 views in threeweeks and has been featured on severalprominent video game websites, includingGamasutra, Kotaku, Machinima, PCGames, and Rock Paper Shotgun.

The comment section for the firstHistory Respawned video was filled

with hopes that future episodeswould be longer and include more

in-depth historical analysis.

The comments to the first video (over200, spread between YouTube and othersites) revealed two things that I had longsuspected. First, players love historicalsettings but want to know if these settingsare accurate. Second, they want to learnabout the accuracy of the game’s historyfrom professional historians wheneverpossible. The sudden appearance ofhistorians on YouTube discussing videogames made some viewers immediatelysuspicious. One commenter on Redditwondered if the show’s experts were actualprofessional historians or self-proclaimed“historians.” Rather than taking this

response as an insult, I saw it as anencouraging sign. It confirmed that manyplayers were not willing to accept historicalknowledge from just anyone, and thatgenuine historical expertise would bevalued so long as it could be delivered insuch a way that players could comfortablyand readily consume it.History Respawned now includes 17

videos covering a number of different timeperiods and historical topics. Through itsinterviews with professional historians, theseries has given gamers background onpiracy in the 18th century (Assassin’s CreedIV: Black Flag), dynasties in feudal Japan(Total War: Shogun 2), slavery in theCaribbean (Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry),everyday life in the Eastern Bloc (Papers,Please), and the contested memory of theFrench Revolution (Assassin’s Creed: Unity).

Despite this breadth of history, the serieshas only scratched the surface of historicalcontent in video games. There are dozensof non-Western history games that theseries has yet to tackle, as well as a numberof older historical video games that shouldbe considered because they remain popularand relevant despite their age. Moreover,there has been a push among the series’viewers to include a more diverse set ofhistorians and historical approaches to theshow’s analysis. This point was a majortopic of interest when I presented at apanel on history and video games in March2015 at PAX East, one of the biggestannual video game conferences in theworld. Talking with my fellow panelistsand the audience, we agreed that thoseinvolved with video games—developers,critics, and players—need to do more to

encourage game developers to tell storiesthat go beyond popular Anglo-Americansubjects or themes. This point seemsparticularly pressing for the video gamecommunity, which is so often rife withracism and sexism.This final issue is where I think historians

are well placed to lend their assistance.The game developers and players that Imet at PAX all want historical games thatare not only compelling, but also accurateand diverse. Yet these two groups willoften be the first to admit that they lackthe necessary knowledge to make thesegames. I believe that historians who pursuethis audience will not only find anenthusiastic reception but also may comeaway with new tools with which to tellnew types of interactive historicalnarratives. Historians, however, need to

reach this audience where they arecurrently located. Perspectives on History(November 2014) published an essay inwhich James Grossman and JasonSteinhauer called for the emergence of“history communicators” to help translatehistorical scholarship for the public. I agreethat our field needs translators to help thepublic understand and appreciate ourwork, but these translators need to use theright mediums to make sure that messageis heard. Members of the gaming publicmay be interested in intellectual thought,but very rarely are they interested in thetraditional trappings (such as books,magazines, or newspapers) of that thought.We need communicators who are willingto engage the public, but also able to usethe 21st-century mediums the publicengages with. I believe that video games

will prove to be one of the most popularmediums of the 21st century, and that it iswell past time for historians to activelyengage with that medium and itsaudience.

Robert Whitaker is a research fellow and visitingassistant professor with the Waggonner Center atLouisiana Tech University. His research project“Policing Globalization” analyzes therelationship between the British empire andinternational police organizations, such asInterpol. He serves as an editor for the BritishScholar Society and is the creator of the videoseries History Respawned.

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FEATURES

The Past,ConditionallyAlternative History inSpeculative Fiction

Carl Abbottn November 20, Amazon PrimeInstant Video brought alternativehistory to the small screen with

its made-for-streaming series The Man inthe High Castle. The source is a novel byscience fiction writer Philip K. Dick,whose work has previously spawned movies

such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, andMinority Report. With The Man in the HighCastle, however, the author imagined not apossible future, but a different Americanpast, in which World War II has left Japanoccupying the Pacific coast, Germanyrunning the eastern half of the nation, anda remnant United States governmentcentered in Colorado. The Amazon seriesis an opportunity for historians to thinkseriously about this increasingly populargenre that unmoors the historicalimagination from its evidentiary anchors.Alternative history is a subgenre of SF

(“science fiction” or “speculative fiction”)that creates a fictional world in which anaction or event in the past has causedhistory to diverge from its known course.For the quickest and funniest introduction,see James Thurber’s 1930 classic from the

New Yorker, “If Grant Had Been Drinkingat Appomattox.” In fewer than a thousandwords, Thurber presented a befuddled andboozy Sam Grant who reverses the knownhistorical outcome by surrendering toRobert E. Lee.The story is wickedly funny, and it is also

a teaching opportunity. How do weseparate historical myths like Grant’s tastefor whiskey from realities of life in theCivil War armies? How did each side copewith the search for effective commanders?Did the South have the capacity tocontinue the war if the Army of NorthernVirginia had found time to regroup?Alternative histories fictionalize the

counterfactuals that are embedded inhistorical thinking. In so doing, the genrecan help both scholars and students tobroaden their historical imaginations.

Skilled practitioners not only setintellectual puzzles (“what if . . . ?”) butfill their scenarios with interesting andcompelling characters who provide a senseof everyday life in a different time andplace. Dick did this very well in HighCastle, published in 1962 and set in thesame year. After half a generation,Americans are adjusting to defeat.Interlocked stories include a San Franciscoantiques dealer trying to please Japaneseclients and a Colorado Springs waitresswho fantasizes about a resistancemovement. There is enough action to drivea TV series, but the author’s deeperinterest is in how the characters adjust tothe new circumstances he’s imagined forthem (including yuppies flocking to theGerman-occupied eastern states, where

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opportunity beckons to ambitious non-Jews).

Alternative History andHistorical Thinking

lternative history fiction can look a lotlike standard historical fiction, but

with a twist. Frederic Jameson has argued

Jay Javier/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

that SF in the 20th century picked up thefunction of historical fiction in the 19th—to show readers the possibility and realityof historical change—and that alternativehistory is a special subgenre. Since WalterScott, historical novelists have insertedfictional characters and stories into knownevents while leaving the overall contours ofhistory (we might call it textbook history)unaltered. Alternative history writers alsomix real and fictional people, but theyspin the kaleidoscope to make newpatterns, doubling down by coupling someof the tropes and the tone of historicalfiction with the SF imagination.Alternative histories provide an intriguing

window on the ways in which particularpeoples understand their pasts, for thegenre’s practitioners often reimagine eventsand turning points that are central to

national mythologies. It is no surprise thatAmericans like to re-envision the Civil Warand the Indian wars. British writersrepeatedly imagine life after Germanvictory in 1941, with the United Kingdomsharing the fate of Vichy France. For thisAmerican reader, it is instructive to seehow deeply the Elizabethan era isembedded in the English sense of nationalgreatness, for multiple writers havespeculated on the retrogressive results ifthe Tudor settlement had failed and theReformation had fizzled. For example, inThe Alteration (1976), Kingsley Amispondered the consequences if MartinLuther had become Pope Germanian andHenry VIII had never reigned. In the mid-20th century, the Roman Catholic Churchkeeps a tight hand on the controls inEurope and frowns on science. Diesel

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engines are permitted, but electricity isforbidden because its “invisible” operationseems to impinge on the spiritual realm.The “alteration” of the title, and thecenter of the character-driven plot, is thecastration of a boy singer for the Vaticanchoir. Amis’s underlying assumption,which he shared with Keith Roberts inPavanne (1968), is that EnglishProtestantism is progressive andCatholicism repressive—evidence of thestaying power of Tudor mythmaking.

Agency and Structurelternative history dramatizes theperpetual tussle between structure

and agency. What we can call “for want ofa nail” stories play off the near-eternaldebates about the outcomes of famousbattles and assassinations. Some are

thoughtful and some are hack work, butthey keep coming in endless succession.Thurber’s take on the surrender atAppomattox has not stilled the publicappetite for stories about Waterloo andGettysburg.One novel that engages directly with

contingency and agency as an intellectualchallenge is Past Conditional: A RetrospectiveHypothesis (1975, translated 1989), afascinating entry by Italian novelist GuidoMorselli. Like much alternative history,Past Conditional centers on imagining theprocesses of change. During World War I,an Austrian army engineer conceives a planto introduce a strike force into Italy byconnecting a set of mining tunnels underthe Alps. After bureaucratic stop-and-gothat reaches to Austro-Hungarian chief ofstaff Conrad von Hötzendorf, the plan

succeeds, Italy drops out of the war, andFrance soon follows. Morselli worked inthe heavily theorizing world of postwarItalian intellectuals, and his intent was toattack structural models of history. ScholarDaniele Visentini has pointed out that theItalian title Contro-passato prossimo moredirectly implies Morselli’s belief that, inVisentini’s words, “history is not rationaland the most important aim of the novel isto re-address it and re-create it.”1

Kim Stanley Robinson’s sweepingreimagination of world history in Years ofRice and Salt (2002) takes the opposite sideof the argument. Robinson, one of themost versatile and distinguished ofcontemporary SF writers, explores a worldin which 14th-century plagues have killedeveryone in Europe. The Islamic world,India, and China are free to develop

without European interference—in effectinverting the narrative of WilliamMcNeill’s Rise of the West and the work ofall the scholars who have tried to explainEurope’s geopolitical success. Robinsonproposes a world system that moves in thesame broad directions as our familiarworld. Islamic scholars in Samarkandreplicate Newtonian science; India startsthe Industrial Revolution; and in the 20thcentury, the Islamic world and China arelocked in an endless trench war across theheart of Asia. Readers do not have to agreewith Robinson’s extrapolations toappreciate the thought experiment ofimagining the world without Europe.

Parameters and Afterthoughts

A lternative history is a booming field.Aficionados have presented the

Sidewise Awards since 1995. Mainstreamnovelists like Michael Chabon and PhilipRoth enjoy alternative history’s speculativefreedom. Academics are also increasinglyinterested.2 In April 2015, the Universityof Liverpool hosted the Sideways in Time:Alternative History and CounterfactualNarratives conference, which drew heavilyfrom literature and cultural studies.Historians can join in, too; instructors andstudents can compare the sort of futuresimagined by Amis and Robinson with thespeculative essays collected by historiansPhilip Tetlock, Richard Ned Lebow, andGeoffrey Parker in Unmaking the West:“What-If?” Scenarios That Rewrite WorldHistory.3

Because I am a historian, the writers I

Because I am a historian, the writers Ifind most interesting work with the knownmaterials of a particular time and placeand explore possible human responses toimagined situations that lie within therealm of foreclosed possibilities. None ofthe books that I’ve highlighted sendscharacters back and forth among theinfinite parallel worlds of quantum theory.None of them depends on miraculousinventions that emerge before their time oron time travelers to alter the past—noConnecticut Yankees allowed. They areserious efforts to think about thecontingencies of history in ways thatchallenge and entertain at the same time.

Alternate Takes onUnited States History

◆ Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee(1953): Different outcomes atGettysburg.

◆ Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain(1998): John Brown’s raid succeeds.

◆ Philip Roth, The Plot against America(2004): Charles Lindbergh is electedpresident in 1940.

◆ Michael Chabon, The YiddishPolicemen’s Union (2007): EuropeanJews find refuge from Nazi Germanyin Alaska.

Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies andplanning, emeritus, at Portland State Universityand a past president of the Pacific Coast Branchof the American Historical Association. He isthe author of a number of books on the historyof American cities, as well as Frontiers Pastand Future: Science Fiction and the

American West (2006) and ImaginingUrban Futures: Science Fiction Cities andWhat We Might Learn from Them(forthcoming).

Notes1. E-mail communication, March 23,2015.2. The standard introduction is framedwithin the field of literary scholarship:Karen Hellekson, The Alternative History:Reconfiguring Historical Time (Kent StateUniversity Press, 2001).3. Philip Tetlock, Richard New Lebow,and Geoffrey Parker, eds., Unmaking theWest: “What-If?” Scenarios That Rewrite WorldHistory (University of Michigan Press,2006).

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FEATURES

ClassroomSoundtrackInspiring HistoricalAnalysis through Music

Alex Hidalgoilence and nervousness greeted mewhen I walked into the classroomthat early fall afternoon.

At the technology station in the front ofthe room, I launched a browser and calledon the services of YouTube. Momentslater, James Brown’s “People Get Up and

Drive Your Funky Soul” blasted throughthe classroom speakers.Students looked around the room, unsure

of the protocol. Then heads began tobounce as Mr. Dynamite crunched tight,horn-filled grooves. Within seconds,students started to speak to each other,casting away the awkward silence thathung uncomfortably over our room.For the last couple of years, I’ve played

music in my survey of colonial LatinAmerican history at Texas ChristianUniversity before the start of each class. Atfirst, my intention was simply to break theice, to get students to relax, to interactwith one another and get acquainted withme. But as I’ve experimented withincorporating music into my teaching, I’vecome to use it to set moods and reflectthemes before the start of class, and as a

primary source during lectures. Combiningmusic of various genres and time periods,I’ve found, promotes useful discussionsabout the past.The survey examines the social and

cultural development of the region fromthe arrival of Columbus in the Caribbeanin the late 15th century to the wars ofrevolution in the early 19th. The majorityof students take the course to fulfillgeneral education requirements, and manywill never take another history class duringtheir college careers. Some students havean interest in the region and its culture,while to others it’s the least of several evils.Like many history faculty, I sometimesface the issue of motivating the lattergroup. Music helps me combat studentindifference.

We met at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays andThursdays. Students from

Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama, Jordan, andNigeria mingled with those from LosAngeles, Fort Worth, Houston, El Paso,and New Orleans. Recent high schoolgrads shared space with graduating seniors,veterans, and first-generation and returningcollege students evenly split along genderlines. Few had qualms about expressingtheir opinions, and I quickly learned that,as a group, they shared a wry sense ofhumor.For our second meeting, Paco de Lucia’s

“Cepa Andaluza,” a flamenco compositioncharacterized by fast rhythmic strummingknown as bulería, set the mood for our classon Muslim and Christian society in theIberian Peninsula leading up to 1492.

Students read a series of decrees issued byIslamic authorities to limit contactbetween the two groups. We paid closeattention to the negative language used todescribe Christian men and women toanalyze the legacy of struggle andaccommodation that characterized theperiod.

Martin Fisch, phono (cc)To help us examine our findings aboutMuslims’ attitudes compared to those ofChristians, I played the one-verse song“Tell me, Moorish bitch!”—part of the16th- century compendium of Spanishmusic known as the Cancionero deMedinaceli—as interpreted by theColombian early Hispanic ensemble

Música Ficta. Students read a translationof the lyrics, a story of unrequited love,contempt, and frustrated desire, pushingthem to assess interpersonal relationshipsthat developed across religious and ethnicdivides.As background for my lesson plan, I

turned to several sources. Harmonia, anationally syndicated public radio programon early music, allows listeners to accesspast shows featuring dances, carols, andreligious compositions from across theregion. Geoffrey Baker and TessKnighton’s Music and Urban Society inColonial Latin America (2011) provides anice selection of written primary sourcescontextualizing the relationship betweensound and ritual, one of which I translatedfrom Spanish for students to read. AndColonial Latin America: Music, Sounds, and

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Silence as Historical Sources, an exciting newdigital platform developed by historianVera Candiani and musicologist IreriChávez-Bárcenas (currently subscription-only), features annotated sections thatweave written and visual primary sourcestogether with recordings. These sourceshave encouraged me to think about theway auditory stimuli shaped theexperiences of historical actors and how toincorporate sound and music into lecturesand assignments.

y classroom soundtrack includesselections that are openly

anachronistic. As a prelude to a discussionof the Inquisition in the New World, Ichose “Spirit in the Dark,” performed liveby Aretha Franklin in 1971 at the FillmoreWest. We evaluated the case of an

American-born Spanish woman possessed,authorities believed, by an evil spirit thatmisdirected her relationships with men.Together we questioned the state’srationale for policing people’s conduct,especially in relation to the behavior ofwomen in colonial society. The idea of theQueen of Soul at her organ, commandingthe stage in front of several thousand fans,gave our gender analysis heft: Franklin’sformidable singing and musicianshipdelivered a message not only of thesubversion of traditional roles in music butalso across time.The session continued with a short

account of an auto de fe, a public ritual tocondemn heretics, held in Lima onDecember 31, 1625.1 Paying attention tothe way the document describes theevent’s use of music helped the class

evaluate institutional efforts to punishtransgressors. The source’s narratordescribed the pageantry and drama ofinquisitorial ceremony, including thesonorous elements that accompanied thepenitent act: the use of buglers andtrumpeters to announce the procession ofdignitaries, and the sorrowful hymns sungby priests during different stages of theritual.We listened to the counter-Reformation

Spanish composer Tomás Luis deVictoria’s hymn “Vexilla Regis [RoyalBanners],” which was intoned by the twochoirs that accompanied the clerics,ministers, and officials of the Holy Officeas they delivered a ceremonial cross to thescaffold. I then played Gregorio Allegri’s“Miserere Mei [Have Mercy on Me],” ahymn sung by four priests as they escorted

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the excommunicated to their sentencing.The intentionality of the music duringspecific moments of the ritual helped usthink about what Alejandro Cañequedescribes as “theatre of power,” the stagedspectacle of governance designed toreinforce values and authority.2

s the course developed, some music Ichose demonstrated that lyrics in

music of today have a deep history.Parliament’s “Mothership Connection(Star Child)” launched a conversationabout runaway slaves. The tune’s evocativechorus (“Swing down, sweet chariot, stop,and let me ride”), a sample on Dr. Dre’slandmark 1992 solo debut album, TheChronic, helped us think about thecirculation of knowledge and thesignificance of oral traditions. Students

didn’t know that the lyrics originated inslave songs from the US South thatreferenced the Underground Railroad, anetwork of escape routes and stations thathelped runaways reach the North. For thislesson, we read accounts about maroonsettlements in Mexico, Panama, and Braziland listened to a selection of work songs,ritual chants, and celebratory tunes fromCuba and the Caribbean. These exampleshelped us analyze religious syncretism,labor regimes, and resistance strategies.Sound contextualized the tensiondescribed by Portuguese residents of early19th-century Bahia (a region of Brazil witha large enslaved African and Afro-Brazilianpopulation) when they listened to theominous drumming of nearby quilombos onthe eve of the 1835 Muslim slave revolt.

By the time Radiohead’s “You and Whose

By the time Radiohead’s “You and WhoseArmy?” introduced popular rebellions inthe Andes in the 18th century, the coursewas drawing to a close. In their finalevaluations, students commented that theyfound open discussions and lectures arewarding experience. “The fact that wetalked so much in class,” one studentnoted in a course evaluation, “helped meabsorb the information better because itforced me to think about my opinions.”Discussions of sensitive subjects, especiallythose concerning class formation and racerelations, touched delicate nerves, yet amajority of students still viewed theclassroom as “an open forum where ideascould easily be exchanged and respect forothers’ comments was strictly enforced.”

Aretha Franklin’s formidablesinging and musicianship delivered a

message of the subversion oftraditional gender roles during theInquisition in Spanish America.

The use of contemporary music toillustrate historical subjects runs the risk ofcreating a prescriptive learningenvironment detached from the livedreality of the actors of the past. For me,the value of combining musical genresfrom different time periods helps to openlines of communication that generateenthusiasm for learning. While fewstudents commented specifically about theuse of music in their final evaluations, theapproach resonated with one, who noted,

“Every class started consistently with musicto relax and gain students’ attention . . . itWORKS!”

Alex Hidalgo is assistant professor of LatinAmerican history at Texas Christian University.He is completing a book on indigenousmapmaking in colonial Mexico and has startedwork on a rare 18th-century Mexicanilluminated manuscript about old sayings recitedto music.

Notes1. “Relación de un auto de fe (Lima, 31December 1625),” reproduced in Musicand Urban Society in Colonial Latin America,ed. Geoffrey Baker and Tess Knighton(Cambridge University Press, 2011), 251.2. Alejandro Cañeque, “Theatre of Power:Writing and Representing the Auto de Fein Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 52, no.

3 (1996): 321–43.

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AHA ACTIVITIES

Awards, Prizes, andHonors Conferred atthe 130th AnnualMeeting

he following is a list of recipients ofthe various awards, prizes, and honors

that were presented during the 130thannual meeting of the American HistoricalAssociation on Thursday, January 7, 2016,in Grand Ballroom D at the HiltonAtlanta Hotel.

2015 Awards for Publications

Herbert Baxter Adams PrizeEmily J. Levine, University of North

Carolina at Greensboro

Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer,Panofsky, and the Hamburg School (Universityof Chicago Press, 2013)This intellectual and cultural history,

deeply considered and researched,sensitively explores ideas and their widerimpact. It skillfully interweaves intellectualbiography with an analysis of place andepoch, offering new and insightfulperspectives on academic life in theWeimar Republic, the German Jewishexperience, exile, and the development ofart history and philosophy in the first half

ChiaMessinaPhotography

of the 20th century. Levine’smultidimensional treatment of figuresfrom the Hamburg school enriches ourunderstanding of the urban intellectualgeography of Weimar Germany, and placesHamburg alongside Berlin, Frankfurt,Munich, and Dessau as a center ofinnovation and turmoil.

George Louis Beer PrizeFrederick Cooper, New York University

Citizenship between Empire and Nation:Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960 (Princeton University Press, 2014)With magisterial command of postwar

French and African history, as well as

JaneBurbank

prodigious research, Cooper overturns thefamiliar narrative of decolonization,persuasively undermining the teleology ofanti-colonial nationalism. He shows howFrench and West African intellectuals andpoliticians attempted to reimagine theempire through novel forms of geopoliticaland social integration and how nationalstates emerged only after the failure toestablish common ideas of citizenship.This revolutionary study is essential tounderstanding both European and Africanhistory since 1945.

Jerry Bentley PrizeAdam Clulow, Monash University

The Company and the Shogun: The DutchEncounter with Tokugawa Japan (ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2014)This remarkable study offers a

stereoscopic view of the 17th-centuryencounter between the VOC and theTokugawa shogunate. Drawing ondocuments penned by both parties, theauthor illuminates the curious andcounterintuitive ways in which the Dutch—whose attempts to use violence inJapanese waters were systematicallyblocked—ended up as formal subordinatesof the Tokugawa. The result is a newpicture of Asian-European relations and avaluable contribution to debates on earlymodern sovereignty, diplomacy, andempire.

Albert J. Beveridge Award

Elizabeth A. Fenn, University of ColoradoBoulder

Encounters at the Heart of the World: AHistory of the Mandan People (Hill & Wang,2014)Fenn achieves a feat once thought

impossible: a longue durée history of theMandan, whose horticultural civilizationknit the American before warfare,epidemics, and environmental pressuresthinned their numbers. She accomplishesthis feat not only by exhausting the sparsearchival sources, but also by tapping intoinsights from other disciplines andembracing a narrative strategy that makesthe very evidentiary uncertainties she faced

drive the narrative. A remarkable exercisein historical forensics, Encounters at theHeart of the World is also a model forwriting early American history from thecenter of the continent outward.Greg Grandin, New York University

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom,and Deception in the New World(Metropolitan Books, 2014)Taking as its launching point the 1805

shipboard rebellion that inspired HermanMelville’s Benito Cereno, Grandin’s bookmakes visceral the webs of unfreedom thatensnared the Americas in an age ofrevolution and liberal ideals. Merginggripping depictions of slave markets and

seal islands, Andean crossings and shipdecks, The Empire of Necessity knitshemispheric history into the larger tapestryof global history. As a meditation on thetaut ties between dreams of liberty andcapitalist entanglements, Grandin’smagnificently researched and multilayeredbook is a powerful cautionary tale for ourown times.

James Henry Breasted PrizeNicolas Tackett, University of California,

Berkeley

The Destruction of the Medieval ChineseAristocracy (Harvard University Asia Center,2014)

Liu Kan

Tackett’s strikingly original monographexplains the rapid disappearance ofChina’s bureaucratic aristocracy amid theTang dynasty’s collapse in the late ninthcentury. Blending traditional analysis oftexts such as poetry and tomb epitaphswith the novel methods and approaches ofGIS mapping and social-network theory,Tackett composes a detailed, elegantsketch of an elite that long provedremarkably adaptable to the upheavals ofthe late Tang, even if it could not finallyresist the destructive violence of rebellion.

Raymond J. Cunningham PrizeMichael D. Welker, University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill, BA ’14“Nothing without a Demand: Black

Power and Student Activism on NorthCarolina College Campuses, 1967–1973,”

Traces: The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal ofHistory (Spring 2014)Faculty adviser: James L. Leloudis,

University of North Carolina at ChapelHill

Richly documented, well organized, andclearly written, this essay examinespostsecondary education in North Carolinaamid social and political protests in the1960s and ’70s. Welker explores howbureaucrats, institutions, individuals, andideologies intersect, revealing the resilienceof the university as an institution, thedifficulties people face when they try tochange those institutions, and the ironythat an ideology rooted in noncompromise

required compromise in order to effectchange. Shedding new light on theworkings of Black Power at various NorthCarolina campuses, Welker combines thevoices of students, nonstudent activists,administrators, and politicians, andprovides a thoughtful analysis of the role ofAfrican American studies at predominantlywhite institutions of higher learning.

John H. Dunning PrizeKate Brown, University of Maryland,

Baltimore CountyPlutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and

the Great Soviet and American PlutoniumDisasters (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Kate Brown’s Plutopia, a riveting exampleof interpretive narrative and comparativehistory, tells its story of expectation,exploitation, and unintendedconsequences with verve and passion. Inaddition to engaging writing, the bookdemonstrates impressive transnationalreach as it weaves together deep archivalresearch in scientific and governmentrecords, in both English- and Russian-language sources, with the personalaccounts of individuals caught up in thenuclear policies and atomic disasters of theSoviet Union and the United States. Indoing so, it offers a seamless integration ofthe history of science, spatial history,environmental history, and social history.

John K. Fairbank Prize

Rian Thum, Loyola University New

Rian Thum, Loyola University NewOrleans

The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History(Harvard University Press, 2014)In this richly textured, rigorously argued,

and theoretically provocative work, RianThum narrates with profoundethnographic sensitivity the complexhistories of community formation andworld making among the Turkic Muslimsof Altishahr—now known as the Uyghurpeoples of northwest China. The SacredRoutes of Uyghur History introduces a vitalchapter in the histories of Central Asia,Islam, the Qing empire, and the Chinesenation-state. It spurs historians toreexamine deeply held notions surrounding

JustinNystrom

early modern identity formation, printculture, nationalism, and the very meaningof writing history.

Morris D. Forkosch PrizeGregory E. O’Malley, University of

California, Santa Cruz

Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Tradeof British America, 1619–1807 (University ofNorth Carolina Press for the OmohundroInstitute of Early American History andCulture, 2014)

Final Passages is a scholarly triumph,

JimO’Malley

Final Passages is a scholarly triumph,combining formidable research and shrewdanalysis. O’Malley has painstakinglyreconstructed the transshipment of vastnumbers of Africans, for whom the MiddlePassage was only the beginning of theirsufferings before being “re-exported”around the Caribbean and North America.He portrays the victims of this humantrafficking and the buyers, seamen, andtraders who carried it out, whileilluminating the complex economy ofslavery between rival empires.

Leo Gershoy AwardJohn C. Rule, Ohio State University

Ben S. Trotter, Columbus StateOhioState

Ben S. Trotter, Columbus StateCommunity CollegeA World of Paper: Louis XIV, Colbert de

Torcy, and the Rise of the Information State(McGill-Queens University Press, 2014)

The result of a massive amount ofresearch in the French archives, this worktraces the rise of Colbert de Torcy and hiscreation of a foreign office for Louis XIV.Torcy recognized that control overinformation flowing into Paris from Louis’sextensive diplomatic affairs was requiredfor French policy to remain coherent.Reorganizing the foreign office andcreating an archive to control the flow ofinformation was crucial to his enterprise.

StateUniversity

NancyCleland

The authors pay close attention to thepersonnel in the ministry and how theoffice worked on a daily basis and madepolicy. This is an important study of thecreation of bureaucracy and information inthe early modern era.

William and Edwyna Gilbert AwardPeter Burkholder, Fairleigh Dickinson

University

“A Content Means to a Critical ThinkingEnd: Group Quizzing in History Surveys,”The History Teacher 47, no. 4 (August2014): 551–78.Teaching a survey course is both the

gateway to historical study for many andthe last exposure to history for many

DanLandauPhotography

others, and its importance is oftenundervalued. Rather than treating thecoverage of general content and thepromotion of cognitive approaches in asurvey class as mutually exclusive goals,Burkholder’s course-design methods makethem mutually reinforcing and theresulting survey course especially enriching.His methods deserve recognition for theirmerit and contribution.

J. Franklin Jameson AwardEmily Levine, independent scholar

Witness: A Húnkpaphˇa Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas (University ofNebraska Press, 2013)

In this sensitively edited and translated

AmeliaMontes

In this sensitively edited and translatedvolume, Emily Levine performs a work ofrecovery mirroring that of Lakota historianJosephine Waggoner (d. 1943). She distillsa disciplined but wide-ranging gathering ofhistorical materials for scholars that mightotherwise have been lost forever. The listof archives consulted is impressive and theattention to Lakota expression andWaggoner’s intention extremelyconscientious. Well illustrated andannotated, it is a major editorialachievement.David Edward Luscombe, University of

Sheffield

The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard andHeloise (Oxford University Press, 2013)

AmeliaMontes

The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard andHeloise (Oxford University Press, 2013)Done to the highest critical and scholarly

standards, and paired with Betty Radice’stranslation, David Luscombe’s volume ofthe correspondence between Abelard andHeloise brings together all the recentscholarship surrounding the letters toproduce the best contemporary edition.The lengthy introduction explains fully thestructure, style, and history of thesurviving, lost, or only tentativelyidentified texts, while the extensive notesoffer insights on the literary traditions thatinfluenced the authors’ writings.

Friedrich Katz PrizeAda Ferrer, New York University

Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Ageof Revolution (Cambridge University Press,2014)Ada Ferrer has crafted a work of

remarkable insight and methodologicalbrilliance. Many commentators evokeHaiti’s hemispheric significance as animpulse for liberation and conservativereentrenchment, but no one else someticulously traces the interdependenciesof freedom and enslavement, orincorporates diplomatic, military, andsocial history while providingextraordinarily imaginative textual analysis.Ferrer’s chapter on the Aponte rebellion isa tour de force, ingeniously unraveling theenigmatic strands that bound togetherHaiti, Cuba, and the African diaspora inthe Age of Revolution.

Joan Kelly Memorial Prize

ChristineMladic

Susan S. Lanser, Brandeis University

The Sexuality of History: Modernity and theSapphic, 1565–1830 (University of ChicagoPress, 2014)The Sexuality of History provides a new

analysis of the phenomenon of womenloving women contained in thepublications of both male and femaleauthors, arguing that “the Sapphic”underwrote early modern understandingsof “the modern.” Lanser shows that ratherthan voicing individuals’ idiosyncraticdesires, texts that invoked intimateconnections among women enabledcritiques of the patriarchal order andsupported radical visions of both equality

MikeLovett

and the normative presence of women inthe public sphere.

Martin A. Klein PrizeFrederick Cooper, New York University

Citizenship between Empire and Nation:Remaking France and French Africa,1945–1960 (Princeton University Press,2014)Cooper’s book presents a radical new view

of decolonization in French Africa. AsCitizenship between Empire and Nationreveals, independent nation-states resultedfrom a contingent process in which Africanand European actors sought to transform,but not dismantle, the connectionbetween France and Africa. Through

JaneBurbank

extensive archival research and masterfulprose, Cooper captures the politicalimagination of African activists, thedynamism of ensuing policy debates, andthe poignancy of outcomes that no one, atthe start, actually wanted.

Littleton-Griswold PrizeCornelia H. Dayton, University of

Connecticut

Sharon V. Salinger, University of

James Boster

Sharon V. Salinger, University ofCalifornia, IrvineRobert Love’s Warnings: Searching for

Strangers in Colonial Boston (University ofPennsylvania Press, 2014)In Robert Love’s Warnings, Dayton and

Salinger painstakingly trace the practice ofwarning out—notifying strangers that thetown would not support them if theybecame indigent—in colonial Boston. Thebook challenges the longstanding claimthat warnings served as forms of exclusion,arguing instead that the system actuallyencouraged the circulation of people.Gracefully written and based in previouslyunexplored sources, the book imaginativelycaptures the texture of everyday life and itsrelationship to law and governance.

J. Russell Major Prize

Michael Kwass, Johns Hopkins UniversityContraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making

of a Global Underground (Harvard UniversityPress, 2014)Contraband tells the gripping tale of an

18th-century gentleman smuggler, framedin the context of emerging globalcapitalism and the Old Regime Frenchstate’s brutal attempts to stamp outunderground markets. Deeply researchedand engagingly written, this fine bookchallenges readers to think over the longterm about how porous borders haveconflicted with state efforts to regulateconsumer demand—a situation that

JohnsHopkinsUniversity

engenders violence and may delegitimizethe regime itself.

Helen & Howard R. Marraro PrizeDavid I. Kertzer, Brown UniversityThe Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of

Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe(Random House, 2014)

Kertzer has produced a compellingnarrative based on previously unavailabledocuments from the Vatican archive. Hereveals, in new and surprising detail, boththe inner workings of the Vatican and theon-again, off-again relationship betweenPius XI and Mussolini. Sensitive to thedifficult situation in which the pope foundhimself, Kertzer nonetheless documents in

RenePerez

no uncertain terms the role played by thechurch hierarchy in the promotion of bothItalian fascism and that regime’s raciallegislation.

George L. Mosse PrizeEkaterina Pravilova, Princeton UniversityA Public Empire: Property and the Quest for

the Common Good in Imperial Russia(Princeton University Press, 2014)

This extraordinary, deeply researchedstudy discovers the “public things” ofimperial Russia through its 19th-centurydebates over property rights. Liberalpoliticians and professional experts soughtto secure a “public empire” betweenprivate property and the state via rivers and

DeniseJ.

Applewhite

forests, minerals and icons, literarymanuscripts and historical monuments. Acompelling, profoundly original work ofscholarship, this book deepens ourunderstanding of how a public domaindeveloped in modern Europe.

John E. O’Connor Film AwardDramatic Feature: 12 Years a Slave

Steve McQueen, director; Brad Pitt,producer (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2013)With this breakthrough production, the

filmmakers and actors have adapted animportant historical source, SolomonNorthrup’s 1853 memoir of kidnappingand enslavement, into a gripping andpainfully accurate drama. In step with thebest historical scholarship, this film alsochallenges Hollywood’s long romance withthe plantation.Documentary: Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of

the Rebels

Tony Buba, director; Marcus Rediker,producer (University of Pittsburgh, 2014)Ghosts of Amistad documents historian

Marcus Rediker’s road trip through Sierra

Leone, listening to the African side ofslavery’s living past, to find traces ofmemory about the 1839 Amistad mutiny.Through innovative oral history methodsand factual sleuthing, the filmmakerspresent a compelling portrait of historiansat work in today’s world.

James A. Rawley PrizeAda Ferrer, New York UniversityFreedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age

of Revolution (Cambridge University Press,2014)

Using sources in English, French, andSpanish from over a dozen archives, Ferrershows how revolution in the mostprofitable Caribbean slave society, Haiti,

ChristineMladic

and the rise of Cuba as its successor, linkedthe two islands in complex ways. Aboveall, the author creatively traces theintellectual crosscurrents to reveal a radicalimaginary of the Age of Revolution, whichendowed ideas about freedom, sovereignty,citizenship, and nation with concrete andlocal meanings.Gregory E. O’Malley, University of

California, Santa Cruz

Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Tradeof British America, 1619–1807 (University ofNorth Carolina Press for the Omohundro

JimO’Malley

Dr.Robert

M.Eaton

Institute of Early American History andCulture, 2014)This book brilliantly reconstructs two

centuries of intra- and inter-colonialBritish slave trade by assembling a databaseculled from thousands of naval shippinglists, alongside mercantile and colonialcorrespondence and occasional slavetestimony. Exceeding demographic history,O’Malley illuminates the lives ofindividual slaves and offers a fascinatingstudy of how all Atlantic trade wassystematically built upon the trade ofhuman beings—an important, oftenoverlooked insight on the historiography ofcapitalism and slavery.

John F. Richards PrizeRichard M. Eaton, University of Arizona

Phillip B. Wagoner, Wesleyan UniversityPower, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites

on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300–1600(Oxford University Press, 2014)

Eaton and Wagoner analyze the builtlandscape of the Deccan plateau during aperiod of intense political conflict,showing how the meanings of thatlandscape were contested and mobilizedby succeeding rulers who drew on bothSanskrit and Persianate cosmologies.Deploying an innovative, multidisciplinarymethodology, and shaped as much by on-

LeeWagoner

the-ground analysis of historical remains asby the study of Sanskrit, Persian, andTelugu texts, their book provides criticalnew insights into the history of this era.

Dorothy Rosenberg PrizeLibby Garland, Kingsborough

Community College

After They Closed the Gates: Jewish IllegalImmigration to the United States, 1921–1965(University of Chicago Press, 2014)While it has been assumed that mass

Jewish immigration to America ended withthe quota law of 1924, Garland revealshow Jews circumvented its restrictionsboth upon leaving Europe and uponentering the United States. She also

JacobFuentes

insightfully captures the struggle of Jewishleaders to reconcile their support for theimmigrants with their reluctance to breakthe law. Garland brilliantly uses Jewishhistory to provide excellent historicalcontext for understanding contemporarydebates about illegal immigration, thusmaking an outstanding contribution toboth American history and the history ofthe Jewish diaspora.

Roy Rosenzweig PrizeThe First Days Project, South Asian American

Digital Archive

The First Days Project(http://www.firstdaysproject.org/) is aplatform for immigrants to create historiesthrough brief video, audio, and textualaccounts about their first day in theUnited States. The site not only engagescommunities beyond traditional academicboundaries, it establishes an archive that isongoing, interactive, and accessible. Itsclean, effective design reflects the value ofcreating a user-friendly website that has

multi-faceted uses inside and outside theclassroom. The First Days Project resonateswith Roy Rosenzweig’s commitment tousing digital technology to democratize thepast.

Wesley-Logan PrizeAda Ferrer, New York University

Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Ageof Revolution (Cambridge University Press,2014)Freedom’s Mirror is an elegant, detailed,

and convincing treatment of the paradoxescharacterizing the Age of Revolution in theearly modern Caribbean. At the momentSaint-Domingue became Haiti—a symbolof freedom and sovereignty in the Atlantic

ChristineMladic

—its eastern neighbor Cuba becameincreasingly entrenched in sugar, slavery,and imperial authority. Moving beyondcomparative history by exploringtransnational connections,interdependencies, and geopolitical crises,this book is a welcome addition to thehistoriography of slavery in the Americas.

2015 Awards for Scholarly andProfessional Distinction

Eugene Asher Distinguished TeachingAwardKimberley Mangun, University of Utah

We commend Dr. Mangun for herinnovative techniques, especially in

teaching history within the parameters ofmass communication, to both graduatesand undergraduates. We are also impressedwith her commitment to the promotion oflocal history and to the awareness of theroles of minorities within that history. Herability to be a highly productive scholarand to be actively engaged in hercommunity simply adds to a record ofoverall general excellence.

Beveridge Family Teaching AwardKevin A. Wagner, Carlisle Area School

District, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

We commend Mr. Wagner for hiscombination of web technology, historicalthinking, and community service in his

“Normandy project,” in which studentsapply research techniques to digital andcommunity resources to create and postmemorial biographical websites for fallensoldiers who might otherwise remain onlynames. His additional work inextracurricular activities such as NationalHistory Day, Model UN, and local historyprojects confirms him as a role model forthe profession.

Equity AwardsIndividual Award: Víctor Macías-González,

University of Wisconsin–La Crosse

The Committee on Minority Historians isvery pleased to confer the 2015 EquityAward on Víctor Macías-González,

SusanLee

associate professor of history at theUniversity of Wisconsin–La Crosse. Asnumerous letters from colleagues andformer students make clear, Macías-González has been tireless in his efforts tomentor underrepresented students andopen the historical profession, andacademia in general, to peoples of allbackgrounds. A prominent scholar ofLatino/a history, his many achievementsinclude directing the Institute for Latino/aand Latin American Studies, and creatingthe Eagle Mentoring Program.

Institutional Award: Jacqueline Looney,

Institutional Award: Jacqueline Looney,senior associate dean for graduate programsand associate vice provost for academicdiversity, on behalf of Duke UniversityGraduate SchoolOver the past 25 years, primarily under

the leadership of Jacqueline Looney, DukeUniversity Graduate School has succeededin recruiting and retaining students fromhistorically underrepresented minoritygroups, more than tripling the percentageof enrolled graduate students of color. Inthe history department, this has resulted inmore than 23 black PhD recipients since1998, most of them now tenured atcolleges and universities across the globe.

Herbert Feis AwardPamela M. Henson, Smithsonian

Institution Archives

Pamela M. Henson, director of theInstitutional History Division of theSmithsonian Institution Archives, hashelped to steward and grow the country’snational collections for decades, enrichingthe fabric of public history while doing so.In her career, she has curated over a dozenexhibits, advised Smithsonian secretaries

KenRahaim

and regents, mentored the careers ofcountless scholars, and made majorcontributions of her own to the history ofscience. The Smithsonian Archives are anational treasure, their value mademanifest through Henson’s work.

Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship AwardBrian Balogh, University of Virginia

Brian Balogh has proved to be a trulyexemplary mentor, deeply committed toproviding immediate critical feedback tohis students and other junior scholars,helping them navigate the shoals of beingboth academic historians and publicadvocates, working to create a rich andsupportive network of new political

historians, and creating the fellowshipprogram at the University of Virginia’sMiller Center, which specializes inpresidential scholarship, public policy, andpolitical history.

Honorary Foreign MemberNatsuki Aruga, Saitama University, JapanProfessor Natsuki Aruga has been a

leading scholar of US and women’s historyin Japan for more than three decades.After 30 years as a professor at SaitamaUniversity, Aruga became a visitingprofessor at Taisho University in 1995.

The author and editor of 15 books,Professor Aruga was awarded theYamakawa Kikue Prize as well as the

Japan–United States FriendshipCommission Book Award for AmerikaFeminizumu no Shakaishi [A social history ofAmerican feminism] in 1989. Aruga is aversatile scholar; her focus has ranged fromchild labor in the 19th-century UnitedStates and the employment of teenagersduring World War II to appraisals of the“new social history” and the direction ofsecond-wave feminism.Professor Aruga was president of the

Japanese Association for American Studiesfrom 2008 to 2010 and now serves as boththe executive director of the AmericanStudies Foundation of Japan and theinternational editor for the Organization ofAmerican Historians.

Awards for Scholarly Distinction

Ira Berlin, University of Maryland,

Ira Berlin, University of Maryland,College Park

Ira Berlin’s scholarship extends from the15th to the 21st century, and his influenceon African American social history is asbroad and deep as any living scholar’s.Berlin’s 1998 classic, Many Thousands

Gone, both energized and reoriented fieldsof study. Rather than regard Americanslavery as a 19th-century “southern”phenomenon, Berlin swept across thecontinent and detailed the expansion of asystem with its own economic, cultural,and political logic. The book remains amodel study.

Berlin’s influence crosses genre as readilyas it crosses time and space. Under his

JohnConsoli

Berlin’s influence crosses genre as readilyas it crosses time and space. Under hisdirection, the Freedman and SouthernSociety Project mined the NationalArchives and identified more than twomillion documents for Freedom, a multi-volume work covering slavery’s destructionand the rise of free labor, with annotationsand essays that qualify as major scholarlycontributions in their own right.Berlin’s recent publications—Generations

of Captivity and The Making of AfricanAmerica—reveal a tireless pursuit ofmeaning by an accessible writer with animmensely fertile mind.Asuncion Lavrin, Arizona State University

Born 80 years ago in Havana, Cuba,AndrewLavrin

Born 80 years ago in Havana, Cuba,Asuncion Lavrin completed her PhD inhistory in 1963 as a member of the firstclass of women admitted to Harvard’sGraduate School of Arts and Sciences. Herdissertation immediately stood out for itstreatment of gender in colonial Mexico,and Lavrin has since become a benchmarkfigure in Latin American history andfeminist historiography.Publishing in English and Spanish, Lavrin

has transnational influence. Her first essay,published in the Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review in 1967, won the journal’sbest article award. Her focus has rangedfrom masculinity and the priesthood tolabor and the left in Chile and Argentina.Lavrin has served on eight editorial boards,and she has edited the Oxford Encyclopediaof Women’s History.

Lavrin made her career at Howard

Lavrin made her career at HowardUniversity before spending well over adecade at Arizona State. She was aGuggenheim fellow in 2001 and wasinducted into the Academia Mexicana dela Historia in 2011.

J

CAREER PATHS

From Academia toETSTwo Historians Reflecton Transitioning to thePrivate Sector

Jeremy Neill and Michael Hilleremy Neill: My career path, likethose of many PhDs who findthemselves working outside of

academia, took a number of surprisingtwists and turns that illustrate thechallenges of the job market. I was rather

fortunate in starting my career with a full-time teaching job. Menlo College, a smallcollege in Silicon Valley with a focus onbusiness, hired me as I was completing myPhD in world history at NortheasternUniversity in 2004. The contract was for a4-4 teaching load, with light expectationsfor scholarship and a heavy emphasis onteaching and service. Like other faculty atthe college, I was hired on a contractsystem, rather than the tenure track.

Arlene Trinidad, ETS

Jeremy NeillMy eight years there were rather eventful—there was a constant undercurrent ofconcern over the financial health of theinstitution, and I saw three changes inadministration. I published a few articlesand gave regular conference papers, butmy main focus was on becoming a betterinstructor. I also served on many

committees, was faculty president for oneyear (which, as an assistant professor, isunusual to say the least), and did a greatdeal of work preparing for accreditationreview.On the third transition in administration,

the college decided to drop the liberal artsmajor, and despite earlier reassurances thatthis would not jeopardize faculty jobs, Iwas one of many nonbusiness facultyinformed that their contracts would not berenewed. So after eight years off themarket, I found myself looking for a job inthe aftermath of the economic crash andbudget cuts across academia.Frustrated with how the job search was

going, I started looking for alternativecareers outside academia while picking upsome tutoring work. This search relied onmore traditional job-search methods,

including LinkedIn and state, local, andfederal government job sites. In the fall of2013, I interviewed for two very differentpositions that resulted in job offers. Onewas with the county records office of SanMateo, California, which sounded asthough it might require a historian’s skills,but primarily involved property records.The other offer, which I accepted, wasfrom the Educational Testing Service(ETS), where I interviewed for a positionin the Assessment Division, primarilyfocusing on producing college placementexams for world and European history.Overall, the latter was a much better fit formy skills, and ETS was generous in movingme out to Princeton and in overallcompensation.

Arlene Trinidad, ETS

Michael HillMichael Hill: I graduated with my PhD inmedieval and global history from RutgersUniversity in spring 2014. Like manyfinishing graduate students, my final yearconsisted of completing my dissertationand applying for 50 to 60 higher- -education faculty positions across theUnited States. Although I interviewed for

both tenure- track and temporary teachingpositions, I was unable to get a job andbecame increasingly frustrated with theacademic job search, not to mention theprospect of potentially having to relocateto an undesirable destination. Luckily, thegraduate vice chair of the Rutgers historydepartment forwarded a job posting fromETS, which was seeking an intern to writetest questions for college placement examsfocusing on European and world history. Ireceived the six-week internship and waslater awarded a full-time position as a testdeveloper.

Our JobsMH: As test developers at ETS, Jeremyand I produce test forms for various collegeplacement and licensure exams. Ourtraining as historians and our experiences

in the classroom provide essential skillsthat we use to conduct our daily tasks. Ourtraining allows us to fulfill our professionaland social mission—namely, to createhistorically accurate and pedagogicallyimportant test questions that generate validand reliable educational assessments. Usingour research and teaching experience, weevaluate and design test questions ontopics that students will have commonlyencountered; thoroughly research thehistorical accuracy of the questions and thetextual or visual source materials uponwhich the questions might be based;review and edit the questions in dialoguewith other historians, teachers, and clients;and assemble the finished questions into acomprehensive assessment that measuresstudents’ historical knowledge as well asanalytical and writing abilities.

JN: The research and teaching skills thatwe developed in graduate school and inthe classroom are especially importantwhen designing college placementassessments. For example, because thoseassessments are designed to approximate afreshman survey, my many years ofteaching the world history survey tostudents of varying skill levels has provedvery useful in thinking about what isappropriate in terms of assessing collegecandidates. The emphasis on engagingstudents with sources, primary andotherwise, means I still get to spend a lotof time working with historical texts andkeeping up with the latest trends inscholarship, both in my research field andin historical pedagogy. The majorchallenge is in finding a balance betweensources that engage true historical thinking

skills and recognizing what high schoolstudents can manage under the pressure oftime.

Our TransitionsJN: Transitioning from academia to acorporate environment was in many wayseasier than I expected, as the academicworld is increasingly influenced bymanagement and business trends andpractices. I found that working onaccreditation and managing otherbureaucratic tasks associated with sharedgovernance at Menlo College was goodpreparation for the sort of work I do atETS in the production of exams. It maynot be where I pictured myself when Istarted the PhD, but it is certainly afulfilling and challenging career.

MH: My transition from academia to the

MH: My transition from academia to theprivate sector has been personally andprofessionally rewarding. I have greaterfinancial flexibility and more free time tospend with my family than I ever had as agraduate student or would have had as atenure-track faculty member. While I wasin graduate school, I spent the majority ofmy time focusing on one geographicalregion in one historical period. Myposition at ETS, however, has allowed meto revisit and explore many other historicalinterests. In addition, my work requiresthat I interact with many other sectors ofETS, which has allowed me to learn agreat deal about other aspects of thebusiness that I find highly interesting, suchas publishing, marketing, operations, andclient relations. Finally, I have still foundit possible to continue to pursue teaching

and research. For instance, last spring I hadan opportunity to teach a course on theCrusades and the Islamic world at a localuniversity. I have found the time to writeand publish articles, and I plan to write abook proposal in the near future.Nevertheless, I can only teach one semestera year and have had to scale backsignificantly on what was once a muchmore ambitious publication agenda.Overall, however, my decision to enter theprivate sector is one that I do not regret.

Jeremy Neill and Michael Hill are assessmentspecialists at Educational Testing Service. Anyopinions expressed in this article are those of theauthors and not necessarily of EducationalTesting Service.

AHA CAREER CENTERPositions are listed alphabetically: first by country,then state/province, city, institution, and academicfield. Find more job ads at careers.historians.org.

BurnabySimon Fraser University

Comparative Muslim Societies and Cultures.The Department of History at Simon FraserUniversity, in conjunction with the Centre for theComparative Study of Muslim Societies andCultures (CCSMSC), seeks to make anappointment at the rank of associate professor

(with tenure for qualifying candidates) in the field ofcomparative Muslim societies and cultures.Exceptional candidates at the rank of assistantprofessor (without tenure) may also be considered.The recommended candidate will serve as directorof the CCSMSC for a 5-year term. The teachingload for the director will be 3 courses per year over2 teaching semesters. The director of theCCSMSC will have access to research fundingfrom the Centre. Strong candidates in alldisciplinary fields will be given seriousconsideration. The geographic area ofspecialization is open. Knowledge of Arabic and/orPersian or other regional research language(s) ispreferred. The successful candidate will have aninternational reputation with a strong publicationrecord and extensive teaching experience,preferably at both the undergraduate and graduatelevels. Simon Fraser University is committed toemployment equity and encourages applicationsfrom all qualified women and men, including visibleminorities, aboriginal people, and persons withdisabilities. All qualified candidates are encouragedto apply; however, Canadian citizens andpermanent residents will be given priority. Underthe authority of the University Act, personal

information that is required by the University foracademic appointment competitions will becollected. For further details seehttp://www.sfu.ca/vpacademic/faculty_openings/collection_notice.htmlThis position is subject to final approval by SFU’sBoard of Governors. Applications must besubmitted electronically in PDF format toccsmsc@sfu.ca and include a cover letterdescribing research and teaching experience, aCV, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and asample publication. Applicants should arrange tohave three reference letters sent independently.The review of applications will begin on 15 January2016, and will continue until the position is filled.To ensure full consideration, applications shouldbe submitted by this date. Please addressapplications to Prof. Thomas Kuehn, Director,Centre for the Comparative Study of MuslimSocieties and Cultures, Dept. of History, SimonFraser University, 8888 University Dr., Burnaby,BC V5A 1S6. The Centre for the ComparativeStudy of Muslim Societies and Cultures wasestablished at Simon Fraser University in 2006 toencourage the academic discussion and publicunderstanding of the cultures and societies ofMuslim peoples in the past and the present. The

community of scholars addressing Muslimsocieties and cultures at SFU currently numbersover 20 regular faculty in departments across theuniversity, together with a complement of visitingscholars and research associates. Please visit theCCSMSC online at http://www.sfu.ca/ccsmsc.htmlfor details.

IrvineUniversity of California, Irvine

Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair inArmenian Studies. The University of California,Irvine announces an open search for a tenure-track position to fill the Meghrouni FamilyPresidential Chair in Armenian Studies. TheMeghrouni Family Presidential Chair is anendowed chair established for the purpose ofteaching courses in Armenian history and culture,and creating a locus of Armenian Studies at theUniversity of California, Irvine. UC Irvine seeks adynamic colleague with a sound record of both

scholarly achievement and successful teachingthat embraces the full range of Armenian historyand culture, including the relationship of thattradition to the wider region, as well as globalcontext of the diaspora. The holder of this positionis also expected to play a central role in furtherdeveloping the Armenian Studies Program, whichis housed in the School of Humanities. Thesuccessful candidate must hold a PhD in ahumanities discipline and may be appointed in anyof the following departments of the School ofHumanities at UC Irvine: Art History, Classics,Comparative Literature, English, Film and MediaStudies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History,Philosophy. We welcome applications fromscholars in a position to contribute to a tradition ofacademic excellence and intellectual distinction atthe University of California, Irvine. To ensure fullconsideration, please apply online atrecruit.ap.uci.edu/apply/JPF03171. Please submiton line: a letter of interest, a career summary, aCV, a statement of current and future researchplans, a statement of teaching philosophy andexperience, a statement addressing how pastand/or potential contributions to diversity, equity,and inclusion will advance UC Irvine’s commitment

to inclusive excellence, evidence of teachingexcellence, the names and contact information ofthree available referees, and any other supportingmaterial you wish. To ensure full consideration,applications need to be submitted by January 31,2016. Further inquiries may be made, by email totdaryaee@uci.edu, to Prof. Touraj Daryaee,Director of the Jordan Center for Persian Studies,1 Humanities Gateway, Irvine, CA 92697-3370.The University of California, Irvine is an AA/EOEadvancing inclusive excellence. All qualifiedapplicants will receive consideration foremployment without regard to race, color, religion,sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationalorigin, disability, age, protected veteran status, orother protected categories covered by the UCnondiscrimination policy. UCI is responsive to theneeds of dual-career couples, is dedicated towork-life balance through an array of family-friendly policies, and is the recipient of an NSFAdvance Award for gender equity. Seeadvance.uci.edu.

New York

Cooper Union for the Advancement ofScience and Art

Postdoctoral Fellowship/East or South Asia.The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences ofthe Cooper Union invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship in Historywith specialization in East Asia or South Asia. Thefellowship, which runs from September 2016through May 2018, is open to candidates whohave been awarded the PhD after September 1,2011. The Cooper Union is a predominantlyundergraduate institution offering baccalaureatedegrees in Art, Architecture, and Engineering. Thefellowship requires teaching three courses, two inthe interdisciplinary core curriculum in humanitiesand social sciences required of all students, andan elective in the fellow’s area of interest.Compensation is $45,000 plus benefits. We areseeking a postdoctoral fellow committed to bothundergraduate teaching and scholarly research.The successful candidate will be expected toparticipate in the work of the Faculty of Humanitiesand Social Sciences and of the Cooper Union as awhole, including meetings and further developmentand diversification of our curriculum. He or she will

also offer a seminar presentation on an issuerelevant to the fellow’s own research. Applicationsshould include a CV, a cover letter describing thecandidate’s teaching experience, doctoral project,and current research interests, as well as threeletters of recommendation. Allmaterials/applications should be submitted throughThe SlideRoom portal athttps://hssfacultysearch.slideroom.com/#/permalink/program/29022All applications must be submitted by January 7,2016. The Cooper Union for the Advancement ofScience and Art is an EOE. Candidates fromunderrepresented populations are encouraged toapply. This is a unionized position. Applicationsmay also be e-mailed to Human Resources athr@cooper.edu, Attention: Prof. Atina Grossmann,Chair, Postdoctoral Fellowship in ComparativeHistory Search Committee.

RochesterUniversity of Rochester

Director, Humanities Center. The University ofRochester seeks a director for its new HumanitiesCenter. Building upon a long tradition of strength inhumanistic inquiry, the Humanities Center has

been established to support and lend vision to thestudy of the humanities and arts at the Universityof Rochester. It represents a call to action for thecommunity of researchers in the humanities andoffers opportunities to explore innovativepossibilities for scholarly exchange andcollaboration in an interdisciplinary setting, offeringprograms for faculty, graduate and undergraduatestudents, and the public. The faculty memberselected for this position will be the first to hold thenamed and endowed position as the Ani and MarkGabrellian Humanities Center Director. TheHumanities Center is guided by the director, whowill report to the Dean of the School of Arts andSciences, in consultation with an executivecommittee of eight faculty members representingeach of the academic departments that are thecore of the Center. The director will hold a seniortenured faculty appointment in one of thesedepartments and have a distinguished record ofscholarly publication. Selection of the director willbe overseen by the dean and a faculty searchcommittee, which is largely independent of theexecutive committee. Other leaders, members ofthe Board of Trustees, and friends of the Universitywill also be consulted about this 5 year, renewable

appointment. Responsibilities focus on overseeingthe day-to-day work of the Center andcollaborating with the executive committee andfaculty at large on programs and strategies to fulfillthe mission of the Center as it evolves along withthe University. In this capacity, the director will leadstrategic planning that is critical for the Center’ssuccess, including expansion of programs andmanaging budgetary needs, and will promote theCenter in conversation with interested parties,donors, and other University associates. Ongoingactivities, carried out in cooperation withadministrative and student support staff, alsoinclude overseeing the selection of speakers,noted invitees and all programs associated withthe Center (such as the Humanities Project, DigitalHumanities events, the Distinguished VisitingHumanist Program, the Ferrari Symposia, andparticipation in Central New York HumanitiesCorridor projects), as well as overseeing theapplication process and selection of external andinternal fellows each year. The director will expandthe role of our undergraduate community in thehumanities and will serve as a strong advocate tothe deans, on behalf of faculty and the executivecommittee, on matters related to the Center and to

the humanities on campus more broadly. For moreinformation about the Center, please visithttp://www.rochester.edu/college/humanities/.Review of applications will begin on January 16,2016, and continue until the position is filled. Forfullest consideration, applicant materials should bereceived by January 30, 2016. Candidates shouldprovide a letter of interest, CV, a short statementabout the role of the humanities and such a Centerin higher education and university life, and thenames of five references, who will not becontacted without permission. The University ofRochester, an EOE, has a strong commitment todiversity and actively encourages applications fromcandidates from groups underrepresented inhigher education.EOE/Minorities/Females/ProtectedVeterans/Disabled.

Stony BrookStony Brook University

Gardiner Chair in American History. TheDepartment of History at Stony Brook Universityinvites applications for the newly endowed RobertDavid Lion Gardiner Endowed Chair in American

History. Our search encompasses all fields andareas of American History before 1877, but weespecially seek a scholar to complement ourexisting strengths in Atlantic history and who cancollaborate across disciplines. Candidates mustshare our commitment to undergraduate andgraduate teaching and mentorship. We seek acolleague who will promote recruitment andengage students from underrepresented groups.The successful candidate will embrace theegalitarian spirit of our Department and itsinterdisciplinary pedagogy, while also bringingcomplementary perspectives and skills (e.g., legalhistory, Native American history, gender history,religious history, public history, and digital history).The Gardiner Chair will also participate indeveloping the Gardiner Center in AmericanHistory. Our vision for this initiative is threefold: 1)to create a vibrant venue for public and scholarlyprogramming; 2) to cultivate resources forfellowship support and professional developmentof our graduate students; and 3) to provide asupportive environment for innovative projects inhistorical interpretation. The Center promises tobecome an important link between the HistoryDepartment and local communities in Long Island

and the New York Metropolitan area. PhD inAmerican history and exceptional records inresearch, publication, teaching, service, andleadership required. Interested individuals shouldcomplete the Academic Jobs application processonline athttps://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/6471. Theapplication process consists of cover letter, CV,teaching statement, research statement, stateemployment application, and contact informationfor three references. Electronic submission viaAcademic Jobs Online is highly preferred.Alternatively, submit above mentioned materials toJennifer Anderson, Search Committee Chair, Dept.of History, Stony Brook University, SBS Building,Third Floor, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4348. For afull position description, or application procedures,visit www.stonybrook.edu/jobs (Ref. # F-9567-15-10). Stony Brook University is an AA/EOE.Female/Minority/Disabled/Veteran. Theadministration of this institution is on the AAUPcensure list. Please refer tohttp://www.aaup.org/our-programs/academic-freedom/censure-list.

Ad Policy Statement

Job discrimination is illegal, and open hiring onthe basis of merit depends on fair practice inrecruitment, thereby ensuring that allprofessionally qualified persons may obtainappropriate opportunities. The AHA will notaccept a job listing that (1) contains wording thateither directly or indirectly links sex, race, color,national origin, sexual orientation, ideology,political affiliation, age, disability, or marital statusto a specific job offer; or (2) contains wordingrequiring applicants to submit special materialsfor the sole purpose of identifying the applicant’ssex, race, color, national origin, sexualorientation, ideology, political affiliation, veteranstatus, age, disability, or marital status.

The AHA does make an exception to thesecriteria in three unique cases: (1) open listingsfor minority vita banks that are clearly not linkedwith specific jobs, fields, or specializations; (2)ads that require religious identification oraffiliation for consideration for the position, apreference that is allowed to religious institutions

under federal law; and (3) fellowshipadvertisements.

The AHA retains the right to refuse or edit alldiscriminatory statements from copy submitted tothe Association that is not consistent with theseguidelines or with the principles of Title VII of theCivil Rights Act of 1964. The AHA acceptsadvertisements from academic institutions whoseadministrations are under censure by theAmerican Association of University Professors(AAUP), but requires that this fact be clearlystated. Refer to www.aaup.org/our-programs/academic-freedom/censure-list formore information.

For further details on best practices in hiringand academic employment, see the AHA’sStatement on Standards of ProfessionalConduct, www.historians.org/standards;Guidelines for the Hiring Process,www.historians.org/hiring; and Policy onAdvertisements, www.historians.org/adpolicy.

New York

Columbia UniversityIstván Deák Visiting Professorship in EastCentral European Studies. Columbia Universityinvites applications for two István Deák VisitingProfessorships in East Central European Studiesfor one semester each (Fall or Spring) in theacademic year 2016–17. The professorship,commemorating Professor Deák’s legacy ofexcellence in research and teaching, is open toscholars who have active interest andaccomplishments in East and Central Europeanstudies. ONE appointment will be at the rank ofvisiting professor. The second will be an open-rankappointment to be filled at any level from visitingassistant to visiting full professor. The visitingprofessors will be appointed in one of theHumanities or Social Science Departments of theFaculty of Arts and Sciences and will teach twocourses, one a course of broad interest for upper-level undergraduates, and the other for graduatestudents. The visitors are expected to give onepublic lecture and participate in the academic lifeof the University, whose interests in East andCentral European studies are well represented oncampus by the East Central European Center, theEuropean Institute, and the Harriman Institute.

Please provide a letter of application, CV, thenames of three persons who may be asked toprovide a letter of reference, and a modest sample(article or book chapter) of scholarship. The letterof application should include a statement of whichsemester the applicant prefers, a short list ofpossible courses which the applicant might teach,and a description of the applicant’s currentresearch interests. Minimum qualifications: PhD orprofessional equivalent. Distinction in research andteaching in the field of East and Central EuropeanStudies. Open until filled; review begins December1, 2015. All applications must be made throughColumbia University’s online Recruitment ofAcademic Personnel System (RAPS). Using RAPS,applicants can upload the following requiredmaterials: a letter of application; CV; the names ofthree persons who may be asked to provide aletter of reference; and a modest sample (article orbook chapter) of scholarship. The letter ofapplication should include a statement of whichsemester the applicant prefers, a short list ofpossible courses which the applicant might teach,and a description of the applicant’s currentresearch interests. RAPS will accommodateuploads of maximum two megabytes in size). For

inquiries about the position please contact AlanTimberlake, at2205@columbia.edu. For questionsabout the RAPS application process please contactJamie Bennett: jb33@columbia.edu. ColumbiaUniversity is an AA/EOE. To apply, go toacademicjobs.columbia.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=61665.

KentKent State University

Chair, Department of History. The Department ofHistory, Kent State University, invites applicationsfor the position of Department Chair to begin inJuly 2016. While specialization is open, theDepartment seeks candidates whose teaching andscholarship explore any period of modern historysince 1500. The successful candidate will be asenior scholar at the rank of full professor with astrong record of scholarship, an active researchagenda, administrative experience, and acommitment to teaching excellence. The chair isexpected to advance the department’s researchprofile, guide curricular development and

department initiatives, oversee the department’sgraduate program (which offers both the MA andPhD), advocate for the department at all levels,and support faculty and student achievement.Review of applications for the position will begin onFebruary 1, 2016, and continue until the position isfilled. Send application materials, including a coverletter, CV, statement outlining a strategic vision forleading and developing a research department, aresearch statement, and names and contactinformation for three references by e-mail toHistoryChair@kent.edu. Kent State University is anAA/EOE and encourages applications fromcandidates who would enhance the diversity of theuniversity’s faculty.

ReadingAlbright College

Latin America. The History Department of AlbrightCollege seeks to appoint an assistant professor ofhistory and Latin American studies, field ofspecialization open, beginning in August 2016. Thesuccessful candidate will bring to the school prior

teaching experience, a willingness to engage incross-disciplinary teaching, an openness to work incollaboration with history colleagues as well as withcolleagues from other departments, and a vision tomanage and grow Albright’s Latin AmericanStudies program. A PhD in history is required bythe time of the appointment. To be considered,applicants should submit a cover letter, CV, astatement of teaching philosophy, a visionstatement for this interdisciplinary program, andthree letters of recommendation tohr@albright.edu. Review of the applications willbegin January 15, 2016, and will continue until theposition is filled. Complete applications submittedby January 22, 2016, will receive full consideration.The department will conduct Skype interviewsbefore inviting finalists for a campus visit. Locatedin Reading, Pennsylvania, Albright College is aboutan hour from Philadelphia, and three from NewYork and Washington, DC. Albright is an AA/EOEand is actively committed to diversity within itscommunity. In pursuit of that, we activelyencourage diversity among applicants for thisposition. Protected veterans and people withdisabilities are encouraged to apply. Web page:www.albright.edu.

MemphisRhodes College

Latin America. The Department of History atRhodes College invites applications for a one-yearsabbatical replacement position in Latin Americanhistory, to begin in August 2016. PhD required; full-time teaching experience desirable. Teaching loadis three courses per semester. Courses will includea two-semester Latin American survey, seminarsin the candidate’s area of expertise, and onecourse (for the year) in the College’sinterdisciplinary humanities program(https://www.rhodes.edu/content/foundations-programs-humanities#Search). We encourageapplications from individuals whose interests gobeyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.Founded in 1848, Rhodes College is a highlyselective, private, residential, undergraduatecollege, located in Memphis, Tennessee. Weaspire to graduate students with a lifelong passionfor learning, a compassion for others, and theability to translate academic study and personalconcern into effective leadership and action in their

communities and the world. We encourageapplications from candidates interested in helpingus achieve this vision. Rhodes College values aninclusive and welcoming environment. We are anEOE committed to diversity(http://handbook.rhodes.edu/diversity) in theworkforce. Memphis has a metropolitan populationof over one million and provides multipleopportunities for research and for cultural andrecreational activities(http://www.rhodes.edu/content/our-city). Pleaseapply online at jobs.rhodes.edu; only onlineapplications will be accepted. A completeapplication includes a cover letter, a CV, and threeletters of recommendation. Please address in yourcover letter your interest in teaching at a liberalarts college and how your experiences withteaching might contribute to a college communitythat includes a commitment to diversity as one ofits core values. Review of completed applicationswill begin on February 8, 2016, and continue untilthe position is filled. The online application systemwill solicit letters of recommendation electronicallyfrom the candidate’s recommenders once theircontact information has been entered by thecandidate and the search committee requests

them. Background checks are required beforecandidates can be brought to campus forinterviews.

HoustonRice University

Rice Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. As aleading research university with a distinctivecommitment to undergraduate education, RiceUniversity aspires to path-breaking research,unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to thebetterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill thismission by cultivating a diverse community oflearning and discovery that produces leadersacross the spectrum of human endeavor. As partof a recently launched $150 million investment inresearch initiatives to advance this mission, RiceUniversity is pleased to announce and inviteapplications for the Rice Academy PostdoctoralFellows Program. The 2016 competition focusesexclusively on topics broadly related to health. Thetwo-year Rice Academy Postdoctoral Fellowshipsare open to exceptional scholars who have

recently earned the doctoral degree in any area,including medicine, and who want to pursueresearch with faculty at Rice University.Applications are particularly welcome from thosewho are interested in interdisciplinary approachesto scholarship. Individuals selected as Fellows willjoin the Rice University Academy of Fellows, acommunity of scholars that includes seniormembers of the Rice faculty. Additionally, the RiceAcademy Postdoctoral Fellowship offers a close,mentored relationship with two specific facultymembers; collaborative relationships with anacademy of distinguished faculty fellows who haveextraordinarily diverse interests and expertiserelevant to scholarship on health; regularopportunities for intellectual exploration with adiverse group of other Rice Academy PostdoctoralFellows; programmatic activities to promoteprofessional development, including a focusedplan to pursue the K99 award and other relevantearly career awards; substantial campus-wideresources in expertise and instrumentation; acompetitive salary, as well as benefits; andappropriate resources to pursue researchobjectives. Candidates for the Rice AcademyPostdoctoral Fellowship must submit a research

proposal (three pages maximum), CV, samplepublication or other work of scholarship, the namesof two Rice University faculty members with whomcandidates would like to work (we encourageapplicants to contact these faculty members inadvance of submitting final applications), and threeletters of recommendation. Applicants must haveearned the doctoral degree between September 1,2012, and August 31, 2016. All applications shouldbe submitted electronically atriceacademy.rice.edu by January 11, 2016. RicePostdoctoral Fellows are all expected to beginSeptember 1, 2016. Rice University is an EOE withcommitment to diversity at all levels, and considersfor employment qualified applicants without regardto race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation,gender identity, national or ethnic origin, geneticinformation, disability, or protected veteran status.