This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: InsideHigherEd.com
Jan 7, 2010
The American Historical Association kicks off its annual meeting today, in San Diego, amid signs that it will be the latest disciplinary group to see a significant drop in attendance. AHA officials stress that they get hundreds of on-site registrations most years, sometimes even 1,000. But as of Jan. 1, 3,705 people had pre-registered. That's down from 5,400 last year (a meeting held in New York City, considered a major draw, and 4,366 the year before, in Washington. Of course many believe that
Source: More or Less Bunk (Blog)
Jan 7, 2010
I’m so glad I’m not in San Diego right now, because watching the academic job market in action always makes my head hurt. It also gives me flashbacks to my underemployed days, which are no fun either. Writing about it doesn’t exactly improve my mood, but I’ve been feeling like doing just that ever since I read the summary of the new AHA jobs report earlier this week. If you haven’t seen it, the news isn’t good:
In the 2008–09 academic year job advertisements fell by 23.8 percent
Source: Historiann (Blog)
Jan 7, 2010
From a distance, of course–Potterville is about 1,137 miles away, 4,659 feet higher, and 70 degrees colder than San Diego this morning. Damn! but I wish I were waking up in the Hotel del Coronado today. It’s -11 here now–but it will be sunny, at least! The sun is about the only thing San Diego will have in common today with the High Plains Sub-Zero Freezer we’re locked in until the weekend. Classy Claude will be filing a first-person report later this weekend, if he can peel himself off the
Source: Marc Bousquet at Brainstorm (Blog)
Jan 7, 2010
My piece questioning the supply-side bent to the American Historical Association's 2010 job report has gotten thoughtful replies by historiann, Alan Baumler, Jonathan Rees, Ellen Schrecker, Sandy Thatcher and others, both at my home blog and here at Brainstorm.
I really appreciate these thoughts, and want to emphasize how much I respect Townsend's work for AHA over the years, including his parsing of the data on many fronts-especially "privilege," which I believe informs h
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
Jan 7, 2010
Professional historians usually concern themselves with the past, but this week in San Diego they’ll be immersed in one of the most contentious issues of the present — same-sex marriage.
The annual convention of the 125-year-old American Historical Association, held here for the first time, will feature a 15-session “mini-convention” on various aspects of matrimony, including how its definition has evolved through time.
These free meetings, which start today and are ope
Source: Dave Lieberson, writing for HNN
Jan 7, 2010
[Dave Lieberson is an HNN intern.]
With the decade officially over we are forced to endure the lists created by mainstream media reminding us of the many notable people who have passed away. While they include many historically influential men and women like President Reagan and journalist Walter Cronkite, the lists are also inflated by the many not-so-relevant pop stars, actors, musicians and sports stars. Lost from the ranks of great historians in the last decade were,
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jan 6, 2010
On a Monday evening in mid-October, the historian Tony Judt appeared onstage at the Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, in Greenwich Village. "I hope you don't mind if I begin by shooting the elephant in the house," he said, speaking from an electric wheelchair, wrapped in a black blanket, with a Bi-Pap breathing device attached to his nose. "As you can see," he continued, his voice gravelly and labored, "I'm paralyzed from the neck down, and also use this r
Source: Brainstorm (Blog)
Jan 6, 2010
A funny thing happened on the way to the AHA this year -- American Historical Association staffer Robert B. Townsend issued his annual report on tenure-track employment in the field. Unsurprisingly, he concluded that holders of freshly minted doctorates face grim prospects. What raised my eyebrows -- and those of many others doing scholarship in academic labor -- was his insistence that the labor market for faculty in history is a matter of an "oversupply" of persons holding doctorates
Source: New York Times
Jan 5, 2010
Ihor Sevcenko, a leading scholar of Byzantine and Slavic history and literature who as a young man persuaded George Orwell to collaborate with him on a Ukrainian translation of “Animal Farm” for distribution to refugees, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on Dec. 26. He was 87.
The cause was bone cancer, said his daughter Catherine.
Mr. Sevcenko (pronounced EE-gore Shev-CHEN-ko) was unrivaled among Byzantinists for the breadth of his linguistic expertise and the vari
Source: Nothing Recedes Like Success (Blog)
Jan 4, 2010
The AHA begins on Thursday, and it’s likely to be a bleak, long weekend in San Diego. While the rich and well-funded among us will enjoy a respite in the expensive southern California city, a storm is brewing on the Pacific coast that may well wash over the nation’s most venerable historical association like a tsunami. To start, GLBTQ activists are boycotting the convention’s main hotel, despite the AHA’s best efforts to fashion a compromise rather than walking away from its contract with the Hy
Source: AHA Perspectives on History
Jan 4, 2010
[Robert B. Townsend, the AHA’s assistant director for research and publications, received his PhD from George Mason University in May 2009. Directory Editor Liz Townsend and Staff Assistant Maddalena Marinari assisted with the data gathering for this report.]
The number of job openings in history plummeted last year, even as the number of new history PhDs soared. As a result, it appears the discipline is entering one of the most difficult academic job markets for historians in more
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 3, 2010
A historian claims to have conclusively proved the identity of the "Man Who Never Was", whose body was used in a spectacular plot to deceive the Germans over the invasion of Sicily in the Second World War, Ian Johnston reports.
It was a turning point in the Second World War. As the Allies prepared to invade Sicily in 1943, they wanted to dupe the Germans into thinking that their attack would be aimed elsewhere.
To carry out the deception, a plan was concocted
Source: ANI
Jan 2, 2010
Claims stating that Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual have been dismissed by acclaimed historian Harold Holzer.
Holzer, a scholar on Lincoln and the political culture of the American Civil War Era, trashed the claim made by playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer, who alleged that George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Lewis and Clark and Lincoln were all interested in men.
"I had a private conversation with him [Kramer]," the New York Post quoted Holzer as
Source: Common-place
Jan 1, 2010
[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, was Theodore R. Sizer's son-in-law.]
In late November, an estimated thousand mourners, including Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, gathered at Memorial Church at Harvard University to honor the life and work of Theodore R. Sizer, the internationally recognized education reformer who died this past October. (Sizer, a friend to this publication, co-authored a piece with his wife, Nancy, on the misguided
Source: UPI
Jan 1, 2010
Israeli historian Alexander Yakobson says if the historic region of Palestine is divided into two states, it should be done without removing settlers.
Yakobson said told Friday's Haaretz evacuating settlers from the region is impractical, instead suggesting settlers remain where they currently are and simply exist as a Jewish minority in a new Palestinian state.
Israeli soldiers will simply withdraw to the new border to exist on territory where Israel has sovereignty, Y
Source: Washington Post
Jan 1, 2010
Margaret Garritsen deVries, 87, an economist and historian at the International Monetary Fund, died of pneumonia Dec. 18 at Suburban Hospital. She lived in Bethesda.
Dr. deVries was among the first employees hired by the IMF, joining it as an economist in 1946. She represented the agency on missions to Mexico, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Turkey, Israel, Yugoslavia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
She was appointed assistant chief of the multiple exchange rate division
Source: The Immanent Frame
Dec 31, 2009
Religion, reported Inside Higher Ed last week, is now the most popular theme of historical study in America, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Historical Association. For the past fifteen years that distinction belonged to culture and prior to that, to social history. That the turn to religion represents at once a natural ramification of, and a challenge to, the methods and concepts particular to these formerly prevalent modes of historical study is indeed a possibility sugg
Source: Reuters
Dec 31, 2009
Religion has become the hottest topic of study for U. S. historians, overtaking the previous favourite — cultural studies — and pulling ahead of women's studies in the latest annual survey by the American Historical Association. Younger historians are more likely than older ones to turn their sights on faith issues.
The proportion of U.S. historians working on religious issues now stands at 7.7 percent. If that seems low, compare it with the more traditional fields in the study of t
Source: NYT
Dec 31, 2009
In the fall of 2003, the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, decided on a new strategy. Known as counterinsurgency, the approach required coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions, rather than simply attacking insurgent cells.
But there was a major drawback, a new unpublished Army history of the war concludes. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a “small footprint” in Afghanistan and because Iraq w
Source: John Fea at The Way of Improvement Leads Home (Blog)
Dec 30, 2009
I have now had two readers ask me to do a post or two about interviewing at the American Historical Association annual meeting. I was unsure if I was really qualified to do this kind of thing, but then my wife reminded me that I have had many, many AHA interviews over the years and might have something worthwhile to say on the subject. I have had interviews at research universities, non Ph.D-granting state schools, liberal arts colleges, and church-related colleges. I have advanced to on-campus
