The Feedback Loop: Historians Talk about the Links between Research and Teaching

Session Abstract

What is the connection between the historian-scholar and historian-teacher? What differences are there between what we research and how we teach? Between what we teach and how we do research? The panel will address the feedback loop of teaching and research, what blocks and enables it, and its genealogies and futures. The panel is based on an upcoming AHA pamphlet, The Feedback Loop, which consists of a collection of essays by historians from a variety of institutions reflecting on what they see as the relationship between research and teaching in their own professional practice.

We are living at a moment when research and teaching in the humanities is threatened and where we are called often upon to justify our roles as researchers at the expense of our work as teachers –or vice versa. Historians in particular are being asked to redefine their roles in the liberal arts educational schemes of the 21st century at a historical juncture when the competition for students and the uncertain fate of tertiary education tout court requires all educators to specify their intellectual, political and ethical obligations to their craft and to the public in historically unprecedented ways. The panel will follow the example of the pamphlet contributors and engage in a conversation about the tense and tender relationships between teaching and research in institutional settings.