Pulse Check: A Roundtable on the AHA’s Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship

AHA Session 85
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Rendezvous Trianon (New York Hilton, Third Floor)
Chair:
Andrew McMichael, Auburn University at Montgomery
Panel:
Steven W. Hackel, University of California, Riverside
Jessica Marie Johnson, Johns Hopkins University
David Schoenbrun, Northwestern University
Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Kennesaw State University

Session Abstract

In this roundtable discussion, historians reflect on the impacts and challenges of working within and implementing the AHA's 2023 Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship. As a statement intended to encourage tenure and promotion committees to think beyond the creation of "new knowledge" (i.e. monographs and journal articles) as the only viable category of historical scholarship, the guidelines endorse other forms of knowledge diffusion as historical scholarship, including textbook, journal, or document editing projects; the creation of amicus briefs, documentaries, exhibitions, databases, op-eds; and more.

Roundtable participants include historians working within some of these broader categories of scholarship as well as those grappling with whether and how to incorporate the guidelines at the department or college levels.

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