History in Focus

This July marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence. In recognition of that milestone, the AHR's June 2026 issue is devoted entirely to exploring the material culture of the revolutionary era. Titled "'76 Objects," it was edited by AHA executive director Sarah Weicksel together with co-editors Ashli White, Zara Anishanslin, Kenneth Cohen, and Natha...

Daniel talks with AHR editor Mark Bradley about the changes coming to the journal in March, in particular a new section called the AHR History Lab that will showcase collaborative projects that challenge us to rethink how history is done in the twenty-first century. Then a conversation with contributors to the Odeuropa project, an EU grant funded research endeavor that seeks to excavate, and bring...

This episode is part of the "Authoritarianism 101" project, produced by the American Historical Review for the #AHRSyllbus series. In this episode: Why do elections in authoritarian regimes matter? Historian Mona El-Ghobashy discusses the 2005 general elections in Egypt and the lengths that some voters went to cast their ballot.

This episode is part of the "Authoritarianism 101" project, produced by the American Historical Review for the #AHRSyllbus series. In this episode: Why do authoritarian states seek to control cultural institutions? Historian Patrick Iber discusses the Cuban Revolution and the banning of the short film, P.M., which showed scenes from Havana's night life.

Something nearly every historian has, but almost never discusses, are abandoned projects—historical quests that for one reason or another did not pan out. But what if we didn't keep these experiences to ourselves? What if, instead, we found community around these moments of questioning and struggle? Those possibilities are what a small group of historians explore in this episode. Reprising a sessi...

In March 2026, AHR begins the rollout of a new project called "Authoritarianism 101: A Global History." Part of the #AHRSyllabus series, A101 consists of 30 modules from 30 different contributors. Each module centers on a core question about the history of authoritarianism and provides a single primary source that allows history teachers and students to explore that question. Alongside these modul...

Daniel provides a quick recap of his time at this year's AHA annual meeting in Chicago. In addition to a number of exciting history podcasting sessions, he sat down with Stacy Hartman from the American Council of Learned Societies to discuss Doctoral Futures, a collabo project with AHA, MLA, and the Society for Biblical Literature seeking to address the multifaceted challenges facing doctoral educ...

To kick off 2026, we have a conversation with the American Historical Association's new executive director, Sarah Weicksel. We get into Sarah's path to her current position and her vision for what this next chapter of the AHA could be in the midst of the challenging times we're living in.

Historian Elizabeth Hinton explores W.E.B. Du Bois's 1935 magnum opus  Black Reconstruction . We also hear from Eric Foner, Chad Williams, Sue Mobley, and Kendra Field. The  AHR  chose not to review  Black Reconstruction  when it was first published. A review by Hinton appears in the December 2022 issue.

What if historians could own up to their mistakes? Or learn to see their mistakes not as weaknesses to be hidden but as a necessary part of the process of growth and discovery? That is what a recent special edition of the History Unclassified section of the journal explores. That edition, "Mistakes I Have Made," includes reflections from nine contributors as well as from section editors Kate Brown...

Historian Alexis Dudden and graphic artist Kim Inthavong discuss their collaborative work on history, memory, and activism in Okinawa, Japan. Their piece, "Okinawa: Territory as Monument," appeared in the History Lab section of the September 2022 issue of the AHR . Inthavong's graphic panels illustrating Okinawans' present-day struggle over US military presence in the islands can be previewed belo...

We kick of season 4 with a miniseries titled "State of the Field for Busy Teachers." In four brief episodes we offer teachers—or really anyone crunched for time—a rapid review of a field of historical scholarship, including how the field has evolved, where it is now, and where one might go to learn more. This first installment features historian Jennifer Hart on the state of the field of African H...

This next installment in our series "State of the Field for Busy Teachers" features historian Ned Blackhawk on the state of the field of Native American History.

This next installment in our series "State of the Field for Busy Teachers" features historian Don Romesburg on the state of the field of LGBTQ+ History.

This final installment in our series "State of the Field for Busy Teachers" features historian Walter Greason on the state of the field of Graphic History.

In this final episode of season 3, we talk with Kate Carpenter, creator and host of the podcast Drafting the Past , which explores the craft of writing history, and researcher of the history of storm chasing in the U.S. We examine the many angles on history writing that Kate explores in her podcast, question what a closer look at this aspect of historians' work illuminates about the discipline and...

A Martian lands on Earth, heads to the nearest university's History Department, and asks the question, "What is Asia?" What kind of response would they get? We explore this question with historian Nile Green, who outlines a forum titled "Big Asia: Rethinking a Region" that appears in the June 2025 issue of the AHR .

Fifty years after the fall of Saigon in April 1975, we investigate the challenges and opportunities of teaching the Vietnam War and the ways that understanding the war has changed. We speak with four contributors to an AHR forum entitled "The Vietnam War Fifty Years On," published in the March 2025 issue—Thy Phu, David Biggs, Wen-Qing Ngoei, and Jana Lipman. And we pay a visit to the Vietnam Veter...

Historian Lily Pearl Balloffet explores the real, live human relationships we form in the process of doing historical work and how, for her, those vital connections were decisively disrupted in the years of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

In this episode, we revisit AHA 2025 with a focus on history teachers. Daniel sits with Katharina Matro and Megan Porter—both high school history teachers—to talk about AHA sessions geared toward history teaching as well as the AHA 2025 K–16 Content Cohort, which this year focused on the theme of "Resilience in the History Classroom."

Historian and quantitative methods expert Jo Guldi discusses text mining, AI, and the wider landscape of digital history in this longform conversation. Guldi's work on these subjects can be found in two recent AHR articles—"The Algorithm: Mapping Long-Term Trends and Short-Term Change at Multiple Scales of Time" published in the June 2022 issue and "The Revolution in Text Mining for Historical Ana...

At the 2024 AHA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, historian David Trowbridge sat down with a handful of attendees to discuss topics of particular interest to historians in the present moment. In this episode of our new "Historians On" series, David speaks with Katharina Matro, Jeff McClurken, Kalani Craig, Jo Guldi, Johann Neem, Kevin Gannon, and Lauren Tilton on the topic of AI and its implication...

In December 2024 American Historical Review published its first ever special issue. Titled "Histories of Resilience," it features almost two dozen scholars from a wide range of fields contributing their research on resilience. In this episode we hear from board of editors members Josh Reid and Cymone Fourshey as they discuss how the issue came together interspersed with cameos from a few of the co...

In this second installment from our collaboration with African history podcast AfriWetu , Mona, with the help of guest narrator Nyaguthii, explores the North African legend of Dihya Al Kahina.

A conversation with AfriWetu host and creator Mona Nyambura Muchemi. We talk about the origins of AfriWetu , about her journey as a storyteller and student of African history, and about the state of popular understandings of African history across the continent.