AHA explores the practice of "Political History Today"
[HNN Editor: In the latest issue of Perspectives the AHA explores how political history is practiced today.]
... The first essay by Julian Zelizer, sets out what he considers to be the "defining aspect" of the new political history—its interdisciplinarity—and argues that practitioners of political history should tap the full range of scholarship that exists outside history departments. In the essay that follows, that in some ways resonates with Zelizer's, Steven Pincus and William Novak declare that traditional political history is dying, but see it being reincarnated as "a synthetic and integrative history" that is in tune with a "reconceived concept of the 'political'." Taking what appears to be an entirely different tack, but arriving at the same destination of reconfiguring what is meant by "political" (and thus, of political history), Karen Offen proposes that the history of feminism is political history. She also seeks "integration" then, of the history of feminism into the teaching and study of political history.
The two articles that follow, by Durba Ghosh and Vinayak Chaturvedi, respectively, consider larger questions relating to political history, albeit from the perspective of South Asia. Ghosh points out that India "appears to be a dream case for optimists and political historians." Chaturvedi discusses what he sees as an apparent paradox in South Asian historiography—the decline of political history even as histories of politics were in the ascendant.
Sean Perrone's article takes us to a different time and place, in examining the challenges and implications of researching representative institutions and processes in early modern Europe. As he phrases it, "A reassessment of representation is crucial to the study of politics in early modern Europe."
In a clutch of three articles, Jason Parker, David Nickles, and Christopher Dietrich analyze what is perhaps the bellwether (and the persistent anchor) of contemporary political history—the history of international relations and diplomacy—from different angles and vantage points. While there are some inevitable echoes and overlaps in these three essays, the restatements in different voices and registers help to clarify the issues.
The challenges of teaching about specific aspects of political history are the primary concerns of the essays by Gretchen Adams, Kellie Carter Jackson, and Rachel Burstein. Adams examines the ways in which access to digital materials helps her to discuss in more effective ways the issue of memory and political history. Jackson considers the difficult pedagogic problem of teaching about the role of violence in political history. Burstein's essay describes how she uses images in the classroom to discuss events in political history, and how that has helped her to get students more engaged with the topics of discussion. Also addressing teaching issues, and the use of digital resources, E. Thomas Ewing describes how he has been able to use online material for teaching a research seminar for history majors on the theme of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Darren Dochuk's essay, which leavens, so to speak, the three teaching essays, addresses the "religion problem," taking off from the 2004 essay by Jon Butler.
Bringing up the rear, as it were, but dealing with the all-important sources that can be used by researchers and teachers, are the three articles by Carl Ashley, Donald Ritchie, and Rosemarie Zgarri. Ashley's article discusses the resources available for doing research into diplomatic history, including the comprehensive series published by the State Department, the Foreign Relations of the United States. Ritchie points to the riches waiting to be mined in the archives of the U.S. Congress. Zagarri describes the "New Nation Votes" database and hints at the riches it contains, especially for those seeking to understand the political history of the early Republic.