research

Have Corporations Captured Social Science Research through Donations?

by Nina Strohminger Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

From decisionmaking to climate change, a focus on individual choices has flourished in social scientific research at the expense of sytemic change. Is corporate enthusiasm for funding this research any coincidence? 

In Praise of Search Tools

by Diedre Lynch

Books by Dennis Duncan and Craig Robertson examine the history of indexing, filing, and other technologies for locating information in books and the resultant culture of research.

You are Only as Good as Your Sources

by Bobby Cervantes

Can researchers reexamine the boundary between journalism and historiography while maintaining the integrity of both? A researcher with a background in both explains how. 

The John Winthrop Fellowship with a Focus on Colonial History

The Gilder Lehrman Institute announces a new initiative funding a short-term research fellowship in colonial history. 

Please Stop Calling Things Archives: An Archivist's Plea

by B.M. Watson

"As many historians currently use the word “archives,” they seem to imply that an archive is the natural state in which primary sources arrange themselves after being discarded or left by their creators."

The Bonnie and Richard Reiss Graduate Institute for Constitutional History Seminar Spring 2021 Session (Virtual)

The Bonnie and Richard Reiss Graduate Institute for Constitutional History is pleased to announce its spring 2021 seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty: America’s Unregulated Police.

Working With Death: The Experience of Feeling in the Archive

by Ruth Lawlor

A researcher of sexual assault against women by American troops in World War II confronted the problem that the archive captures only a traumatic event and leaves the human being affected in the shadows. 

The Etymology of "Jazz": A Cautionary Word About Digital Sources

by Ken Lawrence

Digitization projects have made historical newspapers much more readily accessible, but the process admits error and historians should be cautious making bold claims based on them. 

AHA Receives Major NEH Grant to Fund COVID-19 Initiative

The American Historical Association is launching a major new initiative to help our members and their colleagues with the challenges of being a historian, and a history teacher, in a virtual environment.

History by Text and Thing

by ShawnaKim Lowey-Ball

For researchers, history is a thing we do. It is an activity, a handling of old books, a building seen from the vantage point of its past. 

Black Perspectives Publishes Online Forum: "Researching, Teaching, and Embodying the Black Diaspora"

by Charisse Burden-Stelly and Crystal Moten

An introduction to the online forum and a list of the articles published as part of it so far. 

American Historical Association Announces 2019 Prize Winners

Dozens of historians will be recognized for their exceptional books, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, public history, and other historical projects.

Why President Trump gutting the USDA’s research service is so dangerous

by Jamie Pietruska

Since the 19th century, Americans have benefited from access to rigorous, unbiased statistics about our foodways.    

How do you measure a woman's pain? Historian Whitney Wood aims to find out

Medical historian Whitney Wood is the new Canada Research Chair at Nanaimo's Vancouver Island University.

Historians' archival research looks quite different in the digital age

by Ian Milligan

Our society’s historical record is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Think of all the information that you create today that will be part of the record for tomorrow. 

Robert Caro on the Importance of Analog Research in a Digital Age

"Today everybody believes fast is good. Sometimes slow is good."

Mark Humphries: China epicenter of 1918 flu epidemic, not U.S.

Humphries writes that victims of a mysterious respiratory disease that broke out in northern China in November 1917.

So You Want to Write?

by Vaughn Davis Bornet

A veteran historian's advice.

U.S. Government Secrecy Making Historical Research Difficult

by James McGrath Morris

By redacting all documents, no matter how benign, the government is throwing its past down the memory hole.

Serendip-o-matic Seeks to Replicate Thrill of Archival Discovery Online

by Michelle Moravec

A week ago today, twelve strangers showed up at George Mason University and in five days, going at it around the clock, as humanities people often do, they created a new digital humanities research tool. With almost every day seeming to offer yet another news piece questioning the value of the humanities, One Week | One Tool (OWOT) offers a tangible answer. Funded by an National Endowment for the Humanities grant and organized by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, OWOT created Serendip-o-matic, a “serendipity engine” that searches for “unexpected connections between the material you already have at hand, and the universe of sources beyond your fingertips.”