Claim OwnershipHistory in Focus
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Go behind the scenes with the world's leading history journal as we explore the who, what, how, and why of doing history in the twenty-first century.
49 Episodes
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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 and Emily Callaci. We speak, in turn, with all of them in this episode.
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 below.
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 History.
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 about the work of history more broadly, and delve into the fascinating history of storm chasing on the Great Plains.
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 Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
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 Analysis is Here" from the June 2024 issue—and in the book The Dangerous Art of Text Mining: A Methodology for Digital History published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press.
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 implications for history teaching and research.
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 contributors—Kate Whiteley on the Wiyot Tribe of Northern California, Thaís R. S. de Sant'Ana on migrant workers in Brazil, Tammy Wilks on Kenyan Nubians, and Bob Reinhardt on US communities submerged as part of big dam projects.
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.
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.
Introducing the latest entry in our podcast collaboration series: a terrific and thoughtful African history podcast called AfriWetu. In this episode, host and producer Mona Nyambura Muchemi explores the history of the East African Kingdom of Buganda with special emphasis on the women of Buganda's society.
What story can be told of the American welfare state when you broaden the view beyond established government programs and official actors? We kick off season 3 with a conversation with historians Salonee Bhaman, Bobby Cervantes, and Salem Elzway on their AHR article "A New Welfare History."
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