Some Thoughts on the 2009 Meeting of the American Historical Association

By Stacey Patton:

This past weekend, I attended my first meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA). It was the 123rd meeting, held this year at the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan. I joined fellow historians and a few scholars from other fields to examine the state of the historical profession, learn new methods of research and teaching, give recognition to pioneering and revisionist studies in various specializations, pore over thousands of recently published and classic scholarly texts featured at the grand book exhibit, network with other scholars, and figure out ways to make the historical enterprise better serve a broad and changing constituency – “we the people.”

The first public meeting of the AHA was held on the morning of September 9, 1884 in a small parlor of the US Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York.  There, “a private gathering of friends” – a tiny band of white men with the luxury of time and financial means – engaged in a spirited discussion about what the function of the AHA should be as well as what it meant to be an interpreter of American life.

Since its inception in 1884 and for much of the 20th century, the historical profession has been dominated by a white,  male and Eurocentric perspective.  During the latter part of the 20th century, particularly during the civil rights struggles, African Americans and other groups clamored for inclusion, and have since opened up more nuanced discussions about our nation’s origins and development. Even so, some of those marginalized groups of scholars have sometimes recapitulated the very same kinds of exclusions and binaries that they fought against instead of providing tools that would emancipate us all from socially constructed categories that divide us.

I have discovered that oftentimes good stories about human beings have gotten buried underneath scholar’s battles and identity politics within the field. By regurgitating their own theoretical analysis, regional, gender and racial and other identity affiliations onto their subject’s lives, they don’t always allow men, women, and children of the past to speak for themselves. Sometimes we become trapped and preoccupied with debates amongst ourselves, rather than providing the broader public with a clear understanding of the intricately-woven fabric of American life.

I came to my first AHA meeting primarily to hear intelligent, provocative and interesting stories, whether they are written by historians, journalists or authors. I wanted to learn something new, to think about the past and present in nuanced ways, and to discover tools that will help me wisely navigate through complex changes. As an author, journalist and historian, I want to produce work that reaches a diverse audience, rather than basking in recognition from colleagues sitting in ivory-towered echo chambers. One of the best ways I learn is by listening to those wise ones that came before me. The AHA meeting provides an opportunity to do this.

Throughout the weekend, I expected to hear vibrant panels with deep discussions about the uncertain and precarious times plaguing this country, and the globe writ large. I was poised to hear other scholars talk about historical patterns, to synthesize them, and to provide insight into our current situation. That’s what historians are for, right?

I wondered what these historians would make of today’s talk about post-racialism, the continued destruction and reconstruction of racial identity in American life. I searched the thick program booklet for a panel exploring the history of journalism and other forms of communication and technology to somehow provide insight into why our traditional forms of mass media are dying. I sought to learn what military historians have to say about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and boiling tensions between India and Pakistan?

There were moments during the conference when some scholars effectively and provocatively connected their works to the present. There were others who engaged in the same tired old fights about how to interpret the past. There were complaints that women and minorities are still being marginalized or erased from the American narrative.  I attended a panel put on by the editors of the scholarly journal, American Historical Review, where scholars were urged to move away from specialization and connect their works to a “broader audience.” Yet, neither the AHR editorial assistants in various fields of specialization nor its editorial board represented the diversity of a “broader audience” – “we the people.”

I couldn’t help but think that some of this talk about connecting to a broad audience was also a coded way of telling historians to move further away from narratives about race, even though race is the broader narrative of American history. The historic election of Barack Obama provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us all to contemplate all the change that is unfolding throughout the world. Obama’s election was not the end of America’s racial history. It represents what the French call the longue durée (the long-term) of American history; it is yet another phase in the evolution of our Republic. And so historians must open up and spread the discussion about race as they continue to interpret all dimensions of the nation’s past.

I’ve often heard people joke that historians live in the past. There were moments at the AHA meeting when I suspected that there is truth to this statement. It seems that some historians do live in the past, even as history is being made right before our eyes. Our nation has come to an evolutionary crossroad. Certain trends, ideologies, categories, systems and so on are dying. Others are simply morphing into things more complex.  This is the nature of life itself. Yet I wonder, 30 or 40 years from now, how historians will interpret all this change?

Will it be business as usual? Will the story still be told primarily through a predominantly white, male and Eurocentric perspective?  Or, as the emergence and continued growth of the blogosphere seems to indicate, will history be finally written by “we the people?”