Category Archives: American HIstorical Association

June 13, 2007, 1:24 pm

Am I That Name? Why the AHA’s Gender Policies Make Sense to Some of Us

I’ve been participating in a fascinating discussion about graduate advisors over at Ferule and Fescue; instead of recapitulating it, I’ll just send you there.

I also want to thank those people who commented on my last post: you were, in turns, funny, sweet and — most importantly — you took the post in the spirit it was intended. Mary Dudziak took the trouble to do a retrospective post on my book, which was also really nice.

So in the spirit of following up on other people’s posts, I want to point to a fair amount of chatter in the history blogosphere on the question of the American Historical Association’s requirement that panels at the Annual Meeting be gender diverse: you can get to much of the discussion, and some interesting commentary, by going to this post by Rebecca Goetz, the Historianess. Rebecca has included a number of good links to other posts on the topic, and also…

May 23, 2007, 2:04 pm

A Few Little Things, All Important, But None Important Enough for A Post of Their Own

By Claire Potter

What I had really decided to do today was work on a little talk I am supposed to give on Saturday about teaching Queer Studies for Zenith alums and parents of graduating seniors. In order that this not go into the category labeled No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, I determined a while back to use this presentation as an opportunity to write a short, pleasant article about building queer studies as a concentration in American Studies at a liberal arts institution that is unlikely to dedicate more than a line or so to any interdisciplinary field. Such fields rely on people trained in something else entirely switching over and becoming, shall we say, Transscholarly.

I don’t emphasize Zenith’s limited resources to be churlish: it is simply a Fact, and a Fact to be Dealt With as creatively and cheerfully as possible lest there be research I am unaware of concluding that griping is a major cause…

March 16, 2007, 1:00 am

Leaving Atlanta

By Claire Potter

The last time I was in Atlanta, except perhaps to change planes, was a little more than ten years ago. It was an American Historical Association Annual Meeting and Saturday night, as everyone was making the rounds of the various smokers and publisher’s parties (“I’m not going anywhere that the drinks aren’t free!” my friend Ethel, who now works at Harvard, said to me that night) a rumor arose that there would be three or four inches of snow the next day. Eh, what-evah, we from New England shrugged, as we shoved our way through the Oxford Press reception (chardonnay.)

By the time I was throwing elbows at the Penn smoker (foreign beer and two colors of wine), I was hearing rumours that there would not only be snow in Atanta, there would be snow up North too. A lot. And that anyone who had her wits about her would consider booking an earlier flight. Maybe that night. However, this was …