2019 AHA Election

2019 AHA Election Candidate for President The president-elect stands unopposed for election to president. The current president is John R. McNeill, Georgetown Univ. (environmental, world). Mary Lindemann University of Miami (early modern Europe, medicine) Website Candidate Statement I am a historian of early modern Europe whose geographic focus lies principally in Germany and the Low Countries, My thematic interests have included social, political, and diplomatic history; I am also a historian of medicine and public health who has participated in the construction of programs in medical humanities. More recently, I have developed a project analyzing the impact of early modern wars on the environment and infrastructures. As my research trajectory suggests, I strongly believe that history should be ecumenical, a “big tent” that welcomes historical endeavors of all kinds and promotes them in multiple settings, whether the traditional academy, historical societies, primary or secondary education, outreach, or civic engagement, and should encourage lively interactions among them and, indeed, wherever historians or those with historical interests find themselves. In addition, I deny the false, but widespread, belief that a dichotomy exists between teaching and research. In significant ways, we are all teachers and all researchers no matter where we land professionally. I have had significant administrative experience in several capacities: as chair of my Department (for eight years), on the Professional Division of the AHA, and as president of two organizations (the German Studies Association and the Society for Early Modern German Interdisciplinary Studies). In addition, I have served on several editorial boards and have been active in organizing workshops, conferences, and program panels. In my role as AHA President I would see my principal charge as defending the humanities and social sciences vigorously. At the same time, I would avoid being defensive about their value. It is incumbent on the AHA, its officers, and staff to continue our unequivocal support for institutions, programs, and departments that are threatened with extinction or severe cuts. To do so, we must also repeatedly and forcefully underscore the fact that most of the world’s problems today will not be solved by technological or scientific advancements alone but by applying, in multiple ways, the skills historians excellently command; the foremost of these is critical thinking. Equally important is the need to ensure the future of the profession in the richness of all its forms. We must also renew and increase our efforts to foster early career historians in whatever career path they choose and must commit our energies to halting the devaluation of the humanities and history, in both structural and intellectual terms, in favor of STEM and other initiatives. MARY LINDEMANN Ph.D., History, University of Cincinnati, 1980 FIELDS: Early modern European history, early modern German history, history of medicine and public health MAJOR SERVICE: Chair, Department of History, University of Miami, 2009- President, German Studies Association, 2017-2018 Acting Director, Center for the Humanities, University of Miami, Fall 2015 Member, Professional Division of the AHA, 2004-2006. President, Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär, 1999-2001. GRANTS: I have enjoyed the support of grants from numerous organizations including: NEH, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Flemish Institute for Advanced Study, Shelby Cullom Davis Center, National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Herzog August Bibliothek. PUBLICATIONS (single-authored): The Merchant Republics: Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg, 1648-1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Liaisons dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe in the series, "New Approaches to European History." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 2nd edition, 2010. Translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish. Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Awarded the 1998 William Welch Book Prize by the American Association of the History of Medicine. Patriots and Paupers: Hamburg, 1712-1830. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Named an "Outstanding Academic Book for 1990" by Choice. RECENT CO-EDITED PUBLICATIONS: With Jared Poley, Money in the German-Speaking Lands. New York: Berghahn, 2017. With David Luebke, Mixed Matches: Transgressive Unions in Early Modern Germany. New York: Berghahn, 2014 Candidate for President-elect The president-elect serves a one-year term. At the end of the term, he or she stands unopposed for election for president. The current president-elect is Mary Lindemann, Univ. of Miami (early modern Europe, medicine). Jacqueline Jones University of Texas at Austin (US labor/African American/southern/women) Website Candidate Statement I study African American labor history with a focus on women and the American South. As chair of a large history department at a flagship public university, I have faced challenges that affect many historians’ research, teaching, and working conditions—the corporatization of the university; problematic relations with the state legislature; the technological transformation of the classroom; a difficult job market for our students; and contentious debates over curriculum reform, faculty evaluation, and metrics of assessment. Our department has made strenuous efforts to halt the drop in the number of our majors, to increase the diversity of our faculty, to track the careers of our alums, and to counter the national trend of the proliferation of adjuncts and part-time instructors. Today the historical profession must contend with a general public skepticism aimed at the humanities in general—the notion that a field of study is valuable only to the extent that it leads to a particular kind of job. Still, nursing students should learn about the history of medicine, and forestry students about the history of the environment (for example). Overall, I am optimistic about the future of the study of history, which is a key component of informed citizenship. Scholars, students, and the general public have an enduring appreciation for our discipline; they look to the past for stories about their own families and communities, for background on current trends and events, and for compelling accounts of the great drama that is human history, in all its rich diversity. Professional historians employ a variety of methodologies and labor within a variety of workplaces. The AHA must continue to serve as a robust advocate for all historians in their roles as researchers, teachers, and workers. When I was vice president for the Professional Division (2011–14), the division’s members worked to support individuals, departments, and institutions by upholding professional standards and by crafting “best practices” on a number of issues, including promoting career diversity among historians, embracing a holistic (and not metrics-driven) approach to the evaluation of faculty, maintaining databases on graduates’ career trajectories, and embargoing online PhD dissertations, to name a few. As president, I would work to enhance the AHA’s ongoing commitments to protecting academic freedom, countering efforts to eliminate History departments and cut the history curriculum, opening and preserving access to archives, advancing innovations in undergraduate teaching, expanding career opportunities for PhDs, and ensuring decent working conditions for all historians. JACQUELINE JONES Jacqueline Jones is Ellen C. Temple Professor of Women’s History and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses in American history and has served since 2014 as Chair of the History Department. Before coming to UT, she taught at Wellesley College (1976-1991); Brown University, 1988-90 (as the Clare Boothe Luce Visiting Professor of History); and Brandeis University, 1991-2008 (as the Harry S. Truman Professor of American History). Jones is the author of several books, including Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical (Basic Books, 2018); A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America (Basic Books, 2013; pb., Basic, 2014); Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present, 25th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Updated (Basic, 2010; originally published 1985); Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War, 1854-1872 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008; pb Vintage, 2009); Created Equal: A History of the United States with Peter Wood, Elaine Tyler May, Tim Borstelmann, and Vicki Ruiz (college text) (Prentice-Hall/Pearson, 2003; Fifth Edition, 2016) [chapters 9-18 covering the period 1790-1900]; Creek Walking: Growing Up in Delaware in the 1950s (University of Delaware Press, 2001); A Social History of the Laboring Classes from Colonial Times to the Present (Blackwell Publishers, 1999); American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor (W. W. Norton, 1998; pb., Norton, 1999); The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present (Basic Books, 1992; pb., Basic, 1994); and Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 (University

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