Friday Highlights at OAH 2025

On Friday of the OAH conference, attendees came back together for ongoing discussions and panels. We enjoyed the continued sunshine Chicago has to offer as the Exhibit Hall opened for a morning mixer breakfast before the day’s sessions began. 

Attendees also had the option of going on one of several tours to explore and learn more about Chicago history. For those interested in Chicago’s local art, the Pilsen Public Art walking tour offered attendees a chance to explore the colorful and resilient neighborhood of Pilsen, which hosts the Midwest’s highest concentration of murals in one neighborhood. Led by Luis Tubens, the tour discussed the political and socioeconomic role of murals in the community and in Chicago at large. For those interested in the labor, race, and urban history of Chicago, the Pullman Neighborhood Tour, led by the Illinois Labor History Society, presented the history of the area as a company town, the site of the 1894 strike and national railroad boycott led by Eugene V. Debs, and the role that the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black union in the American Federation of Labor, played in the area. For those interested in the Indigenous history of Chicago, the Indigenous Chicago Walking Tour used historic places and public history representations to recast Chicago as an Indigenous place and to retell stories of Chicago’s founding, covering five centuries of history. Finally, for those interested in the history of the North Lawndale neighborhood, the Chicago Mahogany–North Lawndale bus tour brought attendees to the West side of Chicago, exploring the legacies of the Jewish community in Chicago and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Yesterday, we featured a photograph from one of our post-panel podcast recording sessions. Our staff continued to record conversations today (and will again tomorrow), led by our fearless podcast editorial assistant, Marina Mecham. Marina brought the JAH podcast back after a COVID-19 induced hiatus, and we’re grateful for their thoughtful and steady work. The podcast features interviews with JAH authors, shorter “blogcast” episodes in conjunction with Process, and panel debrief episodes each spring from the OAH Conference on American History. You can find new episodes on your favorite podcatcher. 

The staff of the JAH set out to bring you more session summaries and reports on all that the conference had to offer on the second day of the conference.

During the first session of the day, John D’Emilio (University of Illinois Chicago, Emeritus) chaired the lightning round, “Emerging Voices in Queer and Trans* Histories and Histories of Sexuality.” Panelists spoke about their current research, all of which pushes the fields of Queer and Trans history and the history of sexuality towards new geographic and cultural horizons. Justin Salgado (Ohio State University) explained his work exploring connections between experiences in the HIV/AIDS epidemic, migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the communities coming together to face the joys and challenges of life. Alex Jin (Princeton University) spoke about his book project on queerness among early Chinese migrants to the U.S., especially focusing on the social and financial roles Chinese men played in multiethnic communities across the West Coast. Paola Cavallari’s (University of Memphis) research focuses on the political, social, and cultural history of Memphis, Tennessee by examining the Othering that occurred in police violence enacted against Black women, Black queer people, and Indigenous people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Austin Svedjan (University of Pennsylvania) discussed their work engaging with the presuppositions that literature is pro-queer and social sciences like history are inherently anti-queer. Amelia Carter (University of Pennsylvania) spoke about the Lesbian Feminist Liberation movement’s impact on the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Marcus Lee’s (Princeton University) recent work argues that treating Bayard Rustin as a nearly lost figure has dictated how we’re supposed to remember him and his legacy, speaking to that which is both found in and obscured by silences in archives and the historical record. Myra Billund-Phibbs (University of Minnesota Twin Cities) discussed her work in oral history and microhistory with the political and daily lives of transwomen in the Twins Cities, Minnesota, in the 1970s and 1980s. Sophia DeLeonibus’s (Yale University) research on intersex people in mid-century America intersects with twentieth- and twenty-first-century discussions about gender and sexuality, especially in the wake of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric expounded by many conservative politicians today.

In the Colorado room, Timothy Stewart-Winter (Rutgers University-Newark) chaired and commented on the panel, “Prisons, Bars, and Business: The Struggle over Gay Identity and Its Spaces in 20th Century California,” with Vic Overdorf (Rice University) and Haleigh Marcello (University of California, Irvine) presenting papers. Mari Reithmayr (Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford), while not present, also contributed a paper that was read by Steward-Winter. Overdorf described the sexual psychopathy research of Lewis Terman and Catherine Miles on homosexual prisoners in Alcatraz during the early twentieth century. In the presentation, Overdorf explained how researchers tried to test the masculinity and femininity of prisoners as a gauge for sexuality. This practice of medically defining homosexuality among prisoners was also an effort to define homosexuality as inherently criminal and associated with mental instability. Overdorf argued that this study, among others, was essential to the specification of binary definitions of sexuality as well as an impetus for using this medical research to justify gay imprisonment. Marcello shifted the discussion to her dissertation chapter about the rise and fall of the historically gay community in Garden Grove, California. Marcello argued that the community ran counter to Orange County’s white middle class residents’ heterosexual conception of suburbanization. Additionally, the project studied how homophobic residents organized vice squads alongside police and wrote new local municipal ordinances to target gay establishments and largely expel gay people from the community by the 1980s. Finally, Reithmayr’s project utilizes the performance archive of Jose Sarria to understand how operas performed at the Black Cat Bar inspired activism against gay communities. By analyzing recordings of Sarria’s performances, Reithmayr sees public speeches, collective singing, and even public shaming as common practices used by Sarria to encourage people to identify as gay. Overall, while all these projects reaffirmed California’s central place in mid-century gay history, they also analyzed an array of new spaces—Alcatraz, Garden City, and Black Cat Operas—and engaged with themes of both queer flourishing and repression.

Elsewhere attendees gathered for another lightning round titled “Stemming the Anti-History Tide: Pedagogy and Public Engagement in Reactionary Times.” The panelists shared their experiences and strategies in resisting attacks against the teaching of history at all levels, and engaged in a generative discussion with attendees about concrete steps educators can take moving forward. Dawson Barrett (Del Mar College) discussed his experience teaching at a community college in Texas, describing the kinds of assignments he uses to get his students engaged in local histories of oppression and resistance. He noted that some community colleges retain more room for maneuvering than K-12 teachers, who often are the primary targets of anti-history legislation. Carolyn Edwards (History Not Told) reflected on the need to critically evaluate historical narratives, and discussed her work building a digital repository of historical primary sources. Nathan Rives (Weber State University) shared his experiences managing the dual enrollment history program at his university, pointing to the threat posed by bills currently proposed in the Utah state legislature. He highlighted our “moral and intellectual responsibility” to offer “truthful history” to our students, even in the face of such threats. Hayley McCulloch (Florida Gulf Coast University) discussed her work as a public high school teacher in Florida, and praised educators for their ability to find “better and more intellectually rigorous ways to teach” in light of attacks on history teaching, emphasizing the need to resist self-censorship. She stressed the importance of countering billionaire-backed conservative curricula from groups like PragerU, discussing her efforts to help build alternate lesson plans for teachers. Louis Mercer (University of Illinois Chicago) shared his experiences as a high school history teacher and school board member, reminding the audience of the importance of local school and library boards for impacting local politics. Beth Robinson (Texas A&M–Corpus Christi) situated the current anti-history tide in a longer history of conflict, offering the example of a 1998 Smithsonian exhibit about sweatshops that ignited a swift conservative backlash. Joseph Walzer (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) closed the lightning round by underlining the importance of community partnerships and archiving initiatives. During the subsequent Q&A session, attendees and panelists discussed various strategies for resisting anti-history attacks, including working with district curriculum specialists to disseminate alternate curricular resources, utilizing local archivists and repositories, and engaging community members in local history projects.

During the 3:30 PM session, Rosalyn LaPier (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) chaired the roundtable, “Chicago as an Indigenous Metropolis: Seeing Chicago as a Native Space and Place from Time Immemorial to the Present,” where Zada Ballew (University of Wisconsin–Madison), David Beck (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), John William Nelson (Texas Tech University), and Kabl Wilkerson (Harvard University) shared their insights on Chicago’s deep history, before and after U.S. settler colonists arrived in the area. After opening remarks from Ballew, LaPier opened the discussion by asking the panelists why they chose to write on Chicago of all areas. Beck spoke about the importance of Chicago as the major center of Native American activism outside Native communities and reservations. Wilkerson talked about their family’s connection to Chicago and resisting destabilization and detribalization through citizenship in the wake of forced migrations in the 1800s. LaPier then opened the floor to the panelists to talk about how one can tell the story of Indigenous Chicago, thinking about sources and histories. Nelson spoke about native mobility before the Algonquin pushed into the region, making use of Chicago’s waterways as a historical source. Ballew focused on the perceived threat of imminent indigenous extinction, drawing on Native removal narratives to tell the story of nineteenth-century Chicago. LaPier posed her final prepared question about who should write indigenous history. Beck spoke to the importance of Native agency in histories about Native people and the responsibility of historians to do the best job possible for each community whose history they are writing. Ballew spoke to the importance of working with other Native scholars and communities, pushing back against the traditional single-author monograph model that is so prevalent in modern history. Wilkerson echoed Beck’s comments about responsible history writing, emphasizing the role non-Natives can and do play in advocating for Native communities and the need to consider the consequence of scholarship on the communities in question. Nelson invited non-Native scholars of indigenous history, especially those in positions of privilege like tenured professors, to uplift those voices, especially native voices, who might not otherwise reach academic circles to which they are privy. During the Q&A portion, LaPier and others spoke about the inherent political nature of indigenous history, especially when native people are literally born into political factions and situations without choosing to be there.

Two floors up, attendees convened for the panel “‘Historians and the Carceral State’: A Reflection on the 10th Anniversary of the Special Issue,” which brought together contributors to the June 2015 JAH special issue on the carceral state. These included Robert Chase (Stony Brook University), Torrie Hester (Saint Louis University), Elizabeth Hinton (Yale University), Matthew Lassiter (University of Michigan), Alex Lichtenstein (Indiana University Bloomington), Khalil Muhammad (Harvard Kennedy School), Donna Murch (Rutgers University–New Brunswick), Timothy Stewart-Winter (Rutgers University–Newark), Heather Ann Thompson (University of Michigan), and Stephen Andrews (Organization of American Historians). Chair Carl Suddler (Emory University) described the special issue as being transformative for carceral studies, and asked the panelists to reflect on the production of the issue. All of the attendees emphasized the collaborative nature of the special issue, characterizing it as a community project and praising it as a space for female and Black scholars, indebted to insights from Black Studies. Suddler also asked the panelists to consider new directions in the field of carceral studies and the ways the field is evolving. Robert Chase responded by highlighting the difference between “carceral state” and “carceral states,” emphasizing that incarceration is not just federal and top-down, but also involves the local enforcement and policing power of states. Alex Lichtenstein argued that scholars need to think more about the “capillaries of the carceral as they flow out of prisons” and “infect” other areas of U.S. society, alongside the internationalization of the carceral state. Elizabeth Hinton, Donna Murch, and Matthew Lassiter all stressed the importance of being activist scholars, calling historians who study mass incarceration to organize with and lift up directly impacted people, especially formerly incarcerated people and their families.

The evening’s events began with the OAH awards ceremony. Among other awards announced was the JAH’s Louis Pelzer Memorial Prize, awarded to a graduate student for an outstanding essay in history. The 2025 prize was awarded to Johnny Fulfer (Indiana University Bloomington). After the awards ceremony, there were a variety of receptions, including one for community college educators and one for ALANA scholars.

Friday’s Plenary Session, “The United States Constitution, Past, Present, Future: A Conversation with Jeffrey Rosen,” featured moderators David Blight (Yale University) and Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard University) and presenter Jeffrey Rosen (National Constitution Center). Blight and Gordon-Reed interviewed Rosen about his latest book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, which examines how Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton conceived of and thought about the pursuit of happiness in their own lives. In his book, Rosen connects the legacy Greco-Roman moral philosophy left to the founders led to their own quest for long-lasting pleasure, which they sought through virtuous habits like temperance and sincerity.

During the plenary, Rosen began by talking about the opportunity that COVID-19 lockdown gave him to dive into the Greco-Roman works that inspired Jefferson, including Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which focused on the virtues necessary to happiness. He then reflected on other parts of Jefferson’s reading list, which spanned literature, politics, science, moral philosophy, poetry, and ethics and Jefferson’s daily schedule, which was equally rigorous. These readings transformed Rosen’s understanding of what it meant to strive for happiness with this logical mindset—a focus for the founders, who feared possible monarchs arising in the United States.

Then, getting to the heart of the connection between his latest book and his upcoming book on Hamilton and Jefferson, Rosen asserted, “Despite all the divisions and polarization and fears of constitutional subversion, it’s history and the constitution that will hold us together.” He urged attendees to read often and read deeply to continue striving towards the virtues the founding fathers held so dearly.

Blight next posed the question, “Why virtues?” to his fellow speakers, listing Jefferson’s thirteen virtues for all to hear. His question got at the heart of moral philosophy’s role in the lives of the founders and the lives of people in the twenty-first century. Rosen began his answer by talking about impulse control, referencing the Nicomachean Ethics’ goal of the golden balance between extreme—and thus unproductive—emotions. This ideal balance, he explained, requires discipline and impulse control, which is often at the core of different schools of thought in moral philosophy. These timeless goals, he said, can guide us if we’re willing to let them.

Moving on from the founders’ dedication to classical virtues, Blight asked about the Constitution: “What are the greatest constitutional issues we face right now?” Gordon-Reed emphasized the structural issues of the Constitution, which she described as not fitting the current moment, but also cited the fear and division in the United States that prevents Americans from coming together to amend or adjust the Constitution. She also addressed conflicts of interpretation, citing the founders’ fears of a monarch but acknowledging that perhaps some Americans aren’t quite as afraid of that in the twenty-first century. “People have to decide what kind of society that we want to live in,” she said, asserting that we’re already in the middle of a constitutional crisis, given the willingness of some members of Congress to give away the powers assigned to them in the Constitution. Rosen—citing the Constitution Center’s commitment to non-partisan discussion and pointing back to other historical moments that could have resulted in a Constitutional crisis—argued that we cannot yet say whether or not there is a constitutional crisis. He emphasized the need to understand the details of the Constitution when making calls about crises of this sort.

Blight continued this line of thinking, asking whether the judicial branch could cause a constitutional crisis with a decision, such as the immunity decision released in 2024. Gordon-Reed furthered this question, emphasizing the need to consider the context of such a possibility: “Should the court think about what is happening at this time instead of just thinking about the narrow issue?… Do you think they were not thinking about who they were dealing with—who potentially they could be dealing with when they rendered the decision?” Rosen pointed out that it’s rather difficult to decide whether choices are right or wrong in the moment and that only time will tell, despite the huge stakes of the current situation.

Returning to the importance of history at the end of the plenary, Rosen concluded the evening with an exhortation from John Quincy Adams: “The only thing that will save the Union is if we study history and teach history to our children.”

Friday’s events came to a close with the end of the plenary. The JAH staff is looking forward to the last day of the conference, though the Chicago meeting will be the last OAH conference for Karen Barker, the OAH Accounting and Financial Support Specialist. Karen has been at the OAH and its conferences for the past fifteen years, and we have all greatly benefited from her work and her warm smile. If you see her on Saturday, please be sure to wish her well as she moves on to a new chapter in her life. Thank you, Karen!