Thursday Highlights at OAH 2024

The 2024 Annual Meeting for the Organization of American Historians opened Thursday. Attendees braved storms and flood warnings to arrive at the Marriott Hotel in New Orleans, located in the historic French Quarter on Canal Street. We are lucky enough to be here during the French Quarter Festival, giving attendees the chance to take a break from the conference and enjoy the New Orleans food and music scene.

Your intrepid Journal of American History staff and Editorial Assistants spent the first day of the conference in a range of fascinating panels. Read on to learn more about some of our highlights!

Cookie Woolner (University of Memphis) chaired the panel “Y’all Means All: Doing Queer Southern Public History Now” with panelists Josh Burford and Maigen Sullivan (Invisible Histories Project), Frank Perez (The LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana), and Alysha Rooks (Author). Burford, Sullivan, Perez, and Rooks discussed their experiences working to archive queer histories and stories in the south. Burford and Sullivan stressed the importance of finding ways to create and maintain queer archives in the communities from which they originate and finding ways to empower communities to archive for themselves. They also discussed how crucial it is for researchers and faculty to fairly compensate (both citationally and monetarily) the work of archives. Perez discussed questions of developing effective finding aids, particularly in light of the ways language around queerness has changed and developed over time. Rooks reflected on working on history outside the academy, and the importance of opening access to archives outside university spaces. You can find more on the work and upcoming events from the Invisible Histories Project at their website or on their Instagram at invisiblehistoriesproject and LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana at their website. 

Elsewhere, attendees packed the roundtable “New Directions in United States Empire,” chaired by Alvita Akiboh (Yale University), with panelists Holger Droessler (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Sarah Meiners (Cornell University), Adrian De Leon (University of Southern California), and Kristin Oberiano (Wesleyan University). Participants had a robust discussion surrounding definitions of “empire” and how to think through those definitions in a teaching context. They pointed to both the benefits and the drawbacks of particularly capacious understandings of empire, and the necessity of specificity when it comes to grappling with the tactics and realities of U.S. imperialism. Panelists also shared their research experiences, highlighting and problematizing the role of funding, archival access, and language skills in carrying out their work. The session ended with a thought-provoking discussion about how to incorporate histories and historiographies of empire in the classroom. Oberiano and Droessler reflected on their recent American Historian piece, “Teaching U.S. Territories,” and panel discussion turned to the ways teachers and professors might include empire in 20th century U.S. history courses, and how various institutional and political contexts shape the teaching of U.S. imperial history. The roundtable concluded with a reminder from Akiboh and Oberiano to embrace the complexity and paradoxes of imperial history and of historical actors and imperial processes. You can also find Oberiano’s recent piece for Process here, also available as a podcast. 

In the 12:45 session, presenters Melissa Serio (Education Research Partnerships), Mkunde Mtenga (U.S. History Teacher), Michelle Hofmann-Amaya (PUC Lakeview Charter Academy), and Julie Brown-Bernstein (University of Southern California) explored a framework of “Intercambio” in education between stakeholders at all levels in “Embracing Intercambio as Praxis: How K-12 Educators and Researchers Build Reciprocal Relationships and Root Historical Knowledge in Local Communities.” This fascinating panel, featuring an educational researcher, K-12 educators, and a history PhD candidate explored ways to integrate collaboration between education stakeholders into the classroom and pedagogical approaches. All panelists discussed the value of teaching resources like the Zinn Education Project, Digital Inquiry Group, Facing History and Ourselves, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Serio detailed the ways PearDeck, a learning and engagement platform, collaborated with teachers and educational researchers to co-develop a new learning technology. Hofmann-Amaya and Mtenga, both K-12 classroom teachers, shared ways they have integrated collaboration and community engagement into their lesson plans. Hofmann-Amaya, an English Language Arts teacher, collaborated with her colleague in history to integrate students’ lessons across subjects and provide ways to better and more deeply understand history and their place as readers and interpreters of primary and secondary texts. Brown-Bernstein, a PhD candidate and former secondary history teacher, demonstrated how she has continued to use the models of community engagement and pedagogical best practices in her oral history and doctoral research with former auto workers in the San Fernando Valley. 

Two floors down, attendees gathered for “Environmental Justice in Postwar America,” with panelists Adam Quinn (University of Oregon), Elodie Edwards-Grossi (Université Paris Dauphine and Institut Universitaire de France), and Paul Rosier (Villanova University). Joseph Hower (Southwestern University) provided comments. The panelists shared their papers, which considered various examples of environmental crisis and justice in the postwar United States. Quinn shared his work on the labor and environmental histories of computers in the United States, arguing that mythologies of “clean” and merely “virtual” computer technology obscure the fundamental continuities of pollution and resource extraction between industrial capitalism and supposedly “post-industrial” capitalism. Edwards-Grossi told the stories of pollution and white flight in the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles, describing the arrival of petrochemical companies and the ensuing environmental hazards there. She showed how shrinking state infrastructure rooted in austerity measures left space for private philanthropy that invisibilized the social and environmental costs to rapid industrialization. Finally, Rosier offered a narrative of the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, focusing particularly on the motivations and tactics of Indigenous attendees. He called for a “moral and financial accounting” of the sources and implications of pollution and environmental racism. In the words of Edwards-Grossi, the panel left attendees to grapple with the past–with environmental crises and injustices that persist–as “not another country but as a legacy that still lives and breathes with us” today.

What are the costs of coercive and or racist work conditions inside the nursing profession? The afternoon panel “Nursing for the Common Good? Health Activism, Social Justice, and the History of Nursing Work” grappled with this question as the panelists presented papers focused on various efforts made by nurses to address concerns of sexual assault, integration, and health inequalities in the 20th century. Charissa Threat’s (Chapman University) paper “The Need for Nursing Service is Universal” discussed how the American Nurses Association encouraged its members to participate in public welfare and social justice movements post–World War II by presenting integration of the nursing field as integral to national defense. Karissa Haugeberg’s (Tulane University) “On a Quiet Warpath” focused on how nurses confronted sexual harassment during the 1970s and 1980s. She argued that some nurses went beyond just calling for more protections against sexual assault by pushing for respect from physicians and more control in patient care. Cory Ellen Gatrall’s (Elaine Marieb College of Nursing, UMASS Amherst) paper “Dynamics of Prejudice” revealed nurses’ efforts to address health inequalities in Black and brown neighborhoods through cultural diversity initiatives. She uncovers the ways that white discomfort has been weaponized to derail anti-racist public health work. The panel revealed how nursing has always been a political profession and that working in unsafe, coercive, and discriminatory conditions impacts nurses’ ability to care for others. Moving forward, all the panelists agreed that more work needs to be done to understand how the nursing profession can make sense of racism as a public health crisis. 

In the 2:45 session, Laura Westhoff (University of Missouri–St. Louis) chaired a panel to reflect and build on the most recent edition Textbooks and Teaching in the March issue of the Journal of American History, available online for free. Panelists and JAH contributors Natalie Mendoza (University of Colorado Boulder) and Andrew Koch (Gardner Institute) talked collaboratively with panel attendees about ideas and projects of curricular redesign. In particular, discussion centered on applying the ideas about curriculum and course structure from the JAH in small and shrinking departments. Panelists and attendees explored how small departments might approach questions of curriculum and degree mapping through working with other departments and thinking about curriculum as an interdisciplinary process, working with students as collaborators, taking advantage of conferences on teaching introductory history courses, and using frameworks like Decoding the Disciplines. Participants worked on thinking critically about the ways students navigate degree structures and requirements, and shaping curriculum maps to reflect how students actually navigate degrees. 

The plenary session, chaired by OAH President Anthea Hartig, closed out the first day of conference programming. Titled “Amidst and against a Patriarchy: Women as History-Makers, Advocates, and Defenders of Rights,” session attendees heard from Leona Tate (Leona Tate Foundation for Change, TEP Center), Shirley Ann Higuchi (Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation), Diana Sierra Becerra (University of Massachusetts), and Sarah Adams-Cornell (Matriarch), who spoke passionately and thoughtfully about their own work and experiences, the multivalent role of history in navigating and uprooting patriarchal structures and ideologies, and the importance of women as historical and contemporary change-makers.

Panelists began by sharing their personal experiences and community work. This included Tate’s childhood experience integrating her public elementary school and later reopening and repurposing the building as an educational community center; Higuchi’s family history of incarceration during World War II and her efforts to preserve and share the broader history of Japanese American incarceration; Becerra’s research and advocacy surrounding the historical and contemporary role of working class women in social movements and revolutions; and Adams-Cornell’s work with the organization she co-founded, Matriarch, which focuses on empowering inter-tribal Native women through education and community.

What all the panelists had in common was a shared commitment to community and the role that we, as historians, teachers, and advocates, can play in fighting oppressive and patriarchal structures. Becerra, for example, exhorted listeners to see history as a tool “to understand how we got here and how to change the conditions under which we live.” She argued that history has the power to give us hope, and that there is nothing inevitable about crises and collapse. For Becerra, history has the potential for collective healing and mobilization, and can be used to inform the “analysis, vision, and political strategy of social movements”–though she reminded the audience that history in itself cannot be a substitute for organizing.

For her part, Adams-Cornell warned of the limitations of history, pointing out the ways that Western and colonized histories supplanted Indigenous knowledge and practices. Suggesting that history can be at times a “harm to be overcome,” Adams-Cornell challenged us to grapple with the ways colonized histories might be an obstacle to liberation, and called for us as historians and advocates to center the needs of historically marginalized communities and to hold ourselves accountable to those communities. She encouraged attendees to “be an accomplice, not an ally,” and to lean into the complexities surrounding questions of community, equity, and advocacy, rather than appeasing the urge to “make things palatable.” Like any good panel, the discussion raised more questions than it answered, and the topics will remain relevant throughout the weekend and beyond. 

After the plenary session, attendees were invited to continue to be in conversation and community at the opening reception in the exhibit hall, where participants enjoyed live jazz and refreshments. The exhibit hall will remain open until Saturday at 5 PM. Conference attendees can stop by for refreshments at 12 PM on Friday, and for breakfast at 9 AM on Saturday. Publishers, presses, and exhibitors will be available throughout the weekend–stop by to peruse books, chat with other conference attendees, and check out the work of the exhibiting organizations!

Staff Spotlight:

Today and tomorrow we’ll be highlighting various members of the OAH and JAH team. We’ve asked them to provide a short bio and to tell us what panels or events they’re most excited for this weekend–if you see them around, come say hi!

Beth English, OAH Executive Director

As Executive Director, I wear a lot of hats. I work with the OAH and JAH teams to implement the OAH mission to advance and advocate for excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and practice of American History, and engage with a broad array of internal and external stakeholders. On any given day I can be working on a grant proposal, writing an advocacy statement, meeting with the organization’s executive officers, or working with the OAH team on member engagement or fundraising strategies.

What I’m most excited about? That’s a tough one for sure! Having the opportunity to connect in person with conference attendees, award winners, and committee members who give so much of their time to the organization is definitely at the top of the list. State of the profession sessions—for example the session on academic labor and academic freedom organized by the CPACE committee—and state of field sessions are always favorites of mine. State of the field sessions are such a terrific way to catch up on some of the most exciting work being done across a variety of fields. This year I’m also particularly excited for the LAWCHA presidential address that will be presented by my ever-generous mentor and dissertation advisor, Cindy Hahamovitch. And of course I can’t wait for Anthea Hartig’s OAH Presidential Address as she wraps up an amazing year as our president.      

Paul Zwirecki, OAH Director of Advancement and Strategic Partnerships

As OAH Director of Advancement and Strategic Partnerships, I direct strategic planning and the daily operations of fundraising, development, and advocacy efforts. I manage relationships with key internal and external partners, including the National Park Service. 

I always look forward to the awards ceremony, because I love seeing how happy and proud the winners are, and also because it’s a great way to keep updating my ever-growing reading list.