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OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile

James M. Banner Jr.

Portrait of James M. Banner Jr.
Image Credit: Beverly Resneck

James M. Banner Jr. is an independent historian in Washington, D.C. The cofounder of the National History Center, he is now a visiting scholar in the history department of George Washington University. Banner is a coeditor of Becoming Historians (2009), the author of Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (2012), and, most recently, the editor of Presidential Misconduct: From George Washington to Today (2019). Scheduled for publication in early 2021 from Yale University Press is his book The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History is Revisionist History. His play, "Good and Faithful Servants," adapted from the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson, is under development.

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Featured Lecture

Revisionist History: What It Is, Why We Have It

This lecture originates in a study of the existence, nature, varieties, uses, and problematics of revisionist history since the time of Herodotus. Drawing its examples and arguments from the literature of American history, it ventures some general principles about historical interpretations, their arguments, and their lasting influences. Based on Banner's 2021 book, The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History is Revisionist History.

OAH Lectures

This lecture originates in a study of the existence, nature, varieties, uses, and problematics of revisionist history since the time of Herodotus. Drawing its examples and arguments from the literature of American history, it ventures some general principles about historical interpretations, their arguments, and their lasting influences. Based on Banner's 2021 book, The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History is Revisionist History.
Drawn from Banner's book "Presidential Misconduct: From George Washington to Today," this lecture will cover the record of presidential misconduct originally prepared in 1974 by a group of historians, of whom Banner was one, for the Impeachment Inquiry of the House Committee on the Judiciary and brought up to date through the administration of Barack Obama in 2019. The sole comprehensive account of its subject in the historical literature, its contents are open to many interpretations.
Designed principally as a general guide to graduate students as they commence their preparations to be professional historians, this lecture reviews the state of the discipline of history today, proposes the practices and institutions deserving of attention in both academic and public history arenas, and ends on the necessity of graduate students' charting the professional courses best for them.
In an era of disputed elections, the presidential elections of 1800 and 1801--one involving voting in each state, the other in the House of Representatives--have new salience. This election, arguably the first "critical election," created a Democratic majority that lasted for 60 years, threatened the constitutional fabric, and laid the groundwork for path-breaking constitutional developments. But there may be more to say about it than we know.

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