Events and Networking Opportunities

Plenary Session: Teaching American History in Uncertain Times

Thursday, March 30, 4:30 pm–6:00 pm

Archbishop Stephanic High School. Classroom, Library of Congress

The teaching of American history is under assault by a spate of educational gag orders that restrict what can be taught in K-12 schools and in institutions of higher education. Laws across the country limit or ban teaching on systemic racism, sexism, gender and sexuality, and LGBTQ+ topics. In addition, the use and misuse of history and historical scholarship - most recently in the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs v. Jackson - raises important questions about the role of U.S. history in the classroom and beyond. This year’s in-person and virtual conference highlight many sessions and workshops related to K-12 and college/university teaching during these challenging times.

Building upon this theme, this plenary brings together leading scholars, teachers, and advocates in conversation to discuss the histories behind these efforts, how they threaten the teaching and practice of American history, what we can do to challenge them, and how we can support inclusive and social justice-oriented teaching and learning in all classrooms.

Chair: Erika Lee, OAH President and Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies, University of Minnesota

Daina Ramey Berry, Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Julio Capó, Jr., Associate Professor of History, Florida International University
Alexandra Minna Stern, Humanities Dean, University of California Los Angeles
Jean M. O'Brien, (White Earth Ojibwe), Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History at the University of Minnesota
Mariana E. Ramírez, M.Ed., University of California Los Angeles Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, Division of Urban Schooling and former high school teacher at Roosevelt High School, Los Angeles
Renee Tajima-Peña (Series Producer, PBS's "Asian Americans," Professor of Asian American Studies, Director, Center for EthnoCommunications, Endowed Chair in Japanese American Studies, University of California Los Angeles)

CC - this session is CART Captioned

NEW! Morning Mixer: Networking Welcome Breakfast

Friday, March 31, 8:45 am–10:15 am

Kick off your morning with complimentary coffee or tea and a light breakfast. Meet with colleagues and friends, OAH staff, committee members, and leadership to discuss, socialize, and make new connections. Join a conversation pod to talk about the topics that matter to you most. Pods include:

Educators and Teaching
Publishing
Public History
Adjunct and Contingent Faculty
New Members
Advocacy
Research and Resources
Job Seekers

Submit a conversation pod category to meetings@oah.org

OAH Business Meeting

Saturday, April 1, 5:15 pm–5:45pm

All OAH members are encouraged to attend the meeting and participate in the governance of the organization. Proposals for action should be made in the form of ordinary motions or resolutions. All such motions or resolutions must be signed by one hundred members in good standing and submitted at least forty-five days prior to the meeting to OAH Executive Director Beth English and OAH Parliamentarian Jonathan Lurie, c/o OAH, 112 North Bryan Ave., Bloomington, IN 47408. Should a motion or resolution be submitted in this manner, OAH membership will be notified via electronic communication at least 30 days in advance of the Annual Business Meeting. The OAH Business Meeting will immediately precede the Presidential Address.

OAH Presidential Address:
Confronting Crises: Asian American Histories for Uncertain Times

Saturday, April 1, 5:45 pm–7:00 pm

Erika Lee

Erika Lee, OAH President, Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies
Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History
Director, Immigration History Research Center
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

CC - this session is CART Captioned

The OAH Awards Ceremony

Friday, March 31, 5:15 pm–6:15 pm

Celebrating the best in American history—writing, teaching, public presentation, research, support, and distinguished careers—the OAH Awards Ceremony recognizes colleagues and friends whose achievements advance our profession, bolstering deep, sophisticated understandings of America’s complex past, and informed, historically relevant discussions of contemporary issues.

See the 2022 Award Recipients here.

NEW: Meet & Mingle Reception

Friday, March 31, 6:00 PM–7:30 PM

Join us following the OAH Award Ceremony to meet and mingle with attendees, publishers, and committee members. Join in for conversation, make a new acquaintance, or meet up before dinner. Browse the various committee stands to learn about their goals and how you can get involved.

Trivia Power Hour

Friday, March 31, 6:30 pm–7:30 pm

The makers of HistoryPlunge, a popular card-based history game, are hosting a trivia hour during the Mix and Mingle
reception! Grab a drink, snacks, and settle in to test your mettle against your fellow historians. Play on teams of up to
5 with people you know or use it as a chance to make new connections. There will be prizes for the most creative team
names and for the winning team!

OAH Connect

OAH Booth, Exhibit Hall

Meet with OAH leadership, volunteers, and staff during exhibit hall hours and share your ideas, thoughts, and suggestions. Ask questions, get answers, learn about the goals of the OAH, and how we are can support you. Watch this space for updated schedules!

Chat Room Seminars

Saturday, April 1, 12:15 pm - 1 pm
The Chat Room provides an opportunity for historians to share and learn from the knowledge and experiences of their peers. Led by up to two moderators, each 45-minute seminar encourages conversation in a relaxed and unstructured environment. Teach, learn, and debate while meeting friends both old and new.

Chat topics include:
• Politics of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) in the History Classroom
• Digital Humanities: In the Classroom and In Your Research
• Working with Legal Advocates and Activists
• How Can Professional Organizations Stay Relevant?
• The intersections of DEI Work and Reality on Campuses
• Best Practices for the Freshmen Survey, Sharing Ideas and Resources to Increase Engagement
• Addressing the Challenges of Contingent Academic Labor
• Before Roe, After Dobbs: What the Last Two Centuries Can Tell Us About Abortion Politics Today
• What Does the Public Think Teachers and Historians Do?

COMMUNITY CONVERSATION
Free and open to the public

History on Trial
An American History Forum with Educators

Sunday, April 2, 1:30 pm-4:00 pm
The Tateuchi Democracy Forum at the Japanese American National Museum

From school board meetings to the halls of state legislatures and front-page news, the politicization of the teaching and writing of United States history is reshaping what can and cannot be taught in our nation’s classrooms at all levels. Rooted in the sentiment that there is only a singular narrative explaining the American experiment, past and present, these efforts seek to take us back to an earlier era characterized by a limited, celebratory vision that ignores the core conflict of our national story: that the United States was founded on radical notions of liberty, freedom, and equality, but built on systems of slavery, exploitation, and exclusion. Panelists will focus on the challenges of teaching and presenting history in today’s classrooms, public spaces and museums, debates over what and whose history will be taught, and lessons to be gleaned from “history wars” of the past.

The panel discussion will be held Sunday, April 2, 2023, at the The Tateuchi Democracy Forum at the Japanese American National Museum, with opening remarks beginning at 1:30 pm and a reception following at 3:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public, and will be livestreamed.

This forum honors the late Gary B. Nash — former president of the Organization of American Historians and staunch defender of teaching history in all its complexity.

Co-sponsored by UCLA Department of History, Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History, the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair of History, and the Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World.

Chair: David Blight, OAH Vice President; Sterling Professor of American History; Director, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition Yale University

Panelists:

Danny Diaz, Director of UCLA History-Geography Project
Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History, University of California, Los Angeles
Karalee Wong Nakatsuka, Middle School History Teacher, 2019 Gilder Lehrman CA History Teacher of the Year, author of Bring History and Civics to Life
Orlando R. Serrano Jr., Manager, Youth and Teacher Programs, Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Lynn Yamasaki, Director of Education at the Japanese American National Museum

Livestream, Spanish translation, and CART captioning will be available.

Register for the Livestream

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Organization of American Historians are partnering to offer 100 Southern California teachers in our Affiliate School Program free registration at the 2023 OAH Annual Conference in Los Angeles, California, March 30-April 2, 2023.

Click here to request free registration.

To ensure your school is a member of our free Affiliate School Program, please click here.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History was founded in 1994 by Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, visionaries and lifelong supporters of American history education. The Institute is the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to K–12 history education while also serving the general public. Its mission is to promote the knowledge and understanding of American history through educational programs and resources.

Museum Displays:

¡Murales Rebeldes! L.A. Chicana/o Murals under Siege

Weast Los Streetscapers

Exhibit Hall Feature: ¡Murales Rebeldes! L.A. Chicana/o Murals under Siege presents the dramatic stories of Los Angeles–area Chicana/o murals from the 1970s to the 1990s that were whitewashed, censored, neglected, and even destroyed. These murals challenged inequality and celebrated Chicana/o culture, making them targets of suppression.

Murals connect history, art, identity, and place with themes of free speech, civil rights, and Chicana/o culture and history. Representing these themes are the murals of Barbara Carrasco; Yreina D. Cervántez and Alma López; Roberto Chavez; Ernesto de la Loza; Willie Herrón III; Sergio O’Cadiz Moctezuma; and East Los Streetscapers (David Botello, Wayne Alaniz Healy, and George Yepes). They all endured a lack of recognition—as works of art, as a means of self-expression, and as voices with social, historical, or political relevance. ¡Murales Rebeldes! celebrates their creative spirit, the power of urban art, and truths that must be told.

This project was developed by the California Historical Society and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes for the Getty’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.

Air and Soil in Crisis: Community Empowerment to Fight Environmental Degradation in Boyle Heights

Exhibit Hall Feature: The Boyle Heights Museum, a collective group of faculty members, doctoral and undergraduate students out of the University of Southern California, will produce their fifth historical exhibition focused on “Air and Soil in Crisis: Community Empowerment to Fight Environmental Degradation in Boyle Heights” for the 2023 Organization of American Historians conference in Los Angeles. This group of public historians work collaboratively with CASA 0101, a community-based arts institution in Boyle Heights, founded and directed by playwright Josefina Lopez to house the exhibition and sponsor public programming for the neighborhood made up of an overwhelming poor, immigrant Latinx community. This exhibition combines the historical and contemporary issues of environmental degradation suffered by Boyle Heights, such as being the site of the largest toxic soil cleanup in California and suffering from major air pollution due to five freeways being built through the community, with past and present efforts to fight for community empowerment against large polluters trying to keep Boyle Heights complacent in their efforts to keep the community in environmental danger. It features activist organizations such as Mothers of East L.A. (MELA), who has fought against toxic incinerators and oil lines being built near or in the community, and Edward Roybal, who fought unsuccessfully against the imposition of freeways for L.A. commuters while centering the neighborhood for pollution from automobiles. The point of the exhibition and the accompanying public programming is to educate the local community on these issues and attempts to protect their community, while fostering a new sense of urgency in our time of climate change and environmental challenges.

"Hey, I Know Your Work" Mentorship Program

Graduate students, recent graduates, or early career historians meet with experienced scholars to discuss research, professional aspirations, or simply to get acquainted.

The OAH’s Committee on the Status of African American, Latino/a, Asian American, Native American (ALANA) Historians and ALANA Histories is committed to intersectionality in its conception, constitution, and in the practice of its rotating members. Our mission is to serve a broad swath of the rising underrepresented scholars in our craft. Mentees have the opportunity to learn strategies to navigate an academic career from a more senior scholar aligned with ALANA’s goals. Look for ALANA-endorsed mentors on the listing.

The Society for the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE) is again partnering with the OAH to provide mentors to those interested in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Look for SHGAPE-endorsed mentors in the listing.

How does it work?

Select mentors from the list posted December 2022. The list will include the mentor’s positions and research interests.
Connect: The OAH will assign up to three mentees to a mentor based on availability. In March 2023, all mentors and mentees are connected with each other to finalize their scheduled meeting time.
Meet: During the event, mentors and mentees meet for conversation at a predetermined time. Meetings last between forty-five minutes and one hour.
Why? This program offers emerging scholars the opportunity to forge professional and personal relationships with scholars whose work they admire.

How do I become a mentor?

If you are interested in becoming a mentor please email meetings@oah.org with the following:

Name
Title/Position
Institution if applicable
Contact information including email and phone number
Topics of specialty or areas of interest
If you would like to be listed as an ALANA or SHGAPE mentor

How do I become a mentee?

If you are interested in becoming a mentee please email meetings@oah.org with the following:

Name
Institution if applicable
Contact information including email and phone number
Brief bio (150 words)
Top three mentor choices

Mentor Listing

Thomas Balcerski Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History, Occidental College	Dr. Balcerski's areas of interest include Presidents and First Ladies, Political History, Gender and Sexuality, Public writing, and Social media. View his profile here.
Joan Boudreau Curator, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution	Available for Virtual Meetings Only Dr. Boudreau's areas of interest include printing and printmaking history. View her profile here.
Elizabeth Charles Historian, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State	Dr. Charles's interests are Modern Russian History, Cold War History, and U.S. Diplomatic History. She researches and compiles the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, and has completed volumes on the Soviet Union 1983-1985, Soviet Union 1985-1986, and the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty 1984-1989. She is currently researching in the George H.W. Bush records on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Elizabeth finished her PhD in Modern Russian and Cold War History at the George Washington University in 2010. She also served as the 2020-2021 president of the Society for History in the Federal Government. She will be happy to discuss her work and work in federal history offices more broadly.
William Deverell Professor of History, Environmental Studies and Spatial Sciences, Van Hunnick Department of History, USC Dornsife; College Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West; and Director, USC Libraries Collections Convergence Institute	Dr. Deverell is an American historian interested in the history of the American West (especially the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries) environmental history, history of commemoration and memorialization, and the history of Los Angeles, including conversations about archival and other sources which can be brought into graduate student analyses and interpretation.
Greg Downs Professor, Department of History, University of California, Davis	SHGAPE Affiliated Mentor Dr. Downs's topics of specialty or areas of interest are slavery, emancipation, Civil War, Reconstruction, and transnational history.
Cristina Groeger Assistant Professor, Department of History, Lake Forest College	SHGAPE Affiliated Mentor \| Available for Virtual Meetings Only Dr. Groeger's areas of interest are History of Work, Education, Migration, and Gender in the 20th century U.S. Her first book was about how schools restructured pathways into employment in the city of Boston in the early twentieth century, and the ways this process reinforced economic inequality. Her second book project is about how immigration and migration policies have shaped low-wage labor markets, specifically care work performed by women, over the 20th century.
Rudy Guevarra Jr. Associate Professor, Arizona State University	ALANA Affiliated Mentor Dr. Guevarra's areas of interest include comparative and relational Ethnic Studies, Asian American history, Pacific Islander history, Chicanx and Latinx history, Filipinx history, Critical Mixed Race Studies, borderlands history, race and food studies, labor and community, oral history and memory.
Hidetaka Hirota Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley	ALANA Affiliated Mentor \| SHGAPE Affiliated Mentor Dr. Hirota's topics of specialty and/or areas of interest include US immigration (especially nativism and immigration policy), 19th-century United States, US and the World, and transnational history.
Michael D. Innis-Jiménez Professor, Department of American Studies, The University of Alabama	ALANA Affiliated Mentor Dr. Innis-Jiménez's research interests include Latinx migration and immigration in the Americas, urban U.S. Latinx communities, racialization, food, and the urban environment.
Felicia Kornbluh Professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, University of Vermont	Dr. Felicia Kornbluh (she/her) specializes in the histories of feminism, gender, social welfare, law, race, and reproductive politics. A Professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, as well as an affiliated faculty member in Jewish Studies, she is author or coauthor of three books, including A WOMAN’S LIFE IS A HUMAN LIFE: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice (Grove Press, 2023). Kornbluh writes regularly for the scholarly and popular press, including for The American Prospect, Washington Post, and The Forward, and is vice president of the board of Planned Parenthood of Vermont Action Fund.
Jana K. Lipman Professor of History, Tulane University	Dr. Lipman's interests include: U.S. foreign relations broadly construed, refugee history, migration, labor, U.S. Empire, Asian American history, the U.S. War in Vietnam, and U.S.-Caribbean and U.S.-Cuban relations.
Lauren MacIvor Thompson Assistant Professor of History and Interdisciplinary Studies, Kennesaw State University	SHGAPE Affiliated Mentor Dr. Thompson's areas of interest are women’s history, history of women’s health, legal history and history of medicine and public health.
Johann Neem Professor of History, Western Washington University, and Editor, Journal of the Early Republic	Dr. Neem's areas of interest include the American Revolution; Early American Republic; and History of Education.
Caryn Neumann Teaching Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Applied Science, Miami University of Ohio	Dr. Neumann's specialty is U.S. Women's History with interests in African American History and popular culture (food, comics). She teaches at a regional campus of Miami University of Ohio. She is affiliated with four different departments and holds a position in the Department of Interdisciplinary and Communication Studies because, in her own words, "I discovered it was easier to get a job as an interdisciplinary scholar than an historian." She also has a love of political history.
Sarah Snyder Professor, School of International Service, American University; Executive Co-Editor, Modern American History, Cambridge University Press; and Founding Co-Editor, Global America, Columbia University Press	Dr. Snyder is interested in mentoring graduate students and junior scholars working on U.S. foreign relations, rights, and nonstate actors.
Nancy Unger Professor of History, Santa Clara University, and President of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era	SHGAPE Affiliated Mentor Three of Dr. Unger's four books concern the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and two of those are biographies. Her fields of specialty (all in US History) include LGBTQ+, women, and the environment. she is currently working on a book on a 1913 violation of the Mann Act. She enjoys public intellectual work (op-eds, C-SPAN, and the like).
Amy Louise Wood Professor, History Department, Illinois State University	SHGAPE Affiliated Mentor Dr. Wood's areas of interests are Gilded Age and Progressive Era; histories of crime, punishment, and violence; history of emotion; and history of film and photography.
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu Associate Dean of Research, Faculty Development, and Public Engagement, School of Humanities; Director of the Humanities Center; Director of the Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, and Belonging; and Professor of History and Asian American Studies, University of California, Irvine	Dr. Wu's areas of interest include Asian American history, Race, Women’s history, U.S. Pacific, Empire, Citizenship, and Social Activism.

The Hub | One-on-One Meetings

Meet one-on-one with publishers during the conference. Information to book your appointment can be found in each description below. Book early as spaces fill quickly.

You must be registered for the OAH Conference on American History prior to signing up for an appointment.

⇒ Cambridge University Press

With more than 30 years of experience working in the publishing world, for both trade and academic houses, I currently commission and develop trade, academic, and reference works in US and Latin American history at Cambridge University Press. I am passionate about bringing original, paradigm-shifting scholarship to as wide a readership as possible and am interested in work that explores diversity and equality, highlights underrepresented voices and stories, and challenges the traditional historiographical narrative. Particular areas of interest include African American history, women’s history, legal history, the history of sexuality, the history of slavery, Afro-Latin American history, military history, particularly the study of war and society, and the history of religion.

To set up a meeting please email Cecelia Cancellaro at cecelia.cancellaro@cambridge.org.

⇒ Indiana University Press

At Indiana University Press, we publish books that make a difference—for readers today and for generations to come. Founded in 1950, we are one of the largest public university presses, publishing more than 100 scholarly and trade titles each year in a wide range of subject areas, including music, folklore, and Jewish and Holocaust studies.

We are currently interested in growing our trade American history list, with a particular emphasis on Native and Indigenous history, environmental history, military history, and regional Midwestern subjects. If you would like to set up a meeting, please contact Dan Crissman at dcrissm@iu.edu

⇒ University of Illinois Press

Interested in publishing with University of Illinois Press? Please explore our Getting Started guide for how to submit a book proposal. The following acquiring editors are available to meet with you at the conference:

Dominique Moore, Acquisitions Editor
Areas of interest: American Ethnic Studies, Black Studies, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Email: moore53@uillinois.edu
Twitter: @DomTheEditor

Alison Syring, Acquisitions Editor
Areas of interest: History, Religion, Appalachian Studies, Digital Humanities
Email: asyring2@uillinois.edu
Twitter: @AlisonSyring

These and the following editor will also be available via their OAH virtual exhibit at https://www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/category/virtual-exhibit/:

Daniel Nasset, Editor-in-Chief
Areas of interest: Communication, Journalism, Film and Media, Sports
Email: dnasset@uillinois.edu

⇒ University of Notre Dame Press

The University of Notre Dame Press publishes academic and general interest books that engage the most enduring questions of our time. We believe in the power of research to advance knowledge and impact lives, and of our books to connect scholars, experts, students, and readers in order to encourage intellectual exploration and enrich conversations on campus, across the country, and around the world. We are committed to maintaining an innovative and sustainable publishing program that makes accessible the ideas of today’s leading experts while fostering the next generation of scholars and thinkers. Although the world is confronted by an increasing number of imposing challenges, our books and authors are a powerful force for good in the world.

We are especially interested in works in the following areas: church, cultural, and religious history, Latin American studies and history, African American history, U.S. history, political history, and military history. If you have a proposal, please don't hesitate to reach out to one of our editors, as listed on our proposal information page.

⇒ University Press of Kansas

The University Press of Kansas publishes scholarly and trade books in a wide array of topics, including American political and legal history, Native American and Indigenous studies, military history and intelligence studies, environmental history, American studies and culture, Western and Midwestern history, and Kansas and regional studies. Kansas is the home of the Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures as well as the Rethinking Careers, Rethinking Academia series, which explores graduate education and post-academic/alternative-academic careers.

As part of our mission to publish works that contribute to important scholarly and public debates, we welcome proposal and manuscript submissions that foster inclusivity inside and outside of the academy, shed new light on well-known subjects, and amplify marginalized voices from the past and present.

For topics related to Western history, Native American and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, American studies, CultureAmerica, and legal studies, contact Senior Editor David Congdon at dcongdon@ku.edu.

⇒ Yale University Press

I am a Senior Editor at Yale University Press, where I acquire books in American and Atlantic history. My goal as an editor is to bring the best historical scholarship to a broad reading public, and to help historians inform the scholarly and public conversations about the things that matter. I am interested in all periods and subfields of American history. If you would like to arrange to meet during the OAH meeting, please contact me at adina.berk@yale.edu with a query or proposal describing your book.