[H-PAD] Report on the RHR/H-PAD Affiliate Sessions at the AHA

[Andor Skotnes]

*Report on the RHR/H-PAD Affiliate Sessions at the 2020 AHA Annual Meeting*

*As an experiment, at the 2020 American Historical Association (AHA) Annual
Meeting*, January 3-6 in New York, Radical History Review (RHR) used its
AHA affiliate status, and, with the support of Historians for Peace and
Democracy (H-PAD), organized eleven sessions.  Other AHA affiliated
organizations also organized such sessions, a few, like Conference of Latin
American Historians, in rather large numbers.

*While our sessions were relatively modest in number, they were quite
substantial effective *in offering politically-inflected scholarship,
stimulating radical historical and political discussion, addressing
organizing opportunities and imperatives for historians in the current
crisis, and raising the scholarly and political profiles of both RHR and
H-PAD.  Our eleven sessions emphasized both topics of political-historical
scholarship, and those dealing with historians’ role in political
organizing.  One was a strategy session—the largest of the eleven—which
featured a broad, lively discussion of the roles of historians and
historically-oriented intellectuals during the current social crisis. A
full list of our sessions and their panelists is available at
https://www.historiansforpeace.org/aha2020/sessions/.

*Approximately fifty-three individuals were presenters, panelists, or
commentators on our eleven sessions.*  About 2/3s of these had not
previously been actively involved with either RHR or H-PAD.  All the
sessions attracted reasonable numbers of conference goers and some were
large:  three sessions involved thirty-five to forty people; four, twenty
to twenty-seven; four, eleven to seventeen.  By observers’ and
participants’ accounts (including this writer, who attended every session)
*all* of them were strong in content, presentation quality, political
relevance, and audience engagement. To give political context to the
sessions, each was introduced by a member of the RHR/H-PAD organizing
group, explaining it was part of a RHR/H-PAD program of sessions and
offering the rationale behind them; attendees were pointed toward our other
sessions, our tables, and our resolutions at the AHA Business Meeting (to
be reported on elsewhere).

*We ran RHR and H-PAD tables continuously at the back of the room in which
our sessions were held* one after another from 1 PM on Friday to 5 PM on
Sunday.  Having all of our sessions scheduled sequentially in the same room
was an enormous advantage. The tables attracted much attention, became
sites for much discussion, and provided conference–goers opportunities to
become familiar with the work of both RHR and H-Pad.  The RHR table had
eight recent issues of the journal on display with information on how both
to subscribe and to order back issues, plus informational leaflets. The
H-PAD table had free copies of all ten of our Broadsides, informational
leaflets on H-PAD, on the Peace History website, on the H-PAD sponsored
resolutions at the AHA business meeting, and other related information.
During the sessions, presenters and others asked to leave leaflets on the
table for recent books and forthcoming events with which they were
involved, and we readily  agreed



*We publicized our eleven sessions, our strategy meeting, our tables, and
our business meeting resolutions extensively*, both prior to and during the
AHA meeting. Starting midday Friday, we began distributing program
pamphlets and sheets at our tables, at plenaries and meetings, and on
random to others we knew or encountered.  We began the conference with 400
total copies of program pamphlets and sheets, and had less than fifty over
at the end. Before the conference we used the internet and a variety of
email strings and vehicles to publicize our conference efforts.  Our
publicity efforts appear to us to have been quite broad and effective. This
publicity work was, we feel, important beyond getting folks to our sessions
and activities: it raised the profile of both RHR and H-PAD as centers of
radical history and politics.



Although more discussion is warranted, the organizing group believes that
our sessions, tabling, publicity, and business meeting resolutions at the
AHA meeting were quite worthwhile in terms of making both political and
scholarly contributions*. A number of colleagues proposed that we should
run similar sessions again next year at the Seattle AHA*—some even
suggested particular sessions they would like to see or help organize.
Although
we haven’t fully decided on this, it seems likely we will do just that,
hopefully notify those interested of our plans soon.



*Basically, we feel our experiment at the 2020 AHA was a success.*



*Andor Skotnes for the conference working group.*



*Andor SkotnesProfessor of History*
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