Maryland Professor Barbara Weinstein Named 2007 President of the American Historical Association

Maryland History Professor and AHA President-Elect Barbara Weinstein.

A University of Maryland history professor will become president of the American Historical Association in 2007. Professor Barbara Weinstein is only the second person in the history of the university to win what History Department Chair Gary Gerstle calls, "One of the greatest honors that can be conferred on a historian working in the United States." Maryland History Professor Louis Harlan served as AHA president in 1989.

Prof. Weinstein is a distinguished and internationally known historian of 20th century Latin America. She will serve as president-elect this year and admits she is both "excited and nervous" about taking over the reins next January from Iowa Professor Linda Kerber. Weinstein is the seventh woman to become president of the AHA in its 120-year history.

With a Ph.D. from Yale, Prof. Weinstein taught at Vanderbilt University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook before coming to the University of Maryland. Gerstle says, "Her arrival on campus in 2000, along with Professor Mary Kay Vaughan, catapulted the Latin American history program into a ranking of eleventh best in the United States. Today, the Latin American contingent of faculty and graduate students is among the most talented and vigorous in the department. Weinstein's election to the presidency will raise the profile of that program--and indeed of the entire department--to even greater heights."

She has won numerous awards, and is the author of two books, with a third on its way that looks at questions of race, gender, and nation in 20th century Brazil.

In addition to her research and teaching, Professor Weinstein is director of the Center for Historical Studies in the Department of History, co-editor of the Radical Perspectives series for Duke University Press, and senior editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review, the leading scholarly journal in her field.

During a Newsdesk interview, Prof. Weinstein said she sees the AHA "becoming more and more involved in public discussions of the role of history in education at every level, as well as being an advocate for both the preservation and accessibility of government documents."

As for her own presidency, Weinstein wants to "pursue an agenda that includes ensuring that, scholars in 'underrepresented' fields (such as Africa, Asia, and my own field, Latin America) both feel welcome, and that they have a stake in the continuing vitality of the AHA as an organization."

For a complete biography of Professor Weinstein, see our experts list at: http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/experts/ and search under Weinstein.

See the complete "Conversation With..." interview =>

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