The Sixty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians

Abstract

PLANNING for the sixty-seventh annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Denver, April 17, 18, 19, and 20, 1974, began two years earlier, when then vice-president-elect John Higham and program chairman Robert Kelley met during the Washington (1972) annual meeting. Thereafter, following a careful canvass, the members of the program committee were selected: Richard L. Bushman, Boston University; Clyde C. Griffen, Vassar College; Thomas C. Reeves, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Kenosha; Anne Firor Scott, Duke University; Joel A. Tarr, Carnegie-Mellon University; Samuel F. Wells, Jr., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. choices proved to be happy ones, for, to the program chairman's considerable relief and gratitude, each member not only contributed ideas but also worked hard and thoughtfully to produce a program of significant scholarly value to the profession. During spring and summer of 1972, the committee arrived at the basic decision that about one fifth of the sessions at Denver would be devoted to presenting overviews of the major periods in American history since the Revolution and suggesting where research should be headed. As the committee stated in its announcement in the journal of American History (December 1972) and in a flyer dispatched to all history departments, The immense volume of publication in recent years has left many members of the profession in a quandary as to what new discoveries are really salient; how they relate to each other and to older emphases; where consensus lies, and where conflict still goes on. In selecting this as the distinguishing theme of the meeting, the committee sought to reflect in the program the historiographical studies which have formed so central an element in Professor Higham's work and have given such notable intellectual leadership to the discipline.