Confronting a Pandemic: Historians and COVID-19

FAIN: AH-274445-20

American Historical Association (Washington, DC 20003-3807)
Emily Swafford (Project Director: May 2020 to November 2021)

The retention of 10 positions to enable the development of online professional development webinars and workshops for scholars in and outside of higher education.

A series of webinars, virtual programming, and new digital resources will enhance humanities employment and employability in multiple ways, and will equip teachers of history with the skills to plan and execute online or hybrid courses for the coming academic year and beyond. Together, the various aspects of this integrated, multi-faceted initiative will document historians’ immediate responses to an historic global pandemic, create digital resources that demonstrate the value of the humanities in crisis moments, train teachers in the use of these and other online resources specifically in a remote instruction environment, and enable the AHA to continue this work beyond the grant period. This grant would enable the AHA to repurpose staff time no longer necessary because of canceled or postponed work, allocating it instead to this funded project, and hire new staff who will broaden their employment experience.