Communication

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ARTICLES

To the Editor:
The Conversation on Transnational History (AHR, December 2006, 1440–1464) was one of the more interesting features published by the AHR in the past few years. The interventions of the six participants were both thoughtful and thought provoking, and offered any number of directions for new and exciting research projects. Every paragraph stimulated wonderful and provocative connections—all the more disappointing that the conversation was limited to a narrow academic conceptualization of history, lacking any consideration of what, in the terms of the late Raphael Samuel, we would call "history as activity."
At a time when, over the past three decades, so many new and transnational connections have been forged and transnational projects have been undertaken by public historians, museum professionals, documentary filmmakers, archivists, oral historians, folklorists, and community historians, among others, it is odd to see that work passed over without commentary. This is especially the case since so much of that work revolves around areas of interest noted by your conversationalists: migration, human rights, feminism, LGTB history, and racism. To many of us who have spent a number of years trying to bring to the activities of a wide public the methodological and theoretical concerns of academically centered historians, and in turn the problems and perspectives of publicly engaged citizens to the attention of the academy, the conversation was somewhat discouraging. After so many years we have so far yet to go.
Rather than giving up the struggle, we should take this opportunity to ask those who have an interest in transnational history to think about the issues your participants so brilliantly sketched out for us in a context more meaningful for the millions of history activists beyond the academy.
Ronald J. Grele Columbia University

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