The Journal of American History

• 1. Introduction

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  The Journal of American History has been shaping what scholars say, study, and argue about the American past for well over a century. It began life under a different name, in a different era, with a narrower geographic mandate. How a regional publication became the flagship journal of American historical scholarship is a story about a discipline growing up, and about a field deciding what it wanted to be. Along the way, the journal collected generations of editors, changed its name, moved its institutional home, and outlasted the organization that founded it. Who were the people who guided it? What forces pushed it to reinvent itself? And what does it mean that a journal born on the Mississippi River ended up in Bloomington, Indiana, telling the story of an entire nation?

• 2. Born on the Mississippi

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  In 1914, a journal called the Mississippi Valley Historical Review began publication as the official organ of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association. Its founding reflected a moment when American historians were organizing themselves by region as much as by nation. The valley of the Mississippi was, for those scholars, a coherent unit of study, a geographic frame for understanding migration, agriculture, and westward expansion. Benjamin F. Shambaugh had already been editing the association's Proceedings since 1907, and it was from that tradition that the Review grew. Clarence W. Alvord took the editorial chair when the Review launched in 1914 and held it for nearly a decade, steering the journal through the First World War and into the early 1920s. His tenure established the publication as a serious venue for historical scholarship rooted in the American interior.

• 3. Editors Who Shaped the Review

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  Lester B. Shippee followed Alvord in 1923 but served for only a single year before Milo M. Quaife took over in 1924 and held the position until 1930. Arthur Charles Cole then guided the Review for the longest unbroken stretch of any editor in the journal's history under its original name, serving from 1930 to 1941. Louis Pelzer followed from 1941 to 1946, and then Wendell H. Stephenson carried the editorship through to 1953. William C. Binkley oversaw the Review during the 1950s and into the early 1960s, and Oscar O. Winther took the chair in 1963 as the journal stood on the edge of a transformation that would change everything about it except its institutional seriousness.

• 4. The 1964 Rename

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  After the publication of its fiftieth volume, the Mississippi Valley Historical Review changed its name. The year was 1964, and the decision reflected something the membership itself had noticed: the direction of the scholarship and the interests of historians had shifted beyond what a regionally named journal could easily contain. The Mississippi Valley Historical Association became the Organization of American Historians, and the journal followed suit, becoming the Journal of American History. Oscar O. Winther, who had been editing the Review in its final year, stayed on as the first editor of the renamed publication, bridging the two identities of the same continuous journal.

• 5. Decades of Stewardship

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  Martin Ridge took over from Winther in 1966 and held the editorial chair until 1978, a twelve-year tenure that carried the journal through some of the most turbulent decades in American academic life. Lewis Perry followed in 1978, serving until 1984. Paul Lucas had a notably brief tenure in 1984-1985, lasting only a year before David Thelen assumed the editorship in 1985. Thelen would prove to be the longest-serving editor in the journal's post-rename history, guiding it until 1999. Joanne Meyerowitz took over in 1999 and served until 2004, followed by David Nord in 2004-2005. Edward T. Linenthal then held the position from 2005 to 2016, after which Benjamin H. Irvin became editor and has continued in that role.

• 6. Bloomington and Indiana University

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  The journal is headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, where it has built close ties to the History Department at Indiana University. That institutional relationship gives the journal an academic home beyond its affiliation with the Organization of American Historians, anchoring it within a research university with its own scholarly traditions and resources. The quarterly publication schedule that the journal follows has remained a steady rhythm across all of its editorial tenures, from the earliest years of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review through to the present. The connection between the journal and Indiana University represents one of the quieter but durable features of how American historical scholarship organizes itself around institutional partnerships.