Katrina Gulliver has recently shared her love for the AHA, the main conference for North American historians. As Katrina explained, the stress of the job market has cast a shadow on the conference, with many associating it with awkward interviews or the lack of opportunities in their fields. I have to say I share Katrina’s love for the AHA. I attended my first AHA (in NY) before I was on the job market and I immediately took to the broader scope of the conference.I usually have a very difficult time choosing sessions since there’s always something I would like to attend. I’ve just gone through the program and it looks like I’ll have to make some tough choices as many of the sessions I want to attend are being held at the same time.

I have to admit though, that I’m one of those people who love conferences. I don’t usually get that much from presenting at conferences since there’s usually little time for questions and you are lucky if you get a couple of questions or comments. It doesn’t help that I try to bring my work outside of my field. Part of what I try to do in conferences is make both Spanish and Jewish history part of general medieval history. I tend to present in (and organize) panels that cross the religious or national divide. For example, at the Canadian Historical Society  last summer, I was part of a panel that looked at how the average person manipulated courts of law in the late medieval period. I shared the panel with an English historian and a historian of law in southern France and the commentator was a Scottish legal historians. In other conferences I have shared panels with Italianists or even Hispanists who worked on women or social history topics. And although all these panels are very stimulating, allowing myself and other panelists to see patterns and trends that go beyond our limited fields, it often means that I’m presenting to a non-specialist audience.  So the kinds of comments and questions I get tend to be very general.  Sometimes I get the impression the audience doesn’t know enough about Spain or Jews and are shy of asking questions. The most fruitful discussions, for me at least, have been outside the meeting rooms – at the bars, cafes, and restaurants. And that’s ultimately why I love conferences in general – it gives me a chance to talk to people, find out what they are doing, share what I’m doing, engage in what scholarship should be really about: an open dialogue.

And that’s what makes the AHA special to me. It attracts all kinds of historians. The panels are very diverse and often of very good quality. This year, there are panels on Chinese history, race & citizenship, and several panels on teaching that I would like to attend. Hopefully, they’ll distract me from worrying about my interview later in the week.

Ultimately, I love the AHA not only from what I learn, but also because it gives me a chance to meet old friends and meet face-to-face with people I interact with online but who are from other subdisciplines and whom I would never meet in the more specialized conferences in my field. And getting to visit a city as historical as Boston in the process is the cherry on the top.