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ahr-historiography-positioning

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Use when positioning an American Historical Review (AHR) manuscript within the historiography so it reads as an intervention, not a report. AHR readers are historians across fields who expect you to engage the relevant scholarship and say precisely what you change. Stakes the contribution against prior work; it does not write the literature survey.

When to use

• Positioning AHR manuscripts within historiography
• Drafting or revising the introduction
• Drafting or revising the 'what this changes' passage
• Engaging relevant scholarship
• Distinguishing arguments from closest prior interpretations
• Identifying live interpretive debates
• Stating the intervention precisely
• Locating work in historiographical turns

When not to use

• Writing the literature survey
• Listing works without an organizing debate
• Engaging only one's own subfield
• Using 'first to study' framing for reinterpretation
• Strawmanning or hiding the closest competing account
• Treating a recovered topic as self-justifying without a historiographical stake

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