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| Radical History Review | |
|---|---|
| Title | Radical History Review |
| Discipline | History |
| Abbreviation | RHR |
| Publisher | Duke University Press |
| Country | United States |
| Frequency | Biannual |
| History | 1974–present |
Radical History Review The Radical History Review is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that examines the histories of social movements, political struggles, and cultural transformations through a critical lens, connecting scholars, activists, and public intellectuals. The journal situates its work in conversation with scholars associated with the New Left, feminist movements, labor organizations, and postcolonial activists while engaging debates generated by figures from the Frankfurt School, Marxist historians, and poststructuralist theorists.
The journal was founded in 1974 by editors and activists linked to the New Left, Cold War dissent, antiwar coalitions, and student movements emerging out of events like the May 1968 events in France, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. Early contributors included historians shaped by debates around the New Left Review, the American Historical Association, and the Socialist Workers Party, and the publication aligned with archival initiatives inspired by labor historians documenting the Haymarket affair, the Pullman Strike, and the histories of the Industrial Workers of the World. The founding collective drew on networks connected to the Freedom Riders, the Black Panther Party, the National Organization for Women, and community history projects influenced by the Civil Rights Movement.
The journal's editorial mission foregrounds emancipatory histories rooted in class struggle, anticolonial resistance, feminist praxis, and anti-racist scholarship, often drawing on thinkers from the Communist Manifesto tradition to the writings of Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Emma Goldman, and Frantz Fanon. Editors and contributors have debated orientations toward Leninism, social democracy, and various strands of anarchism represented by networks connected to the Industrial Workers of the World and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The political orientation engages sources ranging from the archives of the Congress of Industrial Organizations to materials from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and dialogues with postcolonial scholarship influenced by Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi K. Bhabha.
Published semiannually, the journal issues curated thematic volumes and occasional forums, producing long-form essays, archival interventions, and historiographical syntheses that converse with works published in outlets like the American Historical Review, Journal of Modern History, and Past & Present. Special issues have centered on topics connected to the Great Depression, the Cold War, the Hispanic American independence era, decolonization in Algeria, and revolutions in Mexico and Russia. The production and distribution have involved partnerships with university presses and library collections such as those at Duke University Press, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library.
Throughout its run the journal has foregrounded themes including labor movements evidenced in studies of the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War, gender histories tied to the Suffragette movement, the Second-wave feminism, and transnational feminist networks connecting Simone de Beauvoir to Betty Friedan. Other notable issues interrogated settler colonialism in contexts like Australia, Canada, and South Africa; anticolonial struggles in the Algerian War of Independence and the Indian independence movement; and neoliberal transformations traced from Margaret Thatcher to Ronald Reagan. The journal has published influential dossiers on incarceration and abolition that engage histories of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Movement, and movements for prison reform linked to the Attica Prison riot.
Contributors have included scholars and activists connected to institutions and movements such as Howard Zinn, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Angela Davis, Stuart Hall, Christopher Hill, and Aijaz Ahmad, as well as archival scholars from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Bancroft Library. The editorial collective historically blended academics from departments at Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, University of Chicago, and London School of Economics with organizers from the United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union, and community historians linked to the Southern Poverty Law Center and grassroots projects inspired by the Poor People's Campaign.
The journal has been cited in scholarship across fields and referenced in policy debates, museum exhibitions, and curricula at institutions including Smithsonian Institution, Museum of the City of New York, New School for Social Research, and Rutgers University. Its influence is evident in historiographical shifts toward transnational labor studies, intersectional feminist histories, and critical race scholarship in journals like Signs, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Journal of American History, and in monographs published by presses such as Verso Books, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press.
Critics have challenged the journal on grounds associated with perceived partisanship, debates over methodological rigor in relation to quantitative history practiced at Clio, and disputes over archival interpretation involving figures tied to the Communist Party USA and Cold War historiography exemplified by controversies around the McCarthy era. Accusations have occasionally focused on editorial decisions in themed issues engaging contentious subjects like the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, debates over reparations connected to the Atlantic slave trade, and polemics concerning histories of Stalinism versus dissident socialist traditions.
Category:History journals