Pennsylvania Historical Association
The Pennsylvania Historical Association, founded in 1932, is a non-profit volunteer organization committed to promoting interest in Pennsylvania and Mid-Atlantic history. It publishes a journal, Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, as well as the Pennsylvania History Studies Series, which provides succinct overviews of themes and issues in Pennsylvania history. With support from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the PHA holds an annual meeting in a different Pennsylvania location each fall and joins other organizations in sponsoring history programming such as Pennsylvania History Day and ExplorePAHistory.com.
History
The PHA was born of a conversation between historians Roy F. Nichols and Lawrence Henry Gipson at the 1928 annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Nichols had developed an interest in doing local history, which he offered as a solution to concerns within the AHA that historians outside of large cities lacked the resources to undertake serious research. Nichols joined with Gipson and others to imagine an organization that, unlike its peers—which included the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the, and the Pennsylvania Historical Commission --would serve all commonwealth historians while remaining independent of institutional and geographic affiliations. In following years, an emergent nationwide interest in regionalism spawned by the New Deal's various cultural programs encouraged a receptive audience in Pennsylvania for Nichols' idea. Several meetings in and around State College, PA during 1932 laid the groundwork for an organizational constitution and planning for the PHA's first annual meeting, which convened in Bethlehem, PA at Lehigh University in 1933.Since its beginnings, the PHA has played a formative role in generating scholarship on Pennsylvania history and shaping archival collections throughout the commonwealth. At the time of its 75th-anniversary commemorations, PHA membership counted 800, including historians, teachers, and others with an interest in Pennsylvania history, and a wide variety of organizations including college and university libraries; secondary schools; public libraries ; research libraries, historic sites, and museums. Annual 3-day PHA conferences continue to be held at different locations throughout the state, featuring new research on topics in Pennsylvania history, and visits to historic sites of interest.