Central European history, like European history and the discipline of history more generally, faces notable challenges and also opportunities in the current academic, cultural, political, and economic climate. Historians of Central Europe are widening their horizons geographically, thematically, and methodologically in order to illuminate a broader spectrum of human diversity and experiences. The meeting of the AHA and the Central European History Society in San Francisco in January 2024 provides an apt moment to assess trends in the field and to take stock of where historians of Central Europe in its various wider contexts stand. Geographically, historians have been extending the range of Central Europe in transnational and global directions as well as broadening the scope of the field from its previous German-speaking core to engage with surrounding interconnected histories of Western, Southern, and Eastern Europe. Thematically and methodologically, historians of Central Europe increasingly explore race, ethnicity, migration, gender, sexuality, and digital humanities, including in ways that shed new light on more traditional political, diplomatic, and military history. This roundtable aims to provide a variety of perspectives across the range of period, thematic, and geographic expertise of Central European historians from the early modern to the modern eras. Such an exchange will offer the opportunity to reflect on both current practice and new paths forward, for historians of Central Europe as well as of the themes and other regions with which they engage.

The CEHS Presidential Roundtable for 2024 will offer contributions from Rita Krueger (Temple University), Laurie Marhoefer (University of Washington Seattle), Michelle Moyd (Michigan State University), and Molly Taylor-Poleskey (Middle Tennessee State University). CEHS President Brian Vick (Emory University) will serve as Chair and offer a few thoughts and questions to help spark discussion. The plan is to keep the initial statements on the shorter side in order to leave at least half of the session for wider conversation among the panelists and with the audience.

The contribution by Prof. Krueger will consider debates about the very definition of Central Europe, examining how these debates were shaped by the extremes of twentieth-century history and how they have affected studies of prior centuries, recognition of which influences can open fresh perspectives for histories of the region. Prof. Marhoefer will focus on the intersections of histories of racism and empire with investigations of gender and queer and trans history. Prof. Moyd will reflect on ways in which increasing attention to issues of migration, race, and inequality can illuminate a more global history of warfare, as in her work on Africans, Germans, and other Europeans in conflicts in Africa during the colonial era and the First World War. Prof. Taylor-Poleskey will in turn highlight the opportunities for the use of digital technologies in early modern Central European history, emphasizing not just what information technologies can do for historians but what premodern historians can offer to computer scientists and software developers.