WHA Annual Meeting: Korea 2026

This session is meant to be an introduction to, and discussion about, Cambridge University Press' forthcoming volume called Explaining International History, edited by Erez Manela, Elisabeth Leake, and Heather Salter. Its purpose is to understand and explore the emerging field of international history. While top universities in the United States and the United Kingdom offer Ph.D., M.A., or undergraduate programs in the field and university presses in North America and Europe have established flourishing book series devoted to it, until now there has been no comprehensive, up-to-date guide to the central concepts, approaches, and methods that make up this rapidly expanding field. This volume, written by leading scholars of international history whose expertise spans a variety of specializations, is the first of its kind. Its twenty-four essays explore how the recent scholarship on international history has reshaped once-dominant narratives in the field; how new perspectives and approaches have opened a whole range of new historical questions; and how historians might imagine the future of the field. Given the field's close relationship to the field of World History, its authors and editors are eager for a World History audience to weigh in on the project. This session features two of the volume's editors (Manela and Salter) and two of its chapter authors (Louro and Salter), including the author of the chapter on World History itself (Salter).