Editor’s note: This is the first in a new series on how historians—especially contingent historians and those employed outside of tenure-track academia—do the work of history. If you know of someone we should interview, or would like to be interviewed yourself, send an email with the subject line HOW I DO HISTORY to pitches@contingentmag.org.
Kelsey Utne is a PhD candidate in history at Cornell University.1 Here’s how she does history.
Are you working on any research? How is it being funded?
I’ve just returned to Ithaca after conducting archival research in India and the United Kingdom for my PhD dissertation on the the politics of human remains and memorialization of death in late colonial India. Generous fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies and Social Science Research Council funded this research.
Where do you anticipate publishing it?
Ideally, I will also be able to publish an academic article or two based on this research. It’s hard to say where I’ll publish them at this stage, but I have a few history and area studies publications in mind.2 Since doctoral dissertations have a small audience (read: your committee members), if I land a tenure track job in a couple of years then I plan to revise the research for publication as a monograph.3 If I don’t get a tenure track job, then I’m not sure yet. It will depend on the nature of my employment and what makes sense at the time.
What are you teaching and where?
At Cornell, I am TAing two discussion sections in the fall for a massive 150-student class called History of Exploration, which is cross listed between the history and astronomy departments. Then in the spring I’m teaching a first-year writing seminar in the history department that I created called Landscapes of Death: Memorials, Monuments, & Massacre Sites.
In my other teaching gig, I am an instructor with the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP). I’ve taught incarcerated students at two (soon to be three!) New York State Correctional Facilities. In the fall I’m assisting in History of Modern Europe, then in the spring I’m part of a team of instructors for a capstone research seminar. In the past also I’ve taught Western Civilization II and Introduction to College Writing for CPEP.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about what historians do and how they work?
That we already know what happened, the consequences that followed, and the causes, both direct and indirect. In this age of Wikipedia and Google in our pockets, it’s easy to believe that all the important information is already out there. But there’s more to it than new technology and instant gratification to an inquiry. In March my 90-year old landlady in New Delhi recently asked me “What’s the point of making college students spend time on studying history? We know what happened already, we know why, and we can’t change it. What’s the point?”
The volume of information available about much of history is daunting to non-specialists. When you don’t know the literature well, there’s a sense that somewhere there’s a book or article on every last thing we could wonder about. Early in undergrad I remember feeling like everything had been done, like the professors had an answer to every student question. Now, going into the fifth year of my PhD, it’s the opposite. It’s incredible how much we still don’t know, even about relatively recent history. These gaps do more than limit our knowledge of the past—they limit our understanding of our present and future as well.
In the past, how have you developed your research projects?
Usually it starts with something on the news, or something I read causes me to wonder to myself things like: How many graveyards were in Delhi in 1920? Where were they? Who used them? How were they segregated? Were they segregated at all? I’ll try to look this up, assuming it will be relatively easy. It isn’t. So I dig further. I wade into the literature, consult mentors and librarians. I adjust my question based on what I find (and don’t find). I identify what else do I need learn to understand the answers I might eventually find.
What’s the best piece of advice you have received about conducting research?
You aren’t married to your original research question. If it’s impossible to answer, what is a question you could answer? Our initial questions may get us started, but that doesn’t mean they are good questions. As you conduct your research you will connect new dots and fill in gaps. Let the question evolve if it needs to.
When you are working on a new piece of writing, to whom do you reach out for feedback?
I generally assume my writing is terrible and therefore am reticent to share it. This is something I’m working on being better about. A few close friends from my MA and PhD programs are my trusted early readers when I do get around to sharing. One of them has been reading my work for six years, so I’m less nervous he’s going to read one shitty draft and decide I’m hopeless.
How would you describe your writing process?
We’re supposed to have a process?! Kidding aside, it’s hard to say right now because I’ve never written a dissertation before. It’s a new genre of writing for me, and I’m still figuring out a process that works for me. For shorter pieces, I start with structure, just laying out the order to present the information. I don’t create full outlines, but it helps to organize my thoughts first. Which examples support this claim? Which ones do I want to include? What ideas do I need to introduce for the next section to make sense? I’m a firm convert to the introduction being the last thing you write, so I’ll usually create a sort of place holder intro knowing it will be entirely rewritten later. If I don’t do this, then I’ll agonize over it line by line and it will still end up in the trash.
What do you think is the toughest part of tackling a research project?
Determining what is the biggest, most important claim. By the very nature of creating new knowledge, our research never introduces just one idea, just one singular new intervention. It’s extremely difficult to not feel like it is all equally important, equally innovative. This predicament is where your trusted soundingboards and early readers come in. They don’t have the same emotional investment and can give incredibly valuable feedback on how your research is developing.
If money, time, and distance were not issues, what’s a dream project you’d love to tackle? Or what’s a class you have always wanted to teach, but just haven’t had the opportunity to?
In my dreams, one day I’ll write a comprehensive history of the politics of burial and cremation in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from the Mughals to the 1980s. I imagine it sitting beside Thomas Laqueur’s The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (2015) or John Parker’s forthcoming In My Time of Dying: A History of Death and the Dead in West Africa.
If you weren’t a scholar, what kind of work do you think you’d be doing?
Probably working in a nonprofit doing some manner of advocacy or program outreach.
Many thanks to Kelsey for being the first historian in this new series. You can follow her on Twitter at @kelsey.utne. If you know of someone we should interview, or would like to be interviewed yourself, send an email to pitches@contingentmag.org with the subject line HOW I DO HISTORY.
- What’s a PhD candidate? How is that different from a PhD student? In the U.S., a grad student in history becomes a candidate after they’ve finished their coursework and passed their comprehensive exams, the first two stages of doing a PhD. Basically, if you’re a candidate, it means you’re in the dissertation phase of your degree.
- “Area studies” is a term used in academic settings to refer to the multidisciplinary study of a certain topic, theme, or even time period. For instance, a department of Africana studies or a journal of Medieval studies might include historians, literary scholars, anthropologists, and musicologists.
- Doctoral committees are usually made up of a grad student’s adviser, two other faculty members from the department, and two other scholars called “readers,” who may be from the department, from elsewhere at the university, or even from another institution altogether.