Diarb2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Lots of scholars from different disciplines study and write about things that happened in the past. So what, if anything, makes history a separate and coherent discipline?
While Contingent is a history magazine and we prioritize publishing people with training in that discipline, we get plenty of pitches from people in fields like lit studies, art history, media studies, music history, archaeology, sociology, political science, and economics.1 We’ve published quite a few pieces by scholars from non-history disciplines over the years. But how related are those disciplines to history and in what ways?
We’re putting together a project in which we’ll pair up contingent historians with contingent scholars in other disciplines who study the same general topic for a conversation about the questions they ask, the sources they use, and the methods, models, frameworks, and theories they employ—a face off, if you will.
Our first goal is to gather a list of interested contingent scholars to see if we have some good pairs. The precise shape of the conversation is still being determined, but we can promise one thing: all participants will be paid.2
For now, we’re just looking for interest; by submitting your info using the form below, you’re not committing yourself to anything. Once we know what we’re working with, we’ll reach out to potential contributors with more information about what we’re asking and what we’re paying.
In addition to your name and the best email to reach you, let us know what discipline you’re trained in and a bit about what and how you research.
- This is not a complete list of relevant disciplines. If your research thinks about the past, we want to hear from you!
- What we do may depend on the personal situations and time zones of the participants we gather. Some ideas we’re knocking about include a set of questions both participants answer by email, a virtual meeting with one of the editors guiding the conversation, and a secret third thing.