“Five Ghouls,” Herbert Crowley, 1911-24, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The monster has been here all along.
It is a historical constant that manifests in wildly different ways across time, place, and culture. Whatever form it takes, the monster claws at categories; it unsettles social systems; it exists against expectation—and demonstrates that another world is possible. The monster is a friend to historians precisely because of its transgressive status, which casts light into shadowed corners of the past. By studying what has been deemed unnatural or aberrant or nightmarish, historians retrieve the values, norms, fears, and fantasies of their subjects.
For this year’s special December issue, Contingent Magazine is now inviting pitches for essays (800-1500 words) that offer historical perspectives on monsters in any geographic or temporal context. We are eager to publish stories that are specific, surprising, and engage with primary sources. All kinds of monsters are welcome. Pitch us:
- on mutants, hybrids, and engineered life;
- on beings “prodigious” and people who are made Other;
- on supernatural entities, mythical creatures, and cryptids;
- on whatever is “monstrous” from the perspective of your historical subjects.
We are especially interested in essays that explore the intersection of monstrosity and contingency, whether historical or professional. How has precarity made or unmade monsters in the past? Can an archival encounter make a monster of the historian? Though our call is broad, please note that we are not considering pitches about Frankenstein in any of its iterations; we already have a Promethean essay in the lab and on the slab, so to speak.
We welcome pitches from anyone, but prioritize contributions from people who have completed postgraduate work in history and are working outside the tenure-track professoriate, including (but not limited to) contingent faculty, K-12 teachers, graduate students, and public historians.
For consideration, use the form on our Pitch Us page and select “Monsters” from the drop-down menu. The submission window closes on Monday, October 20, end of day, with notifications to follow within a week. Essays will be due November 21 for publication in December. Please note the quick turnaround time for first drafts and revisions. Compensation is $300.
This expanded December issue is made possible in part by support from the Kitchings Family Foundation.
References
- Surekha Davies, Humans: A Monstrous History (University of California Press, 2025)
- Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
- Asa Simon Mittman, “Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (Routledge, 2013)
- Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, “Introduction: A Genealogy of Monster Theory,” The Monster Theory Reader (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)
Further Reading in Contingent
- Lorna Wallace, “A Beautiful Mutation,” December 10, 2023
- Edward Guimont, “Hunting Dinosaurs in Central Africa,” March 18, 2019
- Sam Moore, “A Nice Trip to the Forest,” December 12, 2023
- Kathryn Carpenter, “Our Local Monster,” May 19, 2024