Reviews
The Problem of Plenty
|
There was nothing inevitable about the kind of gun country the U.S. is today.
Postcards
A Postcard From The First Annual Bucks County Para-Con
|
America is rapidly changing into a country where we worship strange gods.
Reviews
Bankrupt Authority
|
Advanced Placement: “a money-making racket that lets states off the hook for underfunding education”
Historians as Parents
Historians As Parents: Podcasting Through It
|
The thing that I thought would be easiest to drop became something of a lifeline for me.
Historians as Parents
Historians As Parents: My Father’s Memory
|
Whatever I write and record could be important for my children and future generations.
Revive Your Darlings
The Great Leg Show!
|
Hot pants served as a sartorial riposte to the fashion industry’s relentless campaign for the midi.
Shorts
In Their Own Voices
|
The New Bedford Sunday Standard-Times announced: “Indian Nuns Invade College”
How I Do History
How Kate Carpenter Does History
|
“I was amazed to find that the book I wanted to read didn’t exist yet.”
Jose Chung's December Issue
The Lone Gunmen Who Came in from the Fringe
|
The weirdo researchers were explaining fringe theories to a prime-time audience of millions.
Jose Chung's December Issue
Caught on Camera
|
The X-Files plays on our fascination with the camera — and our fear of it.
Jose Chung's December Issue
This Has Something To Do With Computers, Doesn’t It? The Internet?
|
It seems strange to think of the 1990s as history; it was only 30 years ago, after all.
Jose Chung's December Issue
Past Lives
|
Who wants to watch a show whose characters never make real moral choices?
Jose Chung's December Issue
A Nice Trip To The Forest
|
With so many crop dusters, somebody’s bound to see a UFO.
Jose Chung's December Issue
A Beautiful Mutation
|
This is all wrong. This is not how the story is supposed to end.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2023 Literary Studies Book and Journal Article List
|
A companion list for lit studies scholars.
How I Do History
How Lauren Lassabe Shepherd Does History
|
For the next eight months, I’ll be an independent scholar with a side hustle as a fitness instructor.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2023 Contingent Book List
|
When you’re shopping for books this season, consider a contingent scholar.
Field Trip
Beyond The Gates
|
As I descended into the basement I wondered if copal would ever have a chance to ascend.
Revive Your Darlings
The Castle on the Hill
|
“We asked for Central High School but they think it is too good for us.”
Field Trip
How Mary Klann Does History
|
Last year was the first academic year I only taught at one institution.
Historians as Parents
Historians As Parents: Sex Education
|
Parenting is a humbling reminder that knowledge does not just magically appear.
Historians as Parents
Historians As Parents: Playlist Challenges
|
In a cruel twist of fate, my children suffer from having a historian for a mother.
Historians as Parents
Historians As Parents: Raising Twins
|
I first learned I was pregnant immediately after passing my Ph.D. qualifying exams. A few weeks later I discovered I was carrying twins.
Historians as Parents
Historians As Parents: Introduction
|
I can tell that they find it both fascinating and frustrating to have a historian as a parent.
Postcards
A Postcard from Ann Arbor, Michigan
|
Ann Arbor was the New Left’s primary incubator for the movement’s leading activists.
Mailbag
How Do You Do Research For A Podcast?
|
Any historian knows that it is crucial to write to your audience. I’m writing to two audiences.
Revive Your Darlings
The Prophecy of Rani Gaidinliu
|
The Empire launched a massive manhunt to capture her.
Artworks Are Artifacts Too
|
Art history research can occasionally fall into the trap of viewing everything through a digital screen.
How I Do History
How Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell Does History
|
“I didn’t know my quirky obsession could be a job in its own right.”
Postcards
A Postcard from Makhanda
|
The Historical Association of South Africa held its biennial meeting at Rhodes University in Makhanda, South Africa.
Field Trip
Lost and Found in Bamberg
|
For a minute I stood listening to the 9 a.m. bells, breathing deep sighs of relief.
How I Do History
How Jay Ridler Does History
|
“I have to remind myself – I am the only one who cares if I get paid.”
Shorts
When Witches Take Flight
|
I was quickly surprised to find that flight — a defining feature of the modern image of the witch — figured relatively little in the earliest medieval sources.
Field Trip
No Gloves Required
|
Historians are well aware that a good old map invites curiosity and connection.
How I Do History
How Sara Georgini Does History
|
I learned that I like to edit in the mornings, when I’m a little less caffeinated and a lot more ruthless with the text.
Postcards
A Postcard From Paris
|
Warm and welcoming, the Nubar Library is the place to go when researching Armenian history.
Features
A Known and Unknown War
|
Twenty years later, I am living through the making of the Iraq War as history.
Features
Ain’t I Some Pumpkins?
|
Soon after he was elected, Abraham Lincoln received a rather bizarre letter.
Field Trip
Palace Intrigue
|
Perhaps we can enjoy the Baron’s palace without having to apotheosize him.
Postcards
A Postcard from Sacramento, CA
|
It is fitting to research policy history in the heart of Sacramento.
How I Do History
How Canden S. Arciniega Does History
|
“Why do the best ideas come while I’m driving?”
Shorts
A Profession, If You Can Keep It
|
Imagined meritocracies mean little to extractive institutions.
Bonus
The Case of the Empty Bookshelves
|
Why were librarians keeping the titian-haired detective off their shelves?
History & Mystery
The Song of the Dying Composer
|
Attaching a mystery to a famous musician or work gives us something to hold onto.
History & Mystery
The Mystery of the Social-Climbing Copywriter
|
Smoke your way to a peaceful working-class life.
History & Mystery
The Plot of the Dime Store Dostoyevsky
|
The master of the psychodrama mystery was Jim Thompson.
History & Mystery
The Clue in the Old Lace
|
Fashion history is rarely as straightforward as Nancy Drew led me to believe.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2022 Literary Studies Book and Journal Article List
|
A companion list for lit studies scholars.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2022 Contingent Journal Article List
|
A companion to our 2022 book list.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2022 Contingent Book List
|
When you’re shopping for books this season, consider a contingent scholar.
Mailbag
Why Do Archivists Get Rid Of Things (And Enjoy It)?
|
Just because something is cool doesn’t mean it belongs in an archive.
Field Trip
Edward Guimont’s “From Outer Space”
|
The Hills’ aliens wore clothing and spoke English—albeit with an unspecified “foreign accent.”
Features
The Dentist Who Defrauded Two Governments—and a Historian, Part II
|
What happens when forged documents enter the historical record?
Features
The Dentist Who Defrauded Two Governments—and a Historian, Part I
|
What happens when forged documents enter the historical record?
How I Do History
How Nishant Batsha Does History
|
In those fleeting moments where I’m able to sit down at my desk in silence for five minutes or for two hours, I’d like to think that I’m a writer.
Reviews
The RRRevolution Will Be Cinematic
|
This unflinching depiction of the British Raj and its terror is long overdue in Western pop culture.
Features
The Missouri Social Worker Who Started ICANN with Her Credit Card
|
It was no longer appropriate for one computer scientist in Marina del Rey to control the Internet’s address book.
Postcards
A Postcard from New Haven, CT
|
“When I entered the Sterling Memorial Library, I felt as though I stepped into a cathedral.”
Field Trip
Working at the NMML
|
Two archivists share what it’s like at one of India’s largest archives.
How I Do History
How Yael Schacher Does History
|
“There aren’t many history PhDs in the policy and advocacy spaces I now circulate in, but there should be more.”
Shorts
Dellwood: An Elegy for My Cat
|
I’m an animal historian — I know the dog always dies in the end.
Mailbag
Why Can’t You Just Keep Doing Your Research on the Side?
|
Frankly, even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.
How I Do History
How Shin Yu Pai Does History
|
The most rewarding part of the experience is receiving the story.
Mailbag
Who Do Historians Write For?
|
“I want my reader to enjoy reading it as much as I want to challenge myself writing it.”
Field Trip
My Trips to Vsetín
|
I’m usually the first visitor to arrive, and there are never more than two others at the reading room at any time.
Mailbag
What If… Historians Were Honest About Counterfactuals?
|
A single choice can branch out to infinite realities.
Science
A Social Network Born Of Social Distancing
|
Scholars of science, technology, and medicine who are building a new community from the ground up.
Shorts
Hotline Suspense
|
The entire plot of Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War satire turns around getting people on the phone.
Mailbag
Why Can’t You Just Get A Job At Your Partner’s School?
|
If an academic couple can’t get a partner hire, they’re faced with a life-changing choice.
Features
Hi Person Reading This!
|
We are both former yearbook staffers who became professional historians.
Postcards
A Postcard from Lubbock, TX
|
I sometimes feel guilty about how much fun I have researching storm chasers.
Mailbag
Why Wasn’t This in My Textbook?
|
In both versions of this question, the assumption is that there’s a pure history out there somewhere, perhaps with answers in the appendix.
How I Do History
How Allison Horrocks Does History
|
“. . . if a wide brimmed Stetson gets us going, I’m content to start there.”
Shorts
Man of Smoke
|
“I was trying to write the life of a man who had no life. What other options did I have?”
Features
The Salieri Rumor and Why Gossip Matters
|
It didn’t take long for Salieri’s story to become almost completely removed from his music.
How I Do History
How Steven D. Booth Does History
|
“Archival work involves building relationships.”
A Thing Of The Past
The Papier-Mâché Mask
|
We can intuitively interact with the history of an artform even when we aren’t explicitly aware of that history.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2021 Literary Studies Book and Journal Article List
|
A companion list for lit studies scholars.
A Thing Of The Past
The Persian Rug
|
Still in her concentration camp uniform, Olga found her Persian rug.
A Thing Of The Past
The Government Pen
|
As a child, I thought it was extremely cool that working for the U.S. government meant that you could get a pen that said “U.S. Government.”
A Thing Of The Past
The Second Skeleton
|
Museums construct knowledge by constructing objects—literally.
How I Do History
How Hope Williard Does History
|
It was surprising how much librarianship is about people, not books.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2021 Contingent Journal Article List
|
A companion to our 2021 book list.
Contingent Book & Article Lists
2021 Contingent Book List
|
When you’re shopping for books this season, consider a contingent scholar.
Postcards
A Postcard from Charlottesville, VA
|
Sometimes it is good to remind oneself how lucky and abnormal this profession can be.
Shorts
A Special Memorialized State
|
Facebook was assigning me a place in the past, a place for the dead.
Them, Or Me, Or Us?
|
They created a space to share their own experiences, and found their experiences were shared by others.
Shorts
On The Road With The WPA
|
Pick any stretch of road and you can find along it a history of the nation.
Shorts
The Great History of Small Things
|
If I’m being honest, Dan was probably my best friend all those early years in Newtown.
Entertainment & Recreation
How Canons Are Formed
|
Many Progressive Era playwrights were women. So how did they become “invisible” in the canon?
Shorts
The Committee to Keep Dick Tasting
|
Hi, any chance you might have sent Richard Nixon a dick joke fifty years ago?
Features
Over Time and Then All at Once
|
Kashmir is no longer the peripheral zone of exception, but rather the beta-version of what gets implemented in the mainland.
Mailbag
How Do You Publish A Book Off The Tenure Track?
|
Publishing off the tenure-track is possible, but not without its challenges.
Shorts
The Olympic Paradox
|
The Olympics has always relied on two antithetical forces: nationalism and internationalism.
How I Do History
How Karma Palzom-Pasha Does History
|
This scholar’s upbringing in a Tibetan refugee camp shaped her interest in history.
Features
The Brink of Erasure
|
The impending demolition of the National Archives Annexe is a crisis, not just for the study of history, but for Indian democracy.
Features
Conspiracy to Commit Sodomy
|
Within the longer history of gay spaces and gay porn, eBay’s policing of “adult materials” is nothing new.
Reviews
The Plague Is Not Over
|
Twenty-five years ago, straight Americans were ready to call an end to the AIDS pandemic. But for Sarah Schulman, it has never receded.
Shorts
From the American People
|
How did human rights and development come to be so intertwined in U.S. foreign policy?
Shorts
Colony of Cobblestone
|
The blue cobblestones of Old San Juan look nice on a postcard, but they also tell a long history of exploitation.
Shorts
How To Make An Oligopoly
|
A seven-point memo proposing control of the global insulin market.
Features
The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington’s Birthday
|
If Booker T. Washington never knew when he was born, how are we so sure about it now?
How I Do History
How Hayley Noble Does History
|
Working at the Old Idaho Penitentiary, you do a little of everything.
Features
Ground Operations
|
I had already completed my freshman year when I first learned what an adjunct was.
Shorts
Organize or Perish
|
The pandemic has shown what happens when universities assume they don’t need to answer to graduate students.
How I Do History
How Aimee Loiselle Does History
|
An unexpected job opportunity launched seven years of adjunct teaching and rekindled Aimee Loiselle’s interest in scholarly history.
Shorts
Public Health
|
Loving an alcoholic who is a renowned expert on substance abuse is debilitating.
Field Trip
Book History in the Bay Area
|
I was comfortable with the components of a press and the processes of printing. At least in theory.
Shorts
Country Before Dog
|
Though American children could not serve in the war themselves, they could vicariously serve through their dogs.
Shorts
Where Is Dorsey Foultz?
|
When the D.C. Metropolitan Police failed to catch a murder suspect, white residents criticized and mocked. Black residents worried.
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Turnips
|
“For my family, boiled turnips became a reminder of my grandmother’s suffering.”
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Dorayaki
|
“I don’t need to fit perfectly into one culture to feel like I truly belong.”
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Jell-O
|
Jell-O remains an easy, popular way to enter the domestic realm.
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Wilbur Buds
|
It was the only dark chocolate my grandmother liked.
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Wacky Cake
|
A cake made without milk or butter? Don’t tell the Minnesota Dairy Industry Committee!
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Stuffed Cabbage
|
My great-grandmother Sylvia’s stuffed cabbage held an out-sized role in my culinary imagination.
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Instant Coffee
|
I suppose it really is addiction. But I’ve quit most of the other fun ones.
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: Instant Noodles
|
As a picky eater, I ate oodles of instant noodles growing up.
How I Do History
How Spencer McBride Does History
|
“To see scholars use the papers in their own research to produce groundbreaking history is something we celebrate.”
Personal Pan Histories
Personal Pan Histories: պանիրով հած
|
It might be a simple dish, yet it’s one I hold close to my heart—and a symbol, for me, of the Armenian immigrant experience.
Shorts
2020 Contingent Book List
|
When you’re shopping for books this season, consider a contingent scholar.
How I Do History
How Naomi Rendina Does History
|
“I wrote my entire dissertation between the hours of 10 PM and 3 AM.”
Featured in Category
History of The Present/Contemporary History Resources
|
A history of the present is by its nature a speculative exercise.
Shorts
The Strange World of AP U.S. History
|
Born out of the Cold War, the course has a great contradiction at its heart: why do we teach history?
Field Trip
The Desert Keeps Receipts
|
We are immersed in a landscape of risk, a damaged place that damages in return.
Bonus
Paper Trails and Primary Sources
|
A first-time biographer approaches writing the first biography–of her great-grandfather.
Shorts
The Electoral Punt
|
It can be hard to know what the founders intended when they didn’t know, either.
Featured in Category
Expressions Of Radical Hope
|
My agency in choosing modes of expression must extend to my students.
Reviews
Radical Hope and a Liberal Education
|
What is the purpose of education? Is it just to fill jobs with skilled workers?
Reviews
Contingency Is Not Complacency
|
Just as Gannon calls for seeing students as humans we can trust, we also need to humanize and trust adjuncts.
Reviews
Kevin Gannon’s “Radical Hope”: A Roundtable Introduction
|
The book is a call to arms, and more necessary than ever.
Podcast
Contingent Podcast #1: A Usable History of Reconstruction
|
The greatest strength of the new PBS documentary is its desire to inform contemporary debates. But this may also be one of its weaknesses.
How I Do History
How Chris Deutsch Does History
|
“No one listens unless we tell a good story, so we try to tell good stories.”
Shorts
How-to Booke
|
How-to books, including those which promise the secret to wealth, are not a modern invention.
Shorts
What About The Bad Job Offers?
|
After finishing a doctoral program, the goal for many has always been a tenure-track job offer. But what about really terrible offers?
Field Trip
The Magician In The Castle
|
This museum riled illusionists worldwide when its exhibit dared to reveal Houdini’s secrets.
Features
Teaching In The Age Of COVID Part III
|
“I always felt like I’d find answers in the past. I don’t really find any answers.”
Features
Teaching In The Age Of COVID Part II
|
“This experience was so ridiculously traumatic for everyone—and it’s not over yet, either.”
Features
Teaching In The Age Of COVID Part I
|
“We’re trying to help our students navigate this while also trying to navigate the situation ourselves.”
Shorts
Selling Splitnik; or, Aunt Olga Goes to Moscow
|
She was there to promote a way of life that little resembled her own.
Field Trip
How Camille Bethune-Brown Does History
|
A chance internship helped Camille Bethune-Brown find her career.
Features
The White Background
|
The SHEAR controversy has only exposed structural problems within the wider historical profession.
Field Trip
2020 Student Digital History Roundup
|
Despite challenging circumstances, students and teachers produced compelling digital history.
How I Do History
How Kate Shuster Does History
|
Through her work at SPLC, Kate Shuster helps educators teach hard histories.
Features
History Now
|
How is the pandemic shaping the work of history and the lives of those who do that work?
In Search of Black Europe
|
Johny Pitts’s travelogue is a counter to historical narratives that erase the black European experience.
Field Trip
Catholic Library, Muslim Books
|
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Dominicans in Cairo collected rare printed books in Arabic, particularly Muslim devotional works rarely found in other libraries.
Features
The Star in the Stones
|
The scanned image looked sharper than the framed photograph at my grandmother’s house. And only now did I notice a strange detail.
Featured in Category
How Do You Write A Biography?
|
For this historian, the key in telling her subject’s story was to marry the personal with the public, as honestly as it might be possible to do.
Featured in Category
The Process of Writing History
|
How do we make sure faculty and students are on the same page when approaching a writing assignment?
Archives & Museums
How Jennifer Garcon Does History
|
“There’s so much experimentation and innovation happening in libraries” and Jennifer Garcon is right in the thick of it.
Reviews
Starting With The Essentials
|
Most undergraduate history writing is done by non-majors. Does history writing instruction reflect that?
Shorts
Bowling For Suburbia
|
By adopting middle-class aesthetics, the bar-basement bowling alley became the “poor man’s country club.”
Postcards
A Postcard from St. Louis
|
The undergraduate panels I saw in St. Louis served as a good reminder that Slavic Studies is in good hands.
Features
Escape from New York (and from Columbia University)
|
This is the way the American century ends.
Mailbag
The Five Oral History Commandments
|
Start at the beginning. Work towards the present day. This sounds simple, but it often gets overlooked.
Field Trip
How Anny Gaul Does History
|
“What does a postdoc do?” That’s something Anny Gaul has been figuring out all year.
Postcards
A Postcard from Granada
|
I arrived a day-and-a-half early and stayed a day late in order to do some exploring on my own.
Features
An Interrupted Journey
|
In 1908, Canada tried to deport the South Asian population of Vancouver. But the community stood its ground and won.
Field Trip
When John Brown’s Body Is Wax
|
What better place to think about authenticity than a wax museum?
Field Trip
How Priya Chhaya Does History
|
Even after 13 years working at the National Trust for Historical Preservation, “there isn’t really a typical day of work for me.”
Postcards
A Postcard from Augusta, GA
|
A postcard from the annual meeting of the Georgia Association of Historians.
Features
Oscar’s Hill
|
A decades-long quest, bordering on obsession, leads one man to a small village in the Sierra Juarez—and, perhaps, to the Hill of the Jaguar.
Features
The Life And Times Of Mr. Peanut
|
Mr. Peanut embodies two seemingly-distinct but deeply-connected Virginian worlds.
Postcards
Stumbling Stones
|
Somewhat to my surprise, I didn’t go to my field’s major conference last November. Instead I accompanied a 97-year-old man to the town he fled in 1938.
Postcards
A Postcard from Singapore
|
We were there to share our work on offshore islands across Southeast Asia — an exciting opportunity for a grad student like me, from a landlocked city.
Mailbag
Don’t We Have To Judge People By The Standards Of Their Time?
|
Many who reach for this cliché want it to function as a shield against judgment altogether.
Field Trip
How Nick Hurley Does History
|
The second in a series on how historians—especially contingent historians and those employed outside of tenure-track academia—do the work of history.
Mailbag
Why Do Historians Go To Conferences?
|
Packs of historians roam the streets, name tags flapping in the breeze, only to disappear into hotel conference rooms for hours at a time. What are they doing in there? And why?
Features
A Little More Knowledge Lights Our Way
|
Who gets to take meaning from things and have that meaning-making respected and valued?
Shorts
What to the Droid Is Life Day?
|
The Rebel Alliance fought for freedom, but this freedom was predicated on the automation of labor — on droids.
Features
Sacred Objects
|
A medieval relic economy operates in the Star Wars universe—and in the universe of its fans.
Features
Death to the Ewoks
|
Though the genocidal event isn’t canon, many fans apparently wish it was.
Features
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Batuu
|
To work, a theme park needs to collapse the mythic pasts that it depicts with the pasts of our own lives.
Features
Fandom: A Star Wars Story
|
This is about much more than Star Wars—it is about media bias and “information disorder” in the twenty-first century.
Shorts
2019 Contingent Book List
|
When you’re shopping for books this season, consider a contingent scholar.
Features
Bringing Academics To The Table
|
What happens when academics collaborate with the restaurant industry? Good things (and better food).
Postcards
A Postcard from the 2019 NEMA Conference
|
At museum conferences, there are usually no easily-portable solutions. Institutional differences matter.
Postcards
A Postcard From New Delhi
|
Dogs can be found laying on cooler surfaces or in the shade. Cats saunter into the canteen meowing for attention but also a bite of your lunch.
Field Trip
How Kelsey Utne Does History
|
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.
Story-Shaped Things
|
Historians tell stories about the past. This philosopher thinks those stories are often wrong–and dangerous.
Postcards
A Postcard From Washington, D.C.
|
Seeing Railway Mail Service badges makes the postal carriers and clerks that I read about in other archives seem more real.
Field Trip
A Most Unique Museum
|
From waste containment during the Black Death to a toilet that cost $19 million, the museum is impressively comprehensive.
What is Contingent?
Celebrating the Contingent Community
|
This magazine is much bigger than its staff, or even its writers.
What is Contingent?
History Is For Everyone
|
For all our planning and grand designs, Contingent’s success has rested entirely on having support from others.
What is Contingent?
Showing the Work
|
Sharing the products of historical inquiry isn’t enough—we’ve got to show our work.
Field Trip
Of Strip Mines and Coal Slurry
|
I’d spent years living simultaneously inside the West and outside of it.
Features
Arming the Past: An Interview with Michael Bellesiles
|
He wrote one of the most contentious works of history from the last century. And he sat down with Daniel Gullotta for his first public discussion of the controversy in nearly a decade.
Shorts
It Was History All Along, Mom
|
Flowers, a day at the spa, a biography of Andrew Jackson? A meditation on mothers, history, Mother’s Day gift-giving.
Reviews
What Happened to My People
|
The second half of PBS’s Reconstruction documentary begins where the traditional narrative ends.
Reviews
A Usable History of Reconstruction
|
The greatest strength of the new PBS documentary is its desire to inform contemporary debates. But this may also be one of its weaknesses.
Shorts
Cooking with the Time & Talents Club
|
The classic Parsi cookbook has changed much over the decades, yet remains curiously old-fashioned.
Reviews
Adams Family Values
|
They were a family of seekers, shaped not only by their heritage but by their travels abroad.
Mailbag
What Are the Different Kinds of College Faculty?
|
Their jobs and salaries may differ, but you should still call them “Professor.”
Updates
Emily’s Contingent Story
|
We wanted a site that actively considered the people who would use it.
Updates
Marc’s Contingent Story
|
We are making a bet: that a different approach to historical scholarship will have an audience.
