Erin (@erin_bartram) is an editor for Contingent and president of the magazine’s board of directors. She’s also Associate Director for Education at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford. Erin earned a PhD in 2015 from the University of Connecticut, where she studied 19th-century US history with a focus on women, religion, and ideas. You can find links to her writing on history, pedagogy, and higher ed at her website.
Marc (@Marc_A_Reyes84) is an editor for Contingent and the organization’s treasurer. He is also a history PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut, where he studies 20th-century foreign relations with a focus on the US and India, development, and technology. In 2019, he was a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow in India, conducting research for his dissertation, a political and cultural study of India’s atomic energy program.
Alison (@dinostalgia.bsky.social) is an editor for Contingent. She’s also a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches required first-year courses as well as special topics such as “Extinction and Justice.” Alison holds a PhD from MIT’s interdisciplinary History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society program. She writes about dinosaurs, museum display, and extinction cultures. On her website, you can find links to her academic, public, and creative writing.
Bill (@williamrblack) is emeritus editor for Contingent, and the board’s secretary and vice president. He’s also a teacher at St. Francis Episcopal School in Houston, Texas. Bill grew up in Memphis and got his PhD at Rice University, where he studied religion, nationalism, and slavery in the 19th-century Ohio Valley. You can find links here to his writing in Vox, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and elsewhere.
Emily (@sheishistoric) is Contingent’s web designer and manager. She is also currently the Judaica Digital Humanities Project Coordinator at Penn Libraries. She received an MA in public humanities from Brown University, and a BA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studying history and digital humanities.
William S. Cossen
William is a historian and high school educator. He earned a PhD in history in 2016 from Penn State University, where he specialized in the study of religion and nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He is a member of the faculty of The Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and serves as the book review editor for H-SHGAPE (Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era). You can read more about his scholarship here.
Rachel Eshenour
Rachel is a member of Contingent’s board of directors and a social studies teacher at a public high school outside of Buffalo, N.Y. She earned an MA in history from the University at Buffalo and holds an NYS certification in both Social Studies and Students with Disabilities, grades 7–12.
Michelle Ronholm
Michelle is a member of Contingent’s board of directors and has more than 15 years of experience in communications, at large agencies like Edelman and both large and small organizations like the American Heart Association and the International Food Information Council. She received a BA in history and political science from Muskingum University and an MA in political management from George Washington University.
Ravynn K. Stringfield
Ravynn (@RavynnKaMia) is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the College of William and Mary. Her research centers the Black woman’s imagination and fantasy across different media including, but not limited to, literature, comics, music, and the digital. She is on Contingent’s board of directors.
Illustrations by Audrey Estok.