About History Unclassified
History Unclassified is a section devoted to creative, unconventional, genre-bending modes of historical writing. We’re interested in pieces that play with genre and historical method; that mess around with what constitutes an “archive”; that explore the boundaries between historical inquiry and personal discovery. We welcome essays that open new ways of thinking about both the historical and an author’s shifting identity as a historian. We cast a wide net.
What can I write about?
Maybe you have a historical take on a screenplay, or a rock opera, or a graphic historical novel, or a collage, or a cookbook.
Maybe you’ve been contemplating an instance in which you become a character in the history you are writing.
Maybe you’ve grappled with an encounter in which your identity as an “expert historian” has come up against your investments as a human being.
Maybe you are exploring ways of decolonizing your practice.
Maybe you made a research “mistake” that ended up being more revealing than the research you were trying to do in the first place.
Maybe you’ve found yourself applying a historical lens onto something that is not the “history” that you study with surprising results.
Maybe you got experimental while writing your academic book, but you cut that section, and now wonder if it might have a home somewhere.
Previous History Unclassified Essays
Read a selection of previously published History Unclassified essays.
"Incident At Antelope Springs" by Lucas Besire
"Seeing Madness in the Archives" by Ariel Mae Lambe
"As If I Wasn’t There: Writing from a Child's Memory" by Martha Hodes
"On Silence and History" by Lilia Topouzova
"Historians and Ethics: Finding Anne Moody" by Françoise N. Hamlin
"On Acknowledgements" by Emily Callaci
History Unclassified Submissions
History Unclassified seeks contributions of 2,000 to 5,000 words. Please send submissions to consulting editors brownkl@mit.edu and ejcallaci@wisc.edu with the subject line "History Unclassified."
History in Focus Podcast
Listen to recent episodes with authors of History Unclassified essays.