Please note that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the New York City Writing History Seminar will be on hiatus for the 2020-2021 academic year. We are planning our return for Fall 2021 or whenever it is safe to meet again in person.
Wear a mask, be safe, and find some time for writing! We hope to see you again soon.
Writing History is a seminar for faculty, graduate students, and exceptional undergraduate students, focused on the pleasures and challenges of writing history for a wider public. We put aside a history essay’s content, context, or historiography in order to hone our approach to the writing process—from style, pacing, and word choices to questions of audience, publishers, and of the changes wrought by digital media.
September 27 – Michael Salgarolo, New York University, “Journeys to St. Maló: A History of Filipino Louisiana”
(October 25 – Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr., Columbia University — postponed until 2020-2021)
November 15 – Paul Sabin, Yale University, “Environmental Law and the Remaking of American Liberalism”
Note: There will be a Writing History Lab session on Monday, January 6, at the American Historical Association annual meeting in New York City. Please join us for some flash writing and discussion!
February 7 – Calvin Snyder, Brandeis University, “Shakedown City: The Paranoid Politics of the Los Angeles Underworld, 1933-1941.”
March 13 – R. Isabela Morales, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, “Writing Family History with Legal Documents”
Note: There will be a Writing History Lab session at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting in Washington, DC. Please join us for some flash writing and discussion!
April 24 – Martha Sandweiss, Princeton University, “Writing a Book from a Single Photograph” — postponed until 2020-21 academic year
The Writing History Seminar acknowledges the support of the New York University History Department, the Columbia University History Department, the Digital Humanities Initiative at The New School, the Rutgers University-Newark History Department, and the Urban Studies Program at Manhattan College
Any more questions? Contact Adam Arenson
Writing History is a seminar for faculty, graduate students, and exceptional undergraduate students, focused on the pleasures and challenges of writing history for a wider public. We put aside a history essay’s content, context, or historiography in order to hone our approach to the writing process—from style, pacing, and word choices to questions of audience, publishers, and of the changes wrought by digital media.
The Writing History Seminar acknowledges the support of the New York University History Department, the Columbia University History Department, the Digital Humanities Initiative at The New School, the Rutgers University-Newark History Department, and the History Department and Urban Studies Program at Manhattan College.
Any more questions? Contact Adam Arenson
Writing History is a seminar for faculty, graduate students, and exceptional undergraduate students, focused on the pleasures and challenges of writing history for a wider public. We put aside a history essay’s content, context, or historiography in order to hone our approach to the writing process—from style, pacing, and word choices to questions of audience, publishers, and of the changes wrought by digital media.
We will meet six Fridays, from noon to 2 p.m,
at
New York University
53 Washington Square South
(follow signs to the exact room).
Let us know that you are interested in coming and receiving the pre-circulated readings on this form. We will write to confirm about a week before the session.
2017-2018 Schedule
Sept. 15 – Guy Ortolano, New York University – “Thatcher’s Progress: Narrating Late Twentieth-Century British Urban History through a Single Morning’s Drive” – Portrait Room, ground floor of 53 Washington Square South
Oct. 13 – Ada Ferrer, New York University – “Cuba: An American History” – Portrait Room, ground floor of 53 Washington Square South
Nov. 10 – Beryl Satter, Rutgers University-Newark – “Are Banks People? The Challenges of Writing Intellectual History and Financial History” – Portrait Room, ground floor of 53 Washington Square South
Feb. 2 – Lana Dee Povitz, New York University – “Instruments of Illumination: Vivian Gornick and the Writing of Social Movement Time”
RESCHEDULED FOR FALL 2018 – James Goodman, Rutgers University-Newark – “A Sense of Where You Are: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends in History and Life”
Apr. 20 – Wendy Warren, Princeton University – “Writing about Interpersonal Violence: A Historian’s Dilemma”
The Writing History Seminar acknowledges the support of the New York University History Department, the Columbia University History Department, the Digital Humanities Initiative at The New School, the Rutgers University-Newark History Department, and the Urban Studies Program at Manhattan College
Any more questions? Contact Adam Arenson
Our 2016-2017 events at Columbia University were:
September 23 – Timothy Stewart-Winter, Writing Silences: Narrative Dilemmas and the 1964 Walter Jenkins Gay Sex Scandal
October 28 – Claire Potter, Beginning in 1968: Recent History, Feminism, and the Uses of Biography
December 2 – Donna Murch, Historians and the Present: Gender, Herstory and the Movement for Black Lives
February 10 – Debby Applegate, The Influence of Polly Adler: The Challenges of Rumor, Taboo and Context
March 31 – Martha Hodes, Writing History from Memory: What Happens When a Historian Compares Her Own Recollections to Archival Documents?
April 28 – Robert Rosenstone, Postmodern Historian: Living and Writing the Past
The Writing History Seminar acknowledges the support of the Columbia University History Department, the Digital Humanities Initiative at The New School, and the Urban Studies Program at Manhattan College
Any more questions? Contact Adam Arenson
In our inaugural 2015-2016 year, we met at The New School:
9/18/2015 Nell Painter, History through Digital Collage: Art History by Nell Painter Volume XXVII, Ancestral Arts
10/9/2015 Adam Arenson, This is Not How My Book Starts–Or Is It? Introductions, Tables of Contents, and the Writing Process
11/13/2015 Nathan Connolly, “Who Did What to Whom?” and Other Writing Hazards
1/29/2016 Edward Ball, Writing History Using Family History
3/4/2016 Maria Montoya, Ideas, People, and Place: Biography and Geography in the Progressivism of Rockefeller and Roche
4/1/2016 Bruce Dorsey, A Doctor’s Visit and a Murder in a Mill Town: Experimenting With Perspective
Writing History Seminar 