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