Welcome

This wiki is the first project of the Writing History website. Our site promotes the writing of creative, engaging, and exceptional history. We will develop resources for a national network of engaged scholars and enthusiasts and will connect like-minded individuals.

If you would like to get involved in the larger project, please contact the organizers' yahoogroup: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/writinghistory/

I. Our Guide

This guide aims to inspire and facilitate the thoughtful writing of history.

Your additions welcomed:

• Carry forward collective knowledge on past events, inspirational readings, and spread the word about other projects and groups.
  Ask questions to be answered and those that can only pondered.
  Add to existing categories and create new ones.
  

II. What Writing History Can Be

1. Narrative and experimental forms of history

• 1.1 Key questions
  1.2 Models of narrative and experimental history
  

  • Microhistory
    Narrative history
    Group biography
    

  1.3 Outlets
  

  • Rethinking History http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13642529.asp
    Common-place.org http://www.common-place.org/
    boundary 2 http://boundary2.dukejournals.org/
    

  1.4 Metahistory: how to create or defend different histories

  • Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft
    Barbara Tuchman, Practicing History
    Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse
    James Goodman, "For the Love of Stories"
    William Cronon
    

  1.5 'Creative' uses of primary source material
  

  • "America's first skyscraper reconstructed:" The built environment in Jane Kamensky's The Exchange Artist http://www.exchangeartist.com/
    

2. Sources of Inspiration

• 2.1 Models from literature
  

  • Henry James
    

  2.2 Models from creative nonfiction
  

  • Creative Nonfiction http://www.creativenonfiction.org/
    Rebecca Solnit
    John McPhee
    Rachel Cohen
    

  2.3 Models from journalism
  

  • The New Yorker
    n + 1
    

3. History facing out from the profession

• 3.1 Op-eds
  

  • History News Service op-eds http://www.h-net.org/~hns/index.html
    

  3.2 Blogs
  3.3 Podcast
  

  • Makinghistorypodcast.com http://makinghistorypodcast.wordpress.com/
    History @ 33 1/3 http://www.history3313.com

  3.4 National History Center http://www.nationalhistorycenter.org/
  3.5 Museum exhibits
  

4. The nuts and bolts of doing, publishing, and teaching writing

• 4.1 Tools for research and organization
  4.2 How to get published – book reviews
  4.3 How to get published – articles
  4.4 How to get published – books
  4.5 How to teach writing to undergraduates
  4.6 How to teach writing to graduate students or yourself
  4.7 How to finish a dissertation
  

5. Writing Groups

• 5.1 How to build an effective writing group
  5.2 Writing Challenges
  

  • Everyone’s introduction
    Character Sketch
    Structuring a Dissertation
    

III. The Writing History Network

1. Existing Interest on Campuses
   

   • Cornell -- Aaron Sachs
     NYU--Martha Hodes
     Past Tense at the Huntington Library http://college.usc.edu/emsi/seminars/past_tense.html
     

     • Writing Early America conference, May 22-23, 2008 http://college.usc.edu/emsi/private/2008_WMQ_Program.doc
       

     Rutgers--James Goodman
     UCI--Jeffrey Wasserstrom Narrative History course
     Writing History at Yale http://www.yale.edu/history/gradstudents/working-groups.html#writing
     

     • Courses past and present: Robin Winks, John Demos
       Past events
       Old announcement emails
       Maintaining colloquia funding
       Who will help coordinate in the future?
       How best to include those in other departments: Anthropology, English, Art History, etc.
       Archiving Writing History at Yale
       

2. Infrastructure
   

   • Yahoogroups for organizers
     

     • How to get involved: join at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/writinghistory/

     Web portal: links to already-existing content: calendar, resources, journals
     H-Writing?
     Institutional partners, funding?
     Sponsor conference sessions? Symposium?
     Informal meeting at a conference?