Who We Are

Contingent is a non-profit history magazine. Our writers are adjuncts, museum workers, independent scholars—all people who work outside the tenure-track professoriate.

Contingent is rooted in three principles:

History is for everyone.

A lot of publishers and magazines think the audience for history is pretty narrow, and that assumption shapes the kinds of history they’re willing to publish. We think everyone can understand and find meaning in stories about the past.

Every way of doing history is worthwhile.

Mainstream outlets often want a “hot take,” something that has an obvious connection to present-day political concerns (narrowly defined). We take a much broader view of relevance and publish pieces about such topics as dinosaur hunting, women’s wrestling gear, coal mines, and embroidery. There’s a lot of great history being done out there and we want to share it all with you.

Historians should be paid for their work.

Historians are often paid little to nothing for the writing they do, and they’re increasingly paid very little for the teaching they do as well.1 Since the 2008 recession, colleges and universities have significantly increased their practice of hiring adjuncts, or “contingent faculty,” scholars employed by the course and paid far less than their permanent full-time colleagues.2 Even as the job market for historians has collapsed, these scholars and their peers who’ve left the field entirely still have a lot of great research to share. At Contingent, we help them share that research with you, and we compensate them for their work.

We are an independent non-profit, not backed by any university or think tank, and we pay all of our contributors for their work, so we depend on the financial support of our readers. If you like what we’re doing here, become a supporter.

You can also peruse the “About” tab to meet the folks behind Contingent and see a breakdown of our budget, among other things.

 

  1. But what about when you pay $25 to get access to a scholarly article online? Nope. None of that money goes to the author. It goes to the giant company that holds the rights to store and control distribution of that article.
  2. As little as $1500 per course, with caps on the number of courses a scholar can teach each semester so their institution doesn’t have to give them benefits.