The Abusable Past is a digital venue that emerges from the work of the Radical History Review. For over forty years, Radical History Review has stood at the nexus of historical scholarship and active political engagement. The Abusable Past provides a space for critical scholarship and rigorous debate with implications for how we think through the past, understand the present, and envision the future. The Abusable Past complements Radical History Review with unique and original content related to the praxis of radical history in this social and political moment. The Digital Collective envisions The Abusable Past as a space that can be used to push the boundaries of traditional academic publishing. We are dedicated to showcasing the work of public historians, junior scholars, and contingent faculty in an effort push back against the hierarchies that structure academia generally, and disciplinary History specifically. The Abusable Past is transnational in scope, expansive in chronological breadth, and committed to intersectional analysis and interdisciplinary understandings of radical history.
We welcome pitches for content, but do not accept sponsored posts or requests from authors to be interviewed about their own publications. We do, however, accept pitches from individuals interested in interviewing new authors about their work or facilitating book forums. We also accept pitches for features on individuals “Doing Radical History” such as public historians, curators, artists, and archivists, for example. Please familiarize yourself with the various sections of The Abusable Past in order to have a better sense of where your pitch might fit.
To pitch to the Abusable Past, please fill out this form. If, for whatever reason, you cannot access the form, please send your pitch to abusablepast@gmail.com.
All pitches are subject to review by the Digital Collective and the authors of solicited contributions may be asked to revise their submissions. We reserve the right of declining to publish submissions.
You can follow us on twitter @abusablepast and on instagram @theabusablepast.
DIGITAL COLLECTIVE
A.J. Bauer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press (Columbia University Press, 2026), and co-edited News on the Right: Studying Conservative News Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2019). He was a member of the Writers for the 99% Collective and is also currently a member of the editorial collective of the journal Communication, Culture and Critique.
Fernando Herrera Calderón is Associate Professor of History at the University of Northern Iowa.
Sheer Ganor is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.
Marisol LeBrón is an Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. She is the author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2019), which examines the growth of punitive governance in contemporary Puerto Rico. Along with Yarimar Bonilla, she is the co-editor of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. She is also one of the co-creators of the Puerto Rico Syllabus, a digital resource for understanding the Puerto Rican debt crisis.
Jecca Namakkal is Professor of the Practice in International Comparative Studies, History, Asian American and Diaspora Studies, and Gender, Sexuality, Feminist Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India (Columbia University Press, 2021), and served as a co-editor on Issue 138 of the Radical History Review, “Fascisms and Antifascisms Since 1945″ and Issue 153 “Radical Histories of Decolonization.”
Yalile Suriel is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.
Evan Taparata is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He is a historian of migration, law, and empire in the 19th and 20th century United States. His scholarship has appeared in the Journal of American Ethnic History and his writing has been featured on PublicRadioInternational.org and PublicBooks.org. He has also contributed to several public-facing digital humanities projects, including the #ImmigrationSyllabus, the Humanities Action Lab’s “States of Incarceration” initiative, and the Migration Scholar Collaborative. He was previously a Global American Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History and the Jack Miller Center Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy.
Thomas Harbison is managing editor of the Radical History Review, serving in the journal’s editorial office since 2005. He also works as an instructional designer at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (City University of New York), training and collaborating with faculty in applying digital tools to teaching, learning, and scholarship.
From Left to Right: Jecca Namakkal, Evan Taparata, Marisol LeBron, Kevin Murphy. Photo by Leo Ching.