Unwritten Histories

The Unwritten Rules of History

Rounding Up: Reflections on 10 years of Unwritten Histories

April 7, 2026 / / 0 Comments

A vintage teal typewriter

Roundup, noun:

  1. A systematic rounding up of people or things, esp.
    1. The arrest of people suspected of a particular crime or crimes
    2. The rounding up of cattle etc. usu for the purposes of registering ownership, count, etc.
  2. The people and horses engaged in the rounding up of cattle etc.
  3. A summary, a resume of facts or events.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd edition, Online edition, 2005

The very first “roundup” appeared on Unwritten Histories on April 24, 2016. My original idea was that there was so much cool stuff being published online, and more people needed to know about it. The first one was 650 words long. Little did I imagine that by the last one, published on July 28, 2019, it would grow to 1680 words, divided into 13 different themes. But then again, that’s kinda how Unwritten Histories always worked: it started very small and grew beyond anything I could have possibly imagined.

As we prepare to shut down Unwritten Histories, I find myself very conflicted. I’ve always felt that all writing, whether academic or creative, is inherently biographical. Looking back, Unwritten Histories was very much a product of a particular time in my life. How do you sum (or round….) something like that up?

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The Legacy of Unwritten Histories

April 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

by Stephanie Pettigrew

When I first started my PhD in 2013, I left a very comfortable, established community of support in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, made up of friends I had known since middle school, of family. I had a general sense of knowing my community and being known by it.

When I arrived in Fredericton, I found myself not only in a strange place, but without any pre-existing community support. It was really my only complaint about those early years at UNB. My mentors, Drs Elizabeth Mancke and Greg Kennedy, were amazing and would stop at nothing to support me, but they were not the peer network I increasingly craved. The grad student network at UNB was scattered, incohesive, almost ephemeral. I knew my peers existed on campus, sometimes I’d even get the odd beer with one or two of them, but they did not exist as a supportive network.

I had friends doing their grad studies at other universities who had the sort of peer support network I wanted, and I was downright envious. I missed having that sense of community.

As I started attending conferences and establishing a network outside of my own university, I began to grow more and more of that community I was looking for. Enter Andrea, and Unwritten Histories.

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The Future of Unwritten Histories

April 6, 2026 / / 2 Comments

Hey folks—long time no see. This month marks 10 full years of Unwritten Histories, which feels both significant and a little surreal. I wanted to give you a quick heads-up about what to expect over the next few weeks.

First, we will be closing Unwritten Histories. But don’t worry—you will still be able to access all of your favourite posts. Here’s how:

The entire archive is already available via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20260209153633/https://www.unwrittenhistories.com/). It has been preserved in perpetuity and is fully up to date.

A selection of favourite posts (and some of the most widely read) have also been reposted on Active History, including:

Finally, we will be moving the majority of the posts from Unwritten Histories over to a ebook with Pressbooks. This should be available in the next six months or so. You can stay tuned to Active History for news and updates about that project.

Over the coming months, the majority of Unwritten Histories posts will also be brought together in an ebook through Pressbooks. That project should be available within the next six months—stay tuned to Active History for updates.

Second, as part of the closing of Unwritten Histories, Stephanie and I have both written reflections on our experiences with the project. These will be published first on Active History and reposted here a few hours later.

Unwritten Histories will officially close at the end of April 2026. At that point, the site will be taken offline and will no longer be available at this URL.

This is not a decision that was made lightly. Over the past decade, this project has meant a great deal—to me, and, I hope, to many of you. We have taken care to ensure that the work will remain accessible, and that it can continue to be read, shared, and used in the years to come.

Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, for reading, sharing, and supporting Unwritten Histories over the years.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Jewish Tradition on Rosh Hashanah

September 19, 2020 / / 4 Comments
image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Simmie Knox, under commission of the United States Supreme Court / Public domain

I was originally planning to write a blog post sharing the new interview that I did with Samantha Cutrara, on my research on Jewish women and cultural traditions, especially around food (more on this below). But I’ve also been troubled by the news coverage and responses to death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So I ended up writing a Twitter thread, about it, and I decided to share what I wrote over here. Also because, for reasons(?), it got all out of order on Twitter.

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Stronger Together: The Potential Collaborative Agency of Historians and Archivists

June 22, 2020 / / 0 Comments

by Andrea Eidinger and Krista McCracken

(Cross posted on Active History)

Over the past few years, the historical community in Canada has been rocked by a few scandals. No, we are not talking about the endless discussions around monuments. Rather, we are referring to the numerous public disputes between historians and archivists relating either to the discovery of or access to archival material. For example, you’ve liked seen various historians announcing that they had “discovered” a long-lost historical document by looking in a seemingly forgotten corner of the archive. To which archivists often reply, we knew it was there the whole time. Sometimes we also see these conflicts erupt into larger disputes, as has been the case with respect to the recent announcement that the BC Archives would be closed until 2021 to ensure that proper procedures were in place to protect staff and visitors from COVID-19.

 

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Learning from Past Pandemics: Resources on the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic in Canada

April 15, 2020 / / 2 Comments

 

Influenza epidemic poster

Poster issued by the Provincial Board of Health about the influenza epidemic, Alberta. Glenbow Archives, NA-4548-5.

Note from Andrea: Check out this awesome resource guide we created in collaboration with Sean Carleton, Carolyn Podruchny, and Active History!

 

By Sean Carleton, Andrea Eidinger, Carolyn Podruchny.

We are living in unprecedented times, or so we are being told by many commentators, health experts, and politicians these days.

Just last week, Dictionary.com released a list of “The Best Words to Use During Unprecedented Times” to help people describe their experiences during the COVID-19 crisis. The first word was “unprecedented.” The website explained, “If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’ll have seen this word used quite a lot. Instead of defaulting to “I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ say ‘This is completely unprecedented.’”

Though the world has never seen a coronavirus pandemic quite like we are currently witnessing, that does not mean that what we are experiencing is “completely unprecedented.”

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Stephanie Pettigrew on Active History

March 24, 2020 / / 1 Comment

Hey Folks! Make sure to check out Stephanie’s new post over on Active History, looking at her family history and hooked rugs. It’s fantastic! Here’s a preview:

When my sister and I imagined ourselves getting married as kids, we imagined our Mémére being there, just as she had been for all our moments, big and small. Mémére was everything for us. Mother, protector, teacher, and provider. My memories of her as a child are wild and varied, and would likely not align with most people’s archetypal French-Canadian “grandmother” figure. I remember her chopping wood in the backyard. I remember her teaching me how to cook an egg and crêpes. I remember the enormous meals she would prepare for company, and the time that I got stung by a wasp and she grabbed the wasp’s nest with her bare hands and threw it into a fire out of pure spite. But most of all, I remember watching her hook rugs in the evenings, after the day’s work was done.

Check out the rest of it here!

Wet’suwet’en Pipeline Dispute PowerPoint Presentation

February 21, 2020 / / 1 Comment

Title slide of a presentation on the Wet'suwet'en Pipeline Dispute in Historical Perspective

Hey Folks!

I’m currently teaching a course on Public History at Concordia University. On Thursdays, we do workshops where we learn hands on skills, and I give my students the chance to decide the topics that we cover. This week, they wanted to learn more about the Wet’suwet’en Pipeline Dispute. And as I was writing it, it occurred to me that there might be other people who might want to also cover this topic in class, but don’t know where to start or don’t have the time to do the extra research. So in the spirit of sharing, I have made the full PowerPoint, including notes, available below.

This PowerPoint presentation covers the following subjects:

  • Settler Colonialism
  • Treaties and the Indian Act
  • Background Information
    • Who are the Wet’suwet’en?
    • Delgamuukw vs. BC
    • Hereditary chiefs vs. elected band councils
  • The Conflict
  • The RCMP and Indigenous Resistance
  • Conclusion

And also includes a list of sources and additional resources.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind, however.

 

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2019 Holiday Gift Guide for Historians and History Professionals

December 10, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Header image of three toy Christmas trees against a white backdrop

Do you know a Canadian historian? (::nods::) Are they impossible to shop for because they already own all the books? (::nods vigorously::) Then have we got just the thing for you!

As promised, we’re back with our Fourth Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Historians and History Professionals! This is becoming a veritable Canadian history holiday tradition. I’ll keep the preamble short, but as usual, standard caveats apply:

  • Warning to loved ones of historians and history professionals: It is so lovely that you remembered that we love history and that most of us love reading. However, we strongly recommend against the purchase of history books for holiday gifts, unless they are specifically requested. If you are dead-set on buying a history book for your loved-one, at least make sure that it is: from an academic press (it will say the word University in the title of the publisher) and it is by a person with a Ph.D. in history (Google is your friend – just put their name and the word history to find out). You may also want to make sure that your loved-one doesn’t already own the book in question, or have easy access to it from their institutional library. We have provided a couple of suggestions for non-history books that might be a better fit.
  • While I am Canadian, and many of the recommendations I’ve included down below are specific to Canadian history, this list should be helpful to history professionals no matter their country of origin or residence.
  • Finally, while there are plenty of options here for history enthusiasts, this guide is specifically intended for individuals who are shopping for historians and historical professionals.

I also know that our gift guide is out rather late this year, mostly because I wasn’t planning to do one. And I’m sure that all of my fellow historians and history professionals have already completed their holiday shopping, so this guide is entirely unnecessary, right? 😉

Don’t forget to check out our guides from 2016, 2017, and 2018. While not all of the links work anymore, there are still plenty of fantastic ideas to be found. The leather book weight from 2018 is still a highlight. And don’t forget that the 2017 guide contains additional information if you will be purchasing or making gifts for your Jewish friends.

Once again, I have cheekily divided this list according to academic rank, mostly because I still think it’s funny. Enjoy!

 

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