Rounding Up: Reflections on 10 years of Unwritten Histories

By Andrea Eidinger

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?

I suppose the only real place to start is the beginning.

When I started Unwritten Histories, it was due to frustration and anger after having worked at a history department for three years, only to not even get an interview when the first permanent Canadian History job came up. At that point, I had been working as a sessional instructor for over 5 years, and I was exhausted. In one memorable semester, I had to get up at 5:30 am to take a coach bus and then a shuttle bus to teach an 8 am class two cities over from where I lived. The trip took two hours.  After that class was over at 11, I had to wait 3 hours (because of conflicting bus schedules) before taking the same trip in reverse, to teach another 3 hours class from 6 to 9. I still don’t know how I did it. All I knew was that, after finding out I didn’t get the interview, it felt like my entire career had been a waste of time and I needed a new plan. 

At first, that plan was vague. I wanted to gather the resources I had developed through teaching and make them available to others. Pedagogy had always mattered to me, and after years in the classroom, I had a good sense of the kinds of questions people were asking. My first idea was a podcast. But if you’ve ever met me in person, you know I sound like Minnie Mouse. More to the point, I needed something I could build and control myself. So I started a blog. The earliest posts on Unwritten Histories reflect that choice, and focused on teaching and learning.

I never really expected much to come from this. I had already been reading blogs like Active History, NiCHE, and Nursing Clio, and I loved them, but never expected to grow to their reach. 

But things slowly started to change once I started posting the roundups. All of a sudden, people started actually reading what I was writing.

In fact, when I asked some of my former readers what they remembered most about the blog, it was the roundups, though not necessarily for the reasons you might think. Yes they helped people to stay up to date on all the goings on in the field, but mostly what I heard was that they created connection. I heard from one person that they remember reading the roundups while on maternity leave, and feeling less alone. Others told me about the online and real-life conversations the roundups inspired. Again and again, what I heard was that the roundups helped people feel seen—helped them recognize themselves and their work in what was being brought together. 

This is what I remember the most about Unwritten Histories – the care and community. 

In the end, however, it became clear that Unwritten Histories was an unsustainable project. Most of the other large Canadian history blogs were started by tenure-track or tenured academics, often with grant money, and were operated with teams of editors. Mine was the only one that was run almost entirely by a female sessional instructor, with support from a female graduate student. While we were able to secure some level of ongoing funding, largely from individual donors through Patreon, it was not even enough to cover the basic cost of running Unwritten Histories, let alone providing any kind of fair compensation. By mid-2019, I was working on the blog for 30 hours a week, while also teaching 2 to 3 courses a semester (at two different universities) to pay my rent and groceries. To say nothing of the fact that none of the work I was doing on Unwritten Histories was considered relevant academic experience in terms of the job market, and my schedule didn’t allow me the time to work on my own research. 

Even though Unwritten Histories only lasted for three years, its impact on my life cannot be understated. While it did give me important work experience that has facilitated my career outside of academia, for me the most important were the friends that I made along the way. There are too many to list individually, but I would like to especially acknowledge Krista McCracken, Jenny Ellison, Shannon Stettner, Kesia Kvill, the late Elizabeth Mancke, Jessica Dewitt, Sarah York-Bertram, and Stacey Zembrycki. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t devote an entire paragraph to Stephanie Pettigrew, my forever partner in crime. She was always there for whatever I needed. We met randomly during CHA Reads, and just never stopped talking. She listened to me rant about reading articles I hated, read countless drafts while I argued over innate details, and kept things going when I couldn’t. But most importantly, she was a shelter in the storm when I needed one. None of this would have been possible without her, and I cannot overstate the impact she has had on Unwritten Histories and my life. 

To all of the people who read Unwritten Histories, whether you donated or not – thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

If there is a lesson to be learned from Unwritten Histories, it is this: if you value something, you have to fight for it, again and again. In the world that we live in, it is so easy to dismiss projects relating to history, heritage, and community. Afterall, when we are in crisis mode, who has time for all that? But when we make this argument, we fail to realize that without history, heritage, and community, we lose the ties that bind us together and make us humans. Humanities isn’t just about the study of human beings, it is about the connections that make us who we are. And in the end, actions speak louder than words, but silence speaks loudest of all. 

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While Unwritten Histories in its current form is coming to end, this isn’t the end of the story. Stephanie and I are working on converting the best projects into a Pressbook that will be available online for free. Stay tuned to Active History for more news on this project, and all future news about Unwritten Histories. 

Thank you again to Active History, especially Tom Peace, for hosting this series, and for all of their support.

Andrea Eidinger is a Canadian historian who lives and works with her cat Hedy in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal, and hates writing biographies.