Call for Contributions: Continuity through Crisis

Proposal deadline: 14 December 2026

Deadline for submission of full contributions: 29 January 2027

Prospective publication: Winter/spring 2027

Series editor: Shannon Stunden Bower

History has a particular relationship with crisis. In some areas of the world, the subdiscipline of environmental history took on additional power and coherence partially in response to late 20^th century concern about the crisis of environmental degradation.[1] In Canada, historians from within and beyond the field of environmental history have participated in discussions about what it means to do history amid the global crisis of climate change.[2] In the last few years, the notion of polycrisis has been picked up by some historically-oriented scholars as a means to underline the complexities and complications inherent in multidimensional crises.[3] Just recently, Helge Jodheim examined the work – both intellectual and material – done by the concept of crisis.[4]

Moments of crisis might be particularly interesting to historians and historically-oriented scholars from across a range of subdisciplines and fields because of the association between crisis and change. Whether manifest in relation to an individual, a community, a population, or some other entity, crises often serve as catalysts to transformations of various sorts. Recognizing this, it might perhaps be continuity – rather than change – that is the more remarkable in the face of crisis.

Titled “Continuity through Crisis,” this blog series aims to profile some of the creative and strategic efforts made by historical actors to foster or safeguard some valued dimension of their practices, identities, experiences, or contexts, even in the face of crisis-level disruption. Contributors are invited to define both crisis and continuity on their own terms and in ways that make sense in relation to the actors under study. Contributors might consider:

• particular practices that have helped foster continuity over time, across space, or amid challenges;
• efforts at sustaining continuity through experiences of migration or within diasporic communities;
• the ways in which meanings or understandings of the notion of continuity are historically constructed, perhaps even themselves subject to change; the particular challenges to safeguarding continuity amid compounding crises or polycrisis;
• how the contexts for and specificities of particular crises might affect practices aimed at cultivating continuity;
• how the notion of continuity might be useful in considering non-human actors or processes manifest at very large or very small scales.

Contributors are also welcome to come at this topic from other angles. Where appropriate, contributors are encouraged to directly identify any structural conditions that contribute to crisis, particularly insofar as these conditions generate injustice along lines related to gender, sexuality, class, ability, race, ethnicity, religion, or colonialism.

This blog series forms part of the “Historicizing Our Times” project, led by Professor Edward Dunsworth at McGill University. The project brings together three Canadian history blogs – Active History, Histoire Engagée, and The Otter, NiCHE’s blog – to foster engagement with the histories of migration and climate. The “Continuity through Crisis” blog series is edited by Shannon Stunden Bower, an environmental historian, in consultation with the editors-in-chief of The Otter. But despite the editor’s positioning in the field of environmental history and the larger project’s orientation to both migration and climate, this blog series welcomes contributions from historically-oriented scholars across a range of historical subfields and even scholarly disciplines. Contributors are free to employ any geographic or chronological framing that is appropriate to their submission.  Amid the contemporary polycrisis, with profoundly disruptive and fundamentally interconnected emergencies manifest or looming along multiple lines, diverse stories of creative and strategic efforts at safeguarding continuity through moments of crisis might matter in ways that transcend divisions of discipline and field.

The deadline for expressions of interest is 14 December 2026 and the deadline for submission of articles is 29 January 2027. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please complete this google form. Prospective authors can anticipate a response by 18 December 2026. Please send any questions to Shannon Stunden Bower at stundenbower@ualberta.ca.

NiCHE offers $100 CAD honoraria to contributors without adequate or consistent access to institutional support. Learn more about our honoraria policy here.

Shannon Stunden Bower is a Professor of History in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on the Canadian Prairies, and addresses questions related to water management (with particular concern for the extremes of flood or drought) and government institutions (whether at national, provincial, or local scales).

[1] John R. McNeill, “Observations on the nature and culture of environmental history,” History and theory 42, no. 4 (2003): 5-43.

[2] For example, the theme of the 2024 annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association/Société Historique du Canada was “The Climates of History/ Le climat de l’histoire,” a theme chosen to encourage “reflection upon how anthropogenic climate change challenges us to reassess how we think, write, and teach history,” as per the meeting’s official program.

[3] Elizabeth Chatterjee, “Late Acceleration: The Indian Emergency and the Early 1970s Energy Crisis,” The American Historical Review 129, no. 2 (2024): 429–466; Justin Fisher, “Energy Crisis and Opportunity: Energy Development and Debate in Saskatchewan, 1969–1982” (PhD diss. University of Saskatchewan, 2026). For a critical take on polycrisis and historical explanation, see: Mack Penner, “The Paradox of Polycrisis: Capitalism, History, and the Present,” Journal of History 58, no. 2–3 (2023): 152-166. For a discussion of the term polycrisis and its origins from an anthropological perspective, see: D. Henig and D. M. Knight, “Polycrisis: Prompts for an emerging worldview,” Anthropology Today 39 (2023): 3-6.

[4] Helge Jordheim, “Understanding crisis through temporal and rhetorical analysis,” in Writing Conceptual Histories, ed. Pasi Ihalainen and Jani Marjanen (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), 209-231.