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Contribution short abstract:

This contribution explores the emerging field of “urgent histories” and poses methodologies and future directions for the discipline. I trace the historiography, contemplate what is and is not urgent about our work, and seek to bring together experts beyond history working in times of chaos.

Contribution long abstract:

In 2020, Yves Rees and Ben Huf introduced a forum on Urgent Histories to the journal History Australia. The special issue included an article on doing environmental history in urgent times: the journal’s most-read of all time. Two years later, “Urgent Histories” was chosen as the theme for the annual conference of the Australian Historical Association, the professional organisation that oversees production of the journal. Environmental historians had much to contribute to this theme: sharing reflections on the discipline’s capacity to affect change in a decade that has so far been marked by climate crisis and pandemic. This turn towards urgent histories is a phenomenon that is by no means limited to Australia. Globally, historians have been shifting their attention to the climate crisis and experimenting with new forms of scholarship that are cognisant of — and attempt to respond to — this existential threat.

This contribution attempts to wrangle these scattered voices, and proposes an emergent discipline: the turn to urgency. By giving a name to this trend in the scholarship, I seek not merely to observe and legitimise it, but equally to problematise it. I ponder whether urgent histories are merely extractive, and explore the need for care for ourselves, our (more-than-human) kin, and the Earth, while doing this work. I elaborate on the work already done in establishing the field, and contemplate future directions and gaps yet to be filled. I consider what is and is not urgent in our work, and frame academia as activism.