History and Theory (history-and-theory)
Journal positioning
History and Theory, published for Wesleyan University (Wiley), is the leading venue for
the philosophy of history, historical theory, historiography, and the epistemology and
method of history. It is a meta-level journal: its object is not the past itself but
historical thinking — how historians explain, narrate, periodize, represent, and justify
claims about the past, and what concepts and methods underwrite that practice. Its
defining expectation is an original theoretical or methodological argument that
advances debate about historical knowledge, engaging the relevant theoretical literature
with philosophical care. A straightforward archival case study with no theoretical or
methodological stake is a misfit here, however accomplished as empirical history. This
skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing aid. It does not replace the journal's
current submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live History and Theory
author instructions and style guide.
When to trigger
- The author names History and Theory for a work on philosophy of history,
historiography, or historical method and wants a fit/framing check.
- An empirical project contains a genuine theoretical or methodological argument that
could be extracted and developed for a meta-level venue.
- The author is choosing between History and Theory and an empirical history journal or a
philosophy journal.
- The author needs the journal's theory-level bar and desk-reject heuristics.
Scope & topic fit
- Philosophy of history: historical explanation, causation, contingency, counterfactuals,
and the logic of historical inference.
- Theory of historiography: narrative, representation, the rhetoric of historical writing,
and the status of historical truth and objectivity.
- Epistemology and method: evidence, testimony, the archive, periodization, scale, and
comparison as conceptual problems.
- Critical and reflexive historiography: memory, temporality, the politics of the past,
and debates over the discipline's foundations and futures.
- Conceptual histories of the field's key terms and the theoretical commitments embedded
in historical practice.
- Engagement with theory from philosophy, social theory, and adjacent fields when it
illuminates how history is done and justified.
Method & evidence bar
- The contribution is an original theoretical or methodological argument about
historical knowledge; state the thesis and its stake for historical practice clearly.
- The argument is conceptually rigorous: distinctions are drawn precisely, key terms
defined, the reasoning followed through, and the meta-level thesis earned by argument
rather than merely asserted.
- Historiographical positioning is explicit: which theoretical debate the piece enters and
how it advances or revises it.
- Where historical examples appear, they do genuine argumentative work — illustrating or
testing the theoretical claim, not standing in for it.
- Engagement with the relevant theoretical literature (in philosophy of history and
adjacent theory) is current, fair, and non-padding.
Structure & house style
- Long-form scholarly article sustaining a theoretical argument; defer exact word limits
and article types (articles, review essays where offered) to the live guide.
- Chicago notes-and-bibliography style with full footnotes; footnotes carry qualification
and secondary dialectic.
- Double-blind review: anonymize the manuscript — self-identifying citations and
acknowledgements — per current policy.
- Prose is precise and economical; technical or philosophical apparatus is used only where
it earns its keep, and non-English theory is quoted and translated per policy.
- Any historical illustrations or figures, where used, follow the journal's permissions
and specification requirements.
Official-submission checklist
- Before giving submission-ready advice, read
../../resources/source-basis.md and
../../resources/official-source-map.md; start from the Wesleyan / Wiley anchors, then
cite the current History and Theory page you checked.
- Search the live site for "History and Theory submission guidelines" and follow the
current version.
- Re-check article types (articles, review essays), word limits, the Chicago footnote
form, and the abstract requirement.
- Confirm anonymization requirements for double-blind review.
- Re-check the translation policy for non-English theoretical sources and any image
permissions.
- Re-check competing-interest, funding (if applicable), prior-presentation/preprint, and
AI-use disclosure, and any open-access terms.
- If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions
win.
Pre-submission self-check
Common desk-reject triggers
- A straightforward archival case study with no theoretical or methodological argument.
- A theoretical claim asserted but not argued, terms left undefined and distinctions blurred, or no explicit positioning in the philosophy-of-history / historiography debate addressed.
- Historical illustration that carries the piece in place of a conceptual argument.
- Engagement with theory that is dated, unfair, or padded rather than load-bearing.
- Wrong venue: empirical history better suited to a substantive history journal, or pure philosophy better suited to a philosophy journal.
Re-routing decision
- Empirical study with discipline-wide significance →
the-american-historical-review.
- Problem-driven social/economic/cultural history →
past-and-present.
- Modern European archival study with broad significance →
the-journal-of-modern-history.
- British or wide-ranging empirical study →
the-english-historical-review.
- Representation, memory, or cultural-theory emphasis with a literary axis →
representations.
Output format
[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] History and Theory
[Field/period/region] <theoretical area — e.g. explanation, narrative, method>
[Argument] <the theoretical/methodological thesis in one line>
[Sources/historiography] <does the conceptual rigor + positioning clear the meta-level bar?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection>
[Official items to re-check] <word limit / Chicago style / anonymization / translation / preprint policy>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>