To pitch us, please first read our mission statement. Then email us at editorial@mid-theory.com

Submission Guidelines

Given the current state of the university, we are committed to supporting, publishing and showcasing the work of all voices across academic and public intellectual spheres who bring new critical perspectives to bear on the contemporary. We accept pitches for essays, reviews, and entries in our ongoing Features series on an open basis. Generally, essays at MTC range from 2000-3000 words, and focus on contemporary culture, arts, media, and politics. Send us what you’re excited about — the thing you’ve wanted to write about but didn’t think anyone else would be interested in, the thing that’s been bugging you, the thing you can’t quite yet articulate why you like or dislike. 

We are guided by curiosity, rather than a sense of what’s “trendy” or “trending” in the discourse. We are animated by work that is collaborative in nature and/or unconventional in form. While we focus on contemporary culture, we also welcome pieces that revisit historical objects in an accessible way. We especially welcome pitches that engage with non-Anglophone cultural objects and/or the arts, cultures, and politics of the Global South. 

Because we are committed to the kaleidoscopic ways that we can articulate, explicate, and share knowledge about the workings of contemporary life, we enthusiastically welcome co-authored pieces, conversations, interviews, and other collaborative formats. If you would like to write collaboratively but don’t yet have a collaborator(s), feel free to contact us and we will work to connect you with someone with whom to write!

How to pitch us:

We are currently accepting pitches at editorial@mid-theory.com. We expect all pitches to offer an argument and clearly advocate for the contemporary relevance of an object or topic. We will sometimes ask for a revised pitch if the argument and stakes remain opaque, but the contemporary relevance is clear. Pitches should be clear and concise (approximately 200 words or fewer).

We commit to responding to all pitches within a couple of weeks. If your pitch is accepted, you’ll be connected to an editor who will guide your piece to publication. We aim to be timely in our publication schedules, and therefore expect that first drafts are well-considered and copyedited by the author. We aim to offer short constructive feedback on all rejections.

Editorial Process

We are excited to build something together in a way that feels sustainable for us and for whomever will come after us. Our mission is to make space for thoughtful rigorous thinking that both responds with urgency to the contemporary while surviving the 36-hour discourse cycle. This means we balance swift publication timelines with our own capacity and the time required for an author’s thinking to gestate. We aim to publish one piece a week and adapt our publication schedule to accommodate the needs of the piece, the author’s timeline, and our own commitments. You should hear from us about your pitch within two weeks and we aim to publish pieces within eight weeks of acceptance. 

A Note: MTC is an entirely volunteer-run experiment: we have no institutional affiliation, no advisory board, no money. As a result, we are unable to pay our writers at this moment.