Righting the Past:
Historical Media Consulting
Righting the Past is a historical research consulting firm that specializes in conducting research into history, culture, and society in the field of entertainment media.
Whether you are a writer or video game developer planning to create a story in a historical setting, a YouTube or podcast creator seeking a consultant to write scripts or conduct research for your series, or a film or television series seeking to ensure historical accuracy and cultural sensitivity; Righting the Past is there to conduct research and ensure your work escapes the dreaded sound of “uh, actually, that is not accurate” from viewers.
Why hire a research consultant?
Here’s the thing, research is a skill like any other, and it requires training.
Hiring experts to do the work saves you time, frustration, and gives you reassurance that your content is accurate.
PhilosophyServicesMeredith Walker: Owner and Head of Research
Righting the Past was created to address the need for historical accuracy and literacy in media.
What does that mean exactly?
It means that truth is almost always stranger than fiction and that entertaining media doesn’t have to sacrifice historical accuracy for a good story.
Historical accuracy isn’t all fashion and set pieces. It’s the cultural and social, and political context of a period. It’s understanding the state of racial and sexual/gender politics in a setting. And understand how all of those issues affect the lives of your characters and your plot to create a more realistic world that shows the true tapestry of human history.
Righting the Past provides a number of services to our clients. All services can be contracted on a per-project or hourly basis, depending on your needs and budget.
Research
Script Writing
Fact-Checking
After one too many evenings spent calmly expressing my issues with historical inaccuracy in the media (i.e., telling everyone that would listen about how “corsets weren’t actually considered repressive and restrictive and there’s no reason why Elizabeth Swann should have fainted because she was wearing one” among other historical inaccuracies in films), my best friend pointed out that if I wanted to see better historical accuracy in media, maybe I needed to be the one to do the research.
After receiving my bachelor’s in History with a minor in Public History, I moved to the Netherlands, where I pursued my master’s in Colonial and Global History at the University of Leiden, with a minor sidetrack into the literary studies program. I graduated in December 2020 after completing my thesis on the history of sociopolitical critique in the Star Trek franchise.
I have spoken on several panels at comic conventions on various topics, from literary analysis of character archetypes in film and television to uncovering the political and philosophical themes in science fiction and superhero films.
In my free time, I enjoy drinking cocktails with ridiculous Prohibition-era names, applying my historical research skills to creating the setting for my series of Private Detective novels set in 1920s Los Angeles, nitpicking the historical settings of Assassin’s Creed and the archeological training of Lara Croft and Nathan Drake, producing my podcast - Bitchy History, and writing for the blog Perspectives On Pop Culture.
