The new MLA Forum TC: History & Literature seeks to open up a space to consider the complex relationship between these two disciplines. Whereas literary history is one expression of the synergy between history and literature, the forum’s primary focus will be on creating a sustained conversation about how two distinct disciplines inform each other’s methodologies and shape innovative interdisciplinary research. Described in broad strokes, we can distinguish historical inquiry as being concerned with the documentation of actual events, whereas literature’s engagement with history is interpretative, based on the reading of texts (construed broadly here as they could be images, film, and other forms).