The digital age is affecting all aspects of historical study, but much of the existing literature about history in the digital age can be alienating to the traditional historian who does not necessarily value or wish to embrace digital resources. History in the Digital Age takes a more conceptual look at how the digital age is affecting the field of history for both scholars and students. The printed copy, the traditional archive, and analogue research remain key constitute parts for most historians and for many will remain precious and esteemed over digital copies, but there is a real need for historians and students of history to seriously consider some of the conceptual and methodological challenges facing the field of historical enquiry as we enter the twenty-first century.

Including international contributors from a variety of disciplines - History, English, Information Studies and Archivists this book does not seek either to applaud or condemn digital technologies, but takes a more conceptual view of how the field of history is being changed by the digital age. Essential reading for all historians.

Teaching with film is not a new approach in the social studies classroom. Different publications, such as Hollywood or History, have bridged the gap with challenges attached to using historical film and engage students through inquiry, not entertainment. To continue with the Hollywood or History strategy, this text uses television shows (sitcoms) to brings issue-centered curriculum to middle and high school classrooms. By exploring issues in specific episodes, students can learn the history behind an issue, relate it to their lives, and develop an informed decision associated with the issue. The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) framework is an integral part to the exploration of issue-centered curriculum. In each chapter, the students will work through the four dimensions and develop critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. My hope is that this text can play a small role in walking practicing teachers through the C3 framework while allowing students to learn about issues that affect society and the communities where they live.

Traumagenic events-episodes that have caused or are likely to cause trauma-color the experiences of K-12 students and the social studies curriculum they encounter in U.S. schools. At the same time that the global COVID-19 pandemic has heightened educators' awareness of collective trauma, the racial reckoning of 2020 has drawn important attention to historical and transgenerational trauma. At a time when social studies educators can simply no longer ignore "difficult" knowledge, instruction that acknowledges trauma in social studies classrooms is essential. Through employing relational pedagogies and foregrounding voices that are too often silenced, the lessons in Hollywood or History? An Inquiry-Based Strategy for Using Film to Acknowledge Trauma in Social Studies engage students in examining the role of traumatic or traumagenic events in social studies curriculum. The 20 Hollywood or History? lessons are organized by themes such as political trauma and war and genocide. Each lesson presents film clips, instructional strategies, and primary and secondary sources targeted to the identified K-12 grade levels. As a collection, they provide ready-to-teach resources that are perfect for teachers who are committed to acknowledging trauma in their social studies instruction.

Is global violence on the decline? Scholars argue that Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's proposal that violence has declined dramatically over time is flawed. This highly-publicized argument that human violence across the world has been dramatically abating continues to influence discourse among academics and the general public alike. In this provocative volume, a cast of eminent historians interrogate Pinker's thesis by exposing the realities of violence throughout human history. In doing so, they reveal the history of human violence to be richer, more thought-provoking, and considerably more complicated than Pinker claims. From the introduction: Not all of the scholars included in this volume agree on everything, but the overall verdict is that Pinker's thesis, for all the stimulus it may have given to discussions around violence, is seriously, if not fatally, flawed.The problems that come up time and again are the failure to genuinely engage with historical methodologies; the unquestioning use of dubious sources; the tendency to exaggerate the violence of the past in order to contrast it with the supposed peacefulness of the modern era; the creation of a number of straw men, which Pinker then goes on to debunk; and its extraordinarily Western-centric, not to say Whiggish, view of the world. Complex historical questions, as the essays in this volume clearly demonstrate, cannot be answered with any degree of certainty, and certainly not in a simplistic way. Our goal here is not to offer a final, definitive verdict on Pinker's work; it is, rather, to initiate an ongoing process of assessment that in the future will incorporate as much of the history profession as possible.

The Viennese Socrates: Karl Popper and the Reconstruction of Progressive Politics examines Karl Popper's attempt to develop a political theory that draws upon Socratic fallibilism and commitment to ethical autonomy while preserving progressive sociological insights and commitment to activism. Philip Benesch argues that Popper's critique of Marxist theory is largely an endeavor to separate its progressive-activist core from its positivist and uncritical-rationalist entanglements. The author defends Popper against the charges of positivism and scientism leveled by the Frankfurt School, among others. Although he is in no sense an apologist for Popper's commentary on the classical tradition of philosophy, Benesch contends that Popper's philosophical contribution is of classical breadth and significance and that it continues and advances "the great conversation" that is the substance of the classical tradition.

Now in its second edition, Reading Primary Sources explores the varied traditions in source criticism and, through specific examples, illustrates how primary sources can be read and used in historical research. Part I of this two-part volume begins by establishing the reader's understanding of source criticism with an overview of both traditional and new methodological approaches to the use of primary documents. Taking into account the huge expansion in the range of primary sources used by historians, Part II includes chapters on surveillance reports, testimony and court files, in addition to more traditional genres such as letters, memoranda, diaries, novels, newspapers, political speeches and autobiography. For the new edition, each chapter now includes a checklist that suggests an easy-to-follow sequence of steps for interpreting a specific source genre, enabling students to understand how the sources should be read, what they have to offer, and the pitfalls of their interpretation. In addition to new discussions about the availability of digitised source materials, a new chapter on social surveys unlocks the potential of these widely used primary sources. Taking examples of sources from many European countries and the United States, and providing up-to-date information on the most widely used textual sources, this book is the perfect companion for every student of history who wants to engage with primary sources.

History and Economic Life offers students a wide-ranging introduction to both quantitative and qualitative approaches to interpreting economic history sources from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Having identified an ever-widening gap between the use of qualitative sources by cultural historians and quantitative sources by economic historians, the book aims to bridge the divide by making economic history sources more accessible to students and the wider public, and highlighting the need for a complementary rather than exclusive approach. Divided into two parts, the book begins by equipping students with a toolbox to approach economic history sources, considering the range of sources that might be of use and introducing different ways of approaching them. The second part consists of case studies that examine how economic historians use such sources, helping readers to gain a sense of context and understanding of how these sources can be used. The book thereby sheds light on important debates both within and beyond the field, and highlights the benefits gained when combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to source analysis. Introducing sources often avoided in culturally-minded history or statistically-minded economic history courses respectively, and advocating a combined quantitative and qualitative approach, it is an essential resource for students undertaking source analysis within the field.

In Rationalities in History the distinguished historian David d'Avray writes a new comparative history in the spirit of Max Weber. In a strikingly original reassessment of seminal Weberian ideas, d'Avray applies value rationality to the comparative history of religion and the philosophy of law. Integrating theories of rational choice, anthropological reflections on relativism, and the recent philosophy of rationality with Weber's conceptual framework, d'Avray seeks to disengage 'rationalisation' from its enduring association with Western 'modernity'. This mode of analysis is contextualised through the examples of Buddhism, Imperial China and sixteenth-century Catholicism - in the latter case building upon unpublished archival research. This ambitious synthesis of social theory and comparative history will engage social scientists and historians from advanced undergraduate level upwards, stimulating interdisciplinary discourse, and making a significant contribution to the methodology of history. D'Avray explores the potential of this new Weberian analysis further in his companion volume, Medieval Religious Rationalities.

This 1908 book was a ground-breaking guide for historians in the use and interpretation of official documentary sources. Hubert Hall examines the topic under three headings - archives, diplomatics, and palaeography. In the first part he treats the history, classification and analysis of English archives. He argues that the user should take into account what once existed as well as what survives. The second part deals with diplomatics, from Anglo-Saxon to the sixteenth century. He calls for greater critical analysis of the different types of official documents, something lacking in England when compared to European scholarship. The final part introduces the student to palaeography, and the different kinds of handwriting and contractions met with in official documents. While the book makes no claim to be the definitive work on the subject, it raised the profile of a neglected tool of scholarship, and offers a starting point for further research.

Biblical Interpretation beyond Historicity evaluates the new perspectives that have emerged since the crisis over historicity in the 1970s and 80s in the field of biblical scholarship. Several new studies in the field, as well as the 'deconstructive' side of literary criticism that emerged from writers such as Derrida and Wittgenstein, among others, lead biblical scholars today to view the texts of the Bible more as literary narratives than as sources for a history of Israel. Increased interest in archaeological and anthropological studies in writing the history of Palestine and the ancient Near East leads to the need for an evidence-based history of Palestine. This volume analyses the consequences of the question: "If the Bible is not history, what is it then?" The editors, Hjelm and Thompson are members of the Copenhagen School, which was formed in the light of this question and the commitment to a new approach to both the history of Palestine and the Bible's place in ancient history. This volume features essays from a range of highly regarded scholars, and is divided into three sections: "Beyond Historicity", which explores alternative historical roles for the Bible, "Greek Connections", which discusses the Bible's context in the Hellenistic world and "Reception", which explores extra-biblical functions of biblical studies. Offering a unique gathering of scholars and challenging new theories, Biblical Interpretation beyond Historicity is invaluable to students in the field of Biblical and East Mediterranean Studies, and is a crucial resource for anyone working on both the archaeology and history of Palestine and the ancient Near East, and the religious development of Europe and the Near East.

In this bold new book, Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth traces the broadly established challenges to modernity that now confront historians and citizens of Western societies generally. She puts forward a clear definition of both The Modern Condition and of The Discursive Condition that challenges it, and she briefly introduces the most important practical implications of those challenges to accepted definitions and tools of thought. After decades of conflicting work on related issues this book provides a succinct, lucid and wide-ranging discussion of what is at stake. Drawing on a broad range of intellectual and cultural history from Homer to Hayden White and from the arts to physics, philosophy and politics, this book defines a new stage in the history of ideas. With the practice and assumptions of historians at its core, the book demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary practice in addressing the big questions currently confronting the humanities and social sciences.

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2012. Teaching History to Adolescents: A Quest for Relevance is an exploration of research, ideas, trends, and practices for educators who teach American history to adolescents from the middle grades through high school. Higher education faculty in history and professional education will also find the book germane to their work. Topics within the field of teaching history to adolescents include the use and misuse of history textbooks, implementing primary sources into lessons, subject matter selection, professional development, technology, and the issues of diversity and assessment as directly related to history. The book includes "The World of Practice" sections - contributions from practitioners on topics such as teaching history with comic books, student engagement with public history, using young adult non-fiction books, and the role of controversial topics in the history classroom.

This book analyses the international development of the census by comparing the history of census taking on all continents and in many countries. The timeframe is wide, from male censuses in the Bible to current censuses covering the whole population. There is a focus on the efforts and destinies of census takers and the development of methods used to collect information into the census questionnaires. The book highlights international cooperation in census taking, as well as how computerized access to census data facilitates genealogical studies and statistical research on both historical and contemporary societies. It deals with such questions as "Why did the French and British gentry block efforts at census taking in the 18th century?"; "What role did German censuses play during Holocaust?"; Why were the Soviet census directors executed as part of the Moscow processes?"; "Why did US states sue the Census Bureau in the 1970s?"; "How do wars and revolutions affect census taking?". The text ends by discussing whether the days of the population census as we know it are numbered, since countries exceedingly construct censuses by combining information from population registers rather than with questionnaires.

In his now classic Voices of Collective Remembering, James V. Wertsch (2002) examines the extent to which certain narrative themes are embedded in the way the collective past is understood and national communities are imagined. In this work, Wertsch coined the term schematic narrative templates to refer to basic plots, such as the triumph over alien forces or quest for freedom, that are recurrently used, setting a national theme for the past, present and future. Whereas specific narratives are about particular events, dates, settings and actors, schematic narrative templates refer to more abstract structures, grounded in the same basic plot, from which multiple specific accounts of the past can be generated. As dominant and naturalised narrative structures, schematic narrative templates are typically used without being noticed, and are thus extremely conservative, impervious to evidence and resistant to change. The concept of schematic narrative templates is much needed today, especially considering the rise of nationalism and extreme-right populism, political movements that tend to tap into national narratives naturalised and accepted by large swathes of society. The present volume comprises empirical and theoretical contributions to the concept of schematic narrative templates by scholars of different disciplines (Historiography, Psychology, Education and Political Science) and from the vantage point of different cultural and social practices of remembering (viz., school history teaching, political discourses, rituals, museums, the use of images, maps, etc.) in different countries. The volume's main goal is to provide a transdisciplinary debate around the concept of schematic narrative templates, focusing on how narratives change as well as perpetuate at times when nationalist discourses seem to be on the rise. This book will be relevant to anyone interested in history, history teaching, nationalism, collective memory and the wider social debate on how to critically reflect on the past.

This volume asks which national histories underpinned which national identity constructions in almost every nation state in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores the construction of national identities through history writing and analyzes their interrelationship with histories of ethnicity/race, class and religion.

Modernity in the late eighteenth century transformed all domains of European life -intellectual, industrial, and social. Not least affected was the experience of time itself: ever-accelerating change left people with briefer intervals of time in which to gather new experiences and adapt. In this provocative and erudite book Reinhart Koselleck, a distinguished philosopher of history, explores the concept of historical time by posing the question: what kind of experience is opened up by the emergence of modernity? Relying on an extraordinary array of witnesses and texts from politicians, philosophers, theologians, and poets to Renaissance paintings and the dreams of German citizens during the Third Reich, Koselleck shows that, with the advent of modernity, the past and the future became 'relocated' in relation to each other.The promises of modernity -freedom, progress, infinite human improvement -produced a world accelerating toward an unknown and unknowable future within which awaited the possibility of achieving utopian fulfillment. History, Koselleck asserts, emerged in this crucial moment as a new temporality providing distinctly new ways of assimilating experience. In the present context of globalization and its resulting crises, the modern world once again faces a crisis in aligning the experience of past and present. To realize that each present was once an imagined future may help us once again place ourselves within a temporality organized by human thought and humane ends as much as by the contingencies of uncontrolled events.

The Ancient Near East embraces a vast geographical area, from the borders of Iran and Afghanistan in the east to the Levant and Anatolia, and from the Black Sea in the north to Egypt in the south. It was a region of enormous cultural, political and linguistic diversity.
In this authoritative new study, Amelie Kurht examines its history from the earliest written documents to the conquest of Alexander the Great, c.3000-330 BC. This work dispels many of the misapprehensions which have surrounded the study of the region. It provides a lucid, up-to-date narrative which takes into account the latest archaeological and textual discoveries and deals with the complex problems of interpretation and methodology.
The Ancient Near East is an essential text for all students of history of this region and a valuable introduction for students and scholars working in related subjects.
Winner of the AHS's 1997 James Henry Brested Award.

In his now classic Voices of Collective Remembering, James V. Wertsch (2002) examines the extent to which certain narrative themes are embedded in the way the collective past is understood and national communities are imagined. In this work, Wertsch coined the term schematic narrative templates to refer to basic plots, such as the triumph over alien forces or quest for freedom, that are recurrently used, setting a national theme for the past, present and future. Whereas specific narratives are about particular events, dates, settings and actors, schematic narrative templates refer to more abstract structures, grounded in the same basic plot, from which multiple specific accounts of the past can be generated. As dominant and naturalised narrative structures, schematic narrative templates are typically used without being noticed, and are thus extremely conservative, impervious to evidence and resistant to change. The concept of schematic narrative templates is much needed today, especially considering the rise of nationalism and extreme-right populism, political movements that tend to tap into national narratives naturalised and accepted by large swathes of society. The present volume comprises empirical and theoretical contributions to the concept of schematic narrative templates by scholars of different disciplines (Historiography, Psychology, Education and Political Science) and from the vantage point of different cultural and social practices of remembering (viz., school history teaching, political discourses, rituals, museums, the use of images, maps, etc.) in different countries. The volume's main goal is to provide a transdisciplinary debate around the concept of schematic narrative templates, focusing on how narratives change as well as perpetuate at times when nationalist discourses seem to be on the rise. This book will be relevant to anyone interested in history, history teaching, nationalism, collective memory and the wider social debate on how to critically reflect on the past.

The second edition of Public History: A Textbook of Practice offers an updated guide to the many opportunities and challenges that public history practitioners can encounter in the field. Historians can play a dynamic and essential role in contributing to public understanding of the past, and those who work in historic preservation, in museums and archives, in government agencies, as consultants, as oral historians, or who manage crowdsourcing projects need very specific skills. This book links theory and practice and provides students and practitioners with the tools to do public history in a wide range of settings. This new edition reflects how much the field of public history has changed in the past few years, with public history now being more established and international. New chapters have therefore been added on the definition, history, and international scope of public history, as well as on specific practices and theories such as historical fictions, digital public history, and shared authority. Split into four sections, this textbook provides approaches, methodologies, and tools for historians and other public history practitioners to play a bigger role in public debates and public productions of historical interpretations: Part I focuses on the past, present, and future of public history. Part II explores public history sources, and offers an overview of the creation, collection, management, and preservation of materials (archives, material culture, oral history, or historical sites). Part III deals with the different ways in which public history practitioners can produce historical narratives through different media (including texts, fictions, audio-visual productions, exhibitions, and performances). Part IV discusses the opportunities and challenges that public history practitioners encounter when working with different collaborators. Whether in public history methods courses or as a resource for practicing public historians, this book lays the groundwork for making meaningful connections between historical sources and popular audiences.

Barack Obama's politics are deeply informed by his profound knowledge and understanding of his country's history. His articles, books, and speeches are replete with references to America's past and how that relates to the present he sees and the future he envisions. Exploring Obama's own words, Steven Sarson examines his interpretation of American history from colonial times to the present, showing how Obama sees American history as beginning with the "common creed" of equality and liberty proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and the "more perfect union" created by the Constitution. He analyses Obama's understanding of the colonies, revolution, and early nation, slavery and the civil war, segregation and civil rights, economy and society, Native Americans and foreign policy. An epilogue explores how Obama personifies the American dream through the stories of individuals, including his own. A unique and fascinating take on the past and how we interpret it, this book will appeal to all students and scholars of American history, as well as anyone interested in Obama's presidency.

This is the first book to offer a detailed modern survey of witchcraft historiography. By using a broad chronological structure, from contemporary responses through to modern day developments in historical theory in relation to the study of the history of witchcraft, the book draws on contributions from a range of leading experts to provide a much-needed overview of the area.

Creative Historical Thinking offers innovative approaches to thinking and writing about history. Author Michael J. Douma makes the case that history should be recognized as a subject intimately related to individual experience and positions its practice as an inherently creative endeavor. Douma describes the nature of creativity in historical thought, illustrates his points with case studies and examples. He asserts history's position as a collective and community-building exercise and argues for the importance of metaphor and other creative tools in communicating about history with people who may view the past in fundamentally different ways. A practical guide and an inspiring affirmation of the personal and communal value of history, Creative Historical Thinking has much to offer to both current and aspiring historians.

The process of converting the 'past' into 'history' involves engagement with a multitude of different sources and methods, and sports historians inevitably participate in the same debates over approaches and methodologies as their counterparts in other historical disciplines. At its heart, history remains a genre of empirical knowledge that is based upon the remains of the past, and without suitable evidence, there can be no sports history. A burgeoning range of sources has stimulated new ways of thinking and a significant expansion in the sports historian's evidentiary base, as textual sources have been supplemented by photos, films and cartoons, uniforms, architecture, maps and landscapes, and material culture more generally. This book deals with some of these innovations. It is divided into two sections, the first offering chapter-length studies of particular methodologies, and the second, brief responses from experts in their fields to the question 'what can sports historians learn from other disciplines?'

There is one critical way we honor great tragedies: by never forgetting. Collective remembrance is as old as human society itself, serving as an important source of social cohesion, yet as Jeffrey Andrew Barash shows in this book, it has served novel roles in a modern era otherwise characterized by discontinuity and dislocation. Drawing on recent theoretical explorations of collective memory, he elaborates an important new philosophical basis for it, one that unveils profound limitations to its scope in relation to the historical past. Crucial to Barash's analysis is a look at the radical transformations that symbolic configurations of collective memory have undergone with the rise of new technologies of mass communication. He provocatively demonstrates how such technologies' capacity to simulate direct experience-especially via the image-actually makes more palpable collective memory's limitations and the opacity of the historical past, which always lies beyond the reach of living memory. Thwarting skepticism, however, he eventually looks to literature-specifically writers such as Walter Scott, Marcel Proust, and W. G. Sebald-to uncover subtle nuances of temporality that might offer inconspicuous emblems of a past historical reality.

This unorthodox scholarly work dissects the ghosts of history in order to analyze how the past - both recent and distant - haunts posterity, and in what ways the present disfigures the image of times gone by. The book presents a novel history of Communism from the perspective of its collapse, and inspects the world beyond the Fall in the distorting mirror of its imagined prehistory. Using a series of strange and darkly ironic stories, the subsequent chapters provide a close exploration of some of the essential objects of historical study: the name, the date, the dead, the relic, the pantheon, the court, the underworld, and the underground. The tension between vast distances, both in space and time, that Retroactive Justice covers, and the extremely focused analyses, provide an unexpected experience of writing and rewriting, visioning and revisioning history. Cultural Memory in the Present