What is it to practice history in an age in which photographs exist? What is the impact of photographs on the core historiographical practices which define the discipline and shape its enquiry and methods? In Photographs and the Practice of History, Elizabeth Edwards proposes a new approach to historical thinking which explores these questions and redefines the practices at the heart of this discipline. Structured around key concepts in historical methodology which are recognisable to all undergraduates, the book shows that from the mid-19th century onward, photographs have influenced historical enquiry. Exposure to these mass-distributed cultural artefacts is enough to change our historical frameworks even when research is textually-based. Conceptualised as a series of 'sensibilities' rather than a methodology as such, it is intended as a companion to 'how to' approaches to visual research and visual sources. Photographs and the Practice of History not only builds on existing literature by leading scholars: it also offers a highly original approach to historiographical thinking that gives readers a foundation on which to build their own historical practices.

This book explores commemoration practices and preservation efforts in modern Britain, focusing on the years from the end of the First World War until the mid-1960s. The changes wrought by war led Britain to reconsider major historical episodes that made up its national narrative. Part of this process was a reassessment of heritage sites, because such places carry socio-political meaning as do the memorials that mark them. This book engages the four-way intersection of commemoration, preservation, tourism, and urban planning at some of the most notable historic locations in England. The various actors in this process-from the national government and regional councils to private organizations and interested individuals-did nothing less than engineer British national memory. The author presents case studies of six famous British places, namely battlefields (Hastings and Bosworth), political sites (Runnymede and Peterloo), and world's fairgrounds (the Crystal Palace and Great White City). In all three genres of heritage sites, one location developed through commemorations and tourism, while the other 'anti-sites' simultaneously faltered as they were neither memorialized nor visited by the masses. Ultimately, the book concludes that the modern social and political environment resulted in the revival, creation, or erasure of heritage sites in the service of promoting British national identity. A valuable read for British historians as well as scholars of memory, public history, and cultural studies, the book argues that heritage emerged as a discursive arena in which British identity was renegotiated through times of transitions, both into a democratic age and an era of geopolitical decline.

How did the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution affect everyone's lives? Why did people re/negotiate their identities to adopt revolutionary roles and duties? How did people, who lived with different self-understandings and social relations, inevitably acquire and practice revolutionary identities, each in their own light?This book plunges into the contexts of these concerns to seek different relations that reveal the Revolution's different meanings. Furthermore, this book shows that scholars of the Cultural Revolution encountered emotional and intellectual challenges as they cared about the real people who owned an identity resource that could trigger an imagined thread of solidarity in their minds.The authors believe that the Revolution's magnitude and pervasive scope always resulted in individualized engagements that have significant and differing consequences for those struggling in their micro-context. It has impacted a future with unpredictable collective implications in terms of ethnicity, gender, memory, scholarship, or career. The Cultural Revolution is, therefore, an evolving relation beneath the rise of China that will neither fade away nor sanction integrative paths.

Why have the influences of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (roughly 1966-1976) in contemporary China been so pervasive, profound, and long-lasting? This book posits that the Revolution challenged everyone to decide how they can and should be themselves.Even scholars who study the Cultural Revolution from a presumably external vantage point must end up with an ideological position relative to whom they study. This amounts to a focused curiosity toward the Maoist agenda rivaling its alternatives. As a result, the political lives after the Cultural Revolution remain, ulteriorly and ironically, Maoist to a ubiquitous extent.How then can we cleanse, forget, neutralize, rediscover, contextualize, realign, revitalize, or renovate Maoism? The authors contend that all must appropriate ideologies for political and analytical purposes and adapt to how others use ideological discourses. This book then invites its readers to re-examine ideology contexts for people to appreciate how they acquire their roles and duties. Those more practiced can even reversely give new meanings to reform, nationalism, foreign policy, or scholarship by shifting between Atheism, Maoism, Confucianism, and Marxism, incurring alternative ideological lenses to de-/legitimize their subject matter.

During the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, millions of Americans engaged with the past in brand-new ways. They became absorbed by historical miniseries like Roots, visited museums with new exhibits that immersed them in the past, propelled works of historical fiction onto the bestseller list, and participated in living history events across the nation. While many of these activities were sparked by the Bicentennial, M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows that, in fact, they were symptomatic of a fundamental shift in Americans' relationship to history during the 1960s and 1970s. For the majority of the twentieth century, Americans thought of the past as foundational to, but separate from, the present, and they learned and thought about history in informational terms. But Rymsza-Pawlowska argues that the popular culture of the 1970s reflected an emerging desire to engage and enact the past on a more emotional level: to consider the feelings and motivations of historic individuals and, most importantly, to use this in reevaluating both the past and the present. This thought-provoking book charts the era's shifting feeling for history, and explores how it serves as a foundation for the experience and practice of history making today.

In the Jim Crow era, along with black churches, schools, and newspapers, African Americans also had their own history. Making Black History focuses on the engine behind the early black history movement, Carter G. Woodson and his Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Author Jeffrey Aaron Snyder shows how the study and celebration of black history became an increasingly important part of African American life over the course of the early to mid-twentieth century. It was the glue that held African Americans together as "a people," a weapon to fight racism, and a roadmap to a brighter future.Making Black History takes an expansive view of the historical enterprise, covering not just the production of black history but also its circulation, reception, and performance. Woodson, the only professional historian whose parents had been born into slavery, attracted a strong network of devoted members to the ASNLH, including professional and lay historians, teachers, students, "race" leaders, journalists, and artists. They all grappled with a set of interrelated questions: Who and what is "Negro"? What is the relationship of black history to American history? And what are the purposes of history? Tracking the different answers to these questions, Snyder recovers a rich public discourse about black history that took shape in journals, monographs, and textbooks and sprang to life in the pages of the black press, the classrooms of black schools, and annual celebrations of Negro History Week. By lining up the Negro history movement's trajectory with the wider arc of African American history, Snyder changes our understanding of such signal aspects of twentieth-century black life as segregated schools, the Harlem Renaissance, and the emerging modern civil rights movement.

R.G Collingwood's prolific works have shaped the debate about the nature of civilisation and its status as an ideal governing art, morality and social and political existence. As one of the few philosophers to subject civilisation and barbarism to close analysis, R.G Collingwood was acutely aware of the interrelationship between philosophy and history. In Peter Johnson's highly original work, R.G Collingwood and the Second World War: Facing Barbarism, Johnson combines historical, biographical and philosophical discussion in order to illuminate Collingwood's thinking and create the first in-depth analysis of R.G Collingwood's responses to the Second World War. Peter Johnson examines how R.G Collingwood's responses to the war developed from his early rejection of appeasement as a policy for dealing with Hitler's Germany, through his view of Britain's prosecution of the war once the battle with Nazism had been joined, and finally to his picture of a future liberal society in which civility is its overriding ideal.

Few historical subjects have generated such intense and sustained interest in recent decades as Britain's imperial past. What accounts for this preoccupation? Why has it gained such purchase on the historical imagination? How has it endured even as its subject slips further into the past? In seeking to answer these questions, the proposed volume brings together some of the leading figures in the field, historians of different generations, different nationalities, different methodological and theoretical perspectives and different ideological persuasions. Each addresses the relationship between their personal development as historians of empire and the larger forces and events that helped to shape their careers. The result is a book that investigates the connections between the past and the present, the private and the public, the professional practices of historians and the political environments within which they take shape. This intellectual genealogy of the recent historiography of empire will be of great value to anyone studying or researching in the field of imperial history.

What does it mean to be a social and cultural historian today? In the wake of the 'cultural turn', and in an age of digital and public history, what challenges and opportunities await historians in the early 21st century? In this exciting new text, leading historians reflect on key developments in their fields and argue for a range of 'new directions' in social and cultural history. Focusing on emerging areas of historical research such as the history of the emotions and environmental history, New Directions in Social and Cultural History is an invaluable guide to the current and future state of the field. The book is divided into three clear sections, each with an editorial introduction, and covering key thematic areas: histories of the human, the material world, and challenges and provocations. Each chapter in the collection provides an introduction to the key and recent developments in its specialist field, with their authors then moving on to argue for what they see as particularly important shifts and interventions in the theory and methodology and suggest future developments. New Directions in Social and Cultural History provides a comprehensive and insightful overview of this burgeoning field which will be important reading for all students and scholars of social and cultural history and historiography.

Through case studies of pilot conservation projects launched by the Yunnan Provincial Archives in recent years, this book comprehensively and systematically discusses issues in the conservation of ethnic oral history material and the development of ethnic oral history resources. After an overview of ethnic oral history material in general, the book gives an introduction to the oral history material of the Bai, Hani, Lisu, Wa, Zhuang, and Qiang ethnic groups; discusses theoretical research and work practices related to ethnic oral history; elaborates upon the methods for managing and integrating ethnic oral history archives; reviews the history, current state, and existing issues of work related to ethnic oral materials; summarizes experiences gained from international collaboration in the conservation of ethnic oral materials; and reflects upon issues such as the development of ethnic oral history resources and the establishment of oral history resource systems in multi-ethnic border regions. As the result of research on the management of specialized archives and work related to oral archives, this book contributes towards the establishment of ethnic oral archival science as an academic discipline and enriching the knowledge structure of oral history and the science of managing oral archives.

A brilliant meditation on politics, morality, and history from one of the most courageous and controversial authors of our age Renowned Eastern European author Adam Michnik was jailed for more than six years by the communist regime in Poland for his dissident activities. He was an outspoken voice for democracy in the world divided by the Iron Curtain and has remained so to the present day. In this thoughtful and provocative work, the man the Financial Times named "one of the 20 most influential journalists in the world" strips fundamentalism of its religious component and examines it purely as a secular political phenomenon. Comparing modern-day Poland with postrevolutionary France, Michnik offers a stinging critique of the ideological "virus of fundamentalism" often shared by emerging democracies: the belief that, by using techniques of intimidating public opinion, a state governed by "sinless individuals" armed with a doctrine of the only correct means of organizing human relations can build a world without sin. Michnik employs deep historical analysis and keen political observation in his insightful five-point philosophical meditation on morality in public life, ingeniously expounding on history, religion, moral thought, and the present political climate in his native country and throughout Europe.

At the end of the 19th century, German historical scholarship had grown to great prominence. Academics around the world imitated their German colleagues. Intellectuals described historical scholarship as a foundation of the modern worldview. To many, the modern age was an 'age of history'. This book investigates how German historical scholarship acquired this status. Modern Historiography in the Making begins with the early Enlightenment, when scholars embraced the study of the past as a modernizing project, undermining dogmatic systems of belief and promoting progressive ideals, such a tolerance, open mindedness and reform-readiness. Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen looks at how this modernizing project remained an important motivation and justification for historical scholarship until the 20th century. Eskildsen successfully argues that German historical scholarship was not, as we have been told since the early 20th century, a product of historicism, but rather of Enlightenment ideals. The book offers this radical revision of the history of scholarship by focusing on practices of research and education. It examines how scholars worked and why they cared. It shows how their efforts forever changed our relationship not only to the past, but also to the world we live in.

Using Non-Textual Sources provides history students with the theoretical background and skills to interpret non-textual sources. It introduces the full range of non-textual sources used by historians and offers practical guidance on how to interpret them and incorporate them into essays and dissertations. There is coverage of the creation, production and distribution of non-textual sources; the acquisition of skills to 'read' these sources analytically; and the meaning, significance and reliability of these forms of evidence. Using Non-Textual Sources includes a section on interdisciplinary non-textual source work, outlining what historians borrow from disciplines such as art history, archaeology, geography and media studies, as well as a discussion of how to locate these resources online and elsewhere in order to use them in essays and dissertations. Case studies, such as William Hogarth's print Gin Lane (1751), the 1939 John Ford Western Stagecoach and the Hereford Mappa Mundi, are employed throughout to illustrate the functions of main source types. Photographs, cartoons, maps, artwork, audio clips, film, places and artifacts are all explored in a text that provides students with a comprehensive, cohesive and practical guide to using non-textual sources.

This book develops a new energetic/thermodynamic basis for the cyclic nature of civilizations. The growth of a civilization is due to the ability of the civilization to acquire and utilize resources for growth. The theory developed turns out to be identical to Blaha's previously developed theory, which successfully matches the history of 50+ civilizations. The energetic/thermodynamic theory appears in studies of superorganisms such as ant and bee colonies as well as other organisms including colonies of microbes. It also appears in theories of predator-prey populations such as wolves and rabbits. The consideration of superorganisms, predator-prey population cyclicity, and human civilization cyclicity suggests that there is an underlying unity in Nature in the growth of large groups of organisms and leads to the conclusion that civilizations are superorganisms. Thus this new model of civilizations is called SuperCivilizations. The book begins by overviewing superorganisms including some exciting new evidence for microbial superorganisms on land and in the deep sea. Subsequently we discuss almost all of the known human civilizations within the framework of this theory. We also consider the Richardson theory of arms races and show that Richardson's equations are identical to those of our energetic/thermodynamic model of civilization dynamics. With a suitable choice of parameters the arms race theory has cyclic solutions (as well as the exponential solutions studied by Richardson) that describe the dynamics of armaments growth in the United States - Russia confrontations from 1981 - 2010. The book also describes a program for the exploration and the colonization of the Solar System and a new means of travel to the stars and galaxies with a view towards the development of a space civilization. The probable effects on contemporary human civilizations of meeting an alien civilization are also described in detail. Because of a close analogy with Newtonian dynamics, and realizing that chance plays a major role in human history, the book also develops a probabilistic theory of civilization dynamics. The cyclic theory of civilizations is also generalized to a civilization theory for populations with three interconnected population segments: a dominant minority/leadership, followers, and external immigrants. This generalized theory leads to the cyclic theory of civilizations under reasonable conditions.

Help students get the most out of studying medieval history with this comprehensive and practical research guide to topics and resources. Term Paper Resource Guide to Medieval History brings key historic events and individuals alive to enrich and stimulate students in challenging and enjoyable ways. Students from high school to college will be able to get a jump start on assignments with the hundreds of term paper projects and research information offered here. The book transforms and elevates the research experience and will prove an invaluable resource for motivating and educating students. Each event entry begins with a brief summary to pique interest and then offers original and thought-provoking term paper ideas in both standard and alternative formats that often incorporate the latest in electronic media, such as the iPod and iMovie. The best primary and secondary sources for further research are annotated, followed by vetted, stable website suggestions and multimedia resources, usually films, for further viewing and listening.

Once recalled only for The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) and Christianity and History (1949), Sir Herbert Butterfield's contribution to western culture has undergone an astonishing revaluation over the past twenty years. What has been left out of this reappraisal is the man himself. Yet the force of Butterfield's writings is weakened without some knowledge of the man behind them: his temperament, contexts and personal torments. Previous authors have been unable to supply a rounded portrait for lack of available material, particularly a dearth of sources for the crucial period before the outbreak of war in 1939. Michael Bentley's original, startling 2011 biography draws on sources never seen before. They enable him to present a new Butterfield, one deeply troubled by self-doubt, driven by an urgent sexuality and plagued by an unending tension between history, science and God in a mind as hard and cynical as it was loving and charitable.

This volume discusses a broad range of themes and methodological issues around images, photography and film. It is about sharing a fascination about the visual history of education and how images became the most influential (circulating) media within the field of education on local, regional, national and international levels. Within this volume images are primarily analyzed as presenters, mediators, and means of observation. Images are seen as mobile reproducible media which play an active role within the public and educational sphere. They are means of observation and storytelling, they shape identities by presenting models of how we should act in and perceive the world, they circulate though different contexts and media, all of which impacts their meanings.

Elie Wiesel: Humanist Messenger for Peace is part biography and part moral history of the intellectual and spiritual journey of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, human rights activist, author, university professor, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. In this concise text, Alan L. Berger portrays Wiesel's transformation from a pre-Holocaust, deeply God-fearing youth to a survivor of the Shoah who was left with questions for both God and man. An advisor to American presidents of both political parties, his nearly 60 books voiced an activism on behalf of oppressed people everywhere. The book illuminates Wiesel's contributions in the areas of religion, human rights, literature, and Jewish thought to show the impact that he has had on American life. Supported by primary documents about and from Wiesel, the volume gives students a gateway to explore Wiesel's incredible life. This book will make a great addition to courses on American religious or intellectual thought.