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History Beyond the Text

A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources

Edited by Sarah Barber, Corinna Peniston-Bird

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About the Book

Over the past few years the question of 'what is a historical source' has become an increasingly prominent concern. In History Beyond the Text, Sarah Barber and Corinna Peniston-Bird open up the discussion on sources beyond the 'traditional' ones.

Across ten chapters different historians look at a variety of alternative sources: visual - fine art, cartoons, photography, film and television; aural - music and oral histories; and physical - ephemera, architecture, and landscape, as well as virtual space. While the sources discussed are 'interdisciplinary', each contributor examines how the source can be approached from an historical perspective. Each chapter introduces the reader to the source, suggests the methodological and theoretical questions that historians should keep in mind when using it, and provides empirical examples of approaches to the source. Pulling these disparate sources together, the introduction discusses the nature of historical sources and those factors which are unique to, or shared by, the sources covered throughout the book.

Taking examples of sources from around the globe, this is the ideal companion for every student of history who wants to engage with a variety of sources.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Fine Art: The Creative Image 2. The Cartoon: The Image as Critique 3. The Photograph: The Still Image 4. Film and Television: The Moving Image 5. Music: The Creative Sound 6. Oral Testimony: The Sound of Memory 7. The Internet: Virtual Space 8. Landscape: The Configured Space 9. Architecture: The Built Object 10. Material Culture: The Object

About the Author(s)

Sarah Barber is Senior Lecturer in the History Department at Lancaster University. Her publications include Regicide and Republicanism: Politics and Ethics in the English Revolution (1998) and A Revolutionary Rogue: Henry Marten and the English Republic (2000). Corinna Peniston-Bird is also Senior Lecturer in the History Department at Lancaster University. Her publications include A Soldier and a Woman: Women in the Military (2000) and Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (2007).