Fashioning history : current practices and principles / Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berkhofer, Robert F.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History--Methodology.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 270 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

Historians in the early twenty-first century must reconcile long-standing approaches to evidence and narrative with the challenges posed by postmodern criticism, the explosion of historical sources and interpretations on the Internet, and the popularity of histories provided in movies and on television. Fashioning History is the first book to develop and apply the same methods of source analysis and principles of synthesis to the chief forms historical representations take in the early twenty-first century: to moving images and Web sites as well as books and articles, to museum exhibitions and historical sites as well as classrooms and archives, to memory and heritage as well as conventional histories. The result is an illuminating assessment of the discipline, indispensable to those who wish to understand the ever-changing landscape of the historical profession.

Contents:

Part I Construing the Past as History: Processes and Presuppositions

1 Historical Methods: From Evidence to Facts 3

2 Historical Synthesis: From Statements to Histories 49

Part II Comparing Histories: Forms, Functions, Factuality, and the Bigger Picture

3 Texts as Archives and Histories 93

4 Things in and as Exhibits, Museums, and Historic Sites 133

5 Films as Historical Representations and Resources 175

Afterword: The History Effect and Representations of the Past 215.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [219]-257) and index.

ISBN:

023060868X

9780230608689

OCLC:

225534882

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description