Engaging the past : Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge / Alison Landsberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Landsberg, Alison, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Documentary-style television programs.

Historical films--History and criticism.

Historical films.

Historical television programs.

Motion pictures and history.

Television and history.0.

Local Subjects:

Television and history.0.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (228 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Reading films, television dramas, reality shows, and virtual exhibits, among other popular texts, Engaging the Past examines the making and meaning of history for everyday viewers. Contemporary media can encourage complex interactions with the past that have far-reaching consequences for history and politics. Viewers experience these representations personally, cognitively, and bodily, but, as this book reveals, not just by identifying with the characters portrayed. Some of the works considered in this volume include the films Hotel Rwanda (2004), Good Night and Good Luck (2005), and Milk (2008); the television dramas Deadwood, Mad Men, and Rome; the reality shows Frontier House, Colonial House, and Texas Ranch House; and The Secret Annex Online, accessed through the Anne Frank House website, and the Kristallnacht exhibit, accessed through the Unites States Holocaust Museum website. These mass cultural texts cultivate what Alison Landsberg calls an "affective engagement" with the past, tying the viewer to an event or person and fostering a sense of intimacy that does more than transport the viewer back in time. Affect, she suggests, can also work to disorient the viewer, forcibly pushing him or her out of the narrative and back into his or her own body. By analyzing these specific popular history formats, Landsberg shows the unique way they provoke historical thinking and produce historical knowledge, prompting a reconsideration of what constitutes history and an understanding of how history works in the contemporary mediated public sphere.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. THEORIZING AFFECTIVE ENGAGEMENT I N THE HISTORICAL FILM

2. WAKING THE PAST THE HISTORICALLY CONSCIOUS TELEVISION DRAMA

3. ENCOUNTERING CONTRADICTION REALITY H I STORY TV

4. DIGITAL TRANSLATIONS OF THE PAST VIRTUAL HISTORY EXHIBITS

CONCLUSION

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Pilot project,eBook available to selected US libraries only

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780231539463

0231539460

9780231165754

0231165757

OCLC:

908305660