Bloomsbury Research Skills for History – Serie

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.

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. In addition to this, the book posits a theoretical framework that justifies the use of these items as historical sources and explains how they can be used to further understand the past.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 the Tudor religious propaganda painting Edward VI and the Pope, the 1954 John Ford Western The Searchers 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.

How, as historians, should we ‘read’ a film? Histories on Screen answers this and other questions in a crucial volume for any history student keen to master source use.The book begins with a theoretical ‘Thinking about Film’ section that explores the ways in which films can be analyzed and interrogated as either primary sources, secondary sources or indeed as both. The much larger ‘Using Film’ segment of the book then offers engaging case studies which put this theory into practice. Topics including gender, class, race, war, propaganda, national identity and memory all receive good coverage in what is an eclectic multi-contributor volume. Documentaries, films and television from Britain and the United States are examined and there is a jargon-free emphasis on the skills and methods needed to analyze films in historical study featuring prominently throughout the text.Histories on Screen is a vital resource for all history students as it enables them to understand film as a source and empowers them with the analytical tools needed to use that knowledge in their own work.