Sarah Barber - History Beyond the Text : A Students Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources

Historians are increasingly looking beyond the traditional, and turning to visual, oral, aural, and virtual sources to inform their work. The challenges these sources pose require new skills of interpretation and require historians to consider alternative theoretical and practical approaches.

In order to help historians successfully move beyond traditional text, Barber and Peniston-Bird bring together chapters from historical specialists in the fields of fine art, photography, film, oral history, architecture, virtual sources, music, cartoons, landscape and material culture to explain why, when and how these less traditional sources can be used. Each chapter introduces the reader to the source, suggests the methodological and theoretical questions historians should keep in mind when using it, and provides case studies to illustrate best practice in analysis and interpretation. Pulling these disparate sources together, the introduction discusses the nature of historical sources and those factors which are unique to, and shared by, the sources covered throughout the book.

Taking examples from around the globe, this collection of essays aims to inspire practitioners of history to expand their horizons, and incorporate a wide variety of primary sources in their work.

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 M. Peniston-Bird is Senior Lecturer in the History Department at Lancaster University. Her publications include A Soldier and a Woman: Women in the Military (co-edited with G.J. DeGroot, 2000) and Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (with Penny Summerfield, 2007).

Routledge guides to using historical sources is a series of books designed to introduce students to different sources and illustrate how they are used by historians. Each volume explores one type of primary source from a broad spectrum and, using specific examples from around the globe, examines their historical context and the different approaches that can be used to interpret these sources.

Reading Primary Sources
Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann

History Beyond the Text
Sarah Barber and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird

History and Material Culture
Karen Harvey

A student's guide to approaching alternative sources

Edited by Sarah Barber
and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird

First published 2009

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 100017

Reprinted 2010

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2009 Sarah Barber and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird for selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors

Typeset in Times New Roman by
Keystroke, 28 High Street, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
History beyond the text: a student's guide to approaching alternative
sources/edited by Sarah Barber and Corinna Peniston-Bird.
p. cm. (Routledge guides to using historical sources)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. History-Sources. 2. History-Research. I. Barber, Sarah.
II. Peniston-Bird, C. M.
D5.H556 2008
907.2dc22 2008023473

ISBN10: 0-415-42961-7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-42962-5 (pbk)

ISBN13: 9780415429610 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-42962-7 (pbk)

To Lee and Karl in this generation, and Amelie in the next

Barber, Sarah Co-editor of this volume and co-tutor of the Lancaster University Masters' course, 'History beyond the Text', is the author of Regicide and Republicanism: Politics and Ethics in the English Revolution (1998) and A Revolutionary Rogue: Henry Marten and the English Republic (2000), and co-editor of Conquest and Union ; currently working on a monograph on English Folk, incorporating many of the fields of study outlined in this volume.

Blenkinsop, Lisa Lisa Blenkinsop completed her Ph.D. at Lancaster University in 2007 on 'Writing Histories: Narratives of Integration and Poles in Great Britain since the Second World War', out of which her current publications are emerging. She is currently an International Officer at the University of East Anglia.

Hood, Adrienne D. Adrienne Hood received her Ph.D. in early American history from the University of California in San Diego in 1988. In 1984 she began working as a curator in the Textile Department at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. In 1994, she moved to the University of Toronto, where she teaches early American history and Material Culture. She publishes in all areas of her interest: textile history, material culture, and museums. Her book, The Weaver's Craft: Cloth, Commerce and Industry, was published in 2003, and she is presently working on a book about Canadian hand weaving.

Long, Christopher Christopher Long is an associate professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. His interests centre on modern architectural history, with a particular emphasis on Central Europe between 1890 and 1940. Trained in history rather than architecture, his approach borrows from cultural and intellectual history, as well as political and economic history. He is the author of Josef Frank: Life and Work (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and Paul T. Frankl and Modern American Design (Yale University Press, 2007).

Palmeri, Frank Frank Palmeri is the author of Satire in Narrative (1990) and Satire, History, Novel: Narrative Forms, 1665-1815 (2004), and the editor of Humans and Other Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (2006). He has published essays on Giandomenico Tiepolo, Gibbon and paintings of ruins, and George Cruikshank and Punch.

Peniston-Bird, Corinna M . A senior lecturer in the History Department at Lancaster University, Corinna M. Peniston-Bird is the co-convenor with Sarah Barber of the course that triggered this edited collection. She combines a deep interest in the pedagogy of history and a fascination with twentieth-century European History, and has recently completed a monograph based on oral histories with Penny Summerfield entitled Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Manchester University Press, 2007), as well as multiple related journal articles.

Peretti, Burton W. Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Western Connecticut State University, Dr Peretti is the author of Lift Every Voice: The History of African American Music (2008), Nightclub City: Politics and Amusement in Manhattan (2007), Jazz in American Culture (1997), and The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America (1992).