Histories on Screen The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television

by Edwards, Sam; Sayer, Faye; Dolski, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781474217033
• ISBN10: 1474217036
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-03-09
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Sam Edwards is Lecturer in American History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He has published essays discussing various aspects of American war commemoration and he is the co-editor, along with Michael Dolski and John Buckley, of D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration (2014).

Michael Dolski is a historian with the Joint Prisoner of War-Missing in Action Accounting Command's Central Identification Laboratory in the USA. Together with Sam Edwards and John Buckley, he is editor of D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration (2014).

Faye Sayer is Senior Lecturer in Public History and Community Archaeology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Part I - Thinking about Film
1. Introduction - Sam Edwards (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
2. The Moving Image as Primary Source: Author, Text and Context - Michael Dolski (JPAC, USA)
3. The Moving Image as Secondary Source: Truth, Authenticity and Narrative - Faye Sayer (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
4. The Moving Image as Memory: Past and Present on Screen - Sam Edwards (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
Part II - Using Film: Case Studies
a. The Lens of History: Race, Class and Gender on Film
5. 'The Way We Are': Class and Britishness on Film - Marcus Morris (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
6. Gender, Propaganda and World War II in British Cinema - Corinna Penniston-Bird (University of Lancaster, UK)
7. 'We Can Be Heroes': Spider-Man, September 11th and American National Identity - Michael Goodrum (University of Essex, UK)
8. Screening Multicultural Britain: Blair, Britishness and Bend it Like Beckham - Sarah Post (University of Lancaster, UK)
9. The Empire at the Movies: India in Newsreels, c. 1911-1947 - Tilman Frasch (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
b. Reel Life and Real Life: Narrating the Past
10. Presenting the Past: On Television History as Drama and Documentary - Pete Yeandle (University of Manchester, UK)
11. Truth and the Tudors: Filming and Interpreting the Early Modern Era - Jonathan Spangler (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
12. The Sound of History: Hollywood Musicals Make History - Nick Gebhardt (Birmingham City University, UK)
13. Mammy, Mandingo, Django and Solomon: A Century of American Slavery in Cinema from The Birth of A Nation to 12 Years A Slave - Lydia Plath (Canterbury Christchurch University, UK)
c. Remembering and Revisiting: War, Image and Memory
14. 'We Will Remember Them?' Film, the First World War and British Memory - Sam Edwards (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
15. Auschwitz on Film: Documenting and Dramatizing the Liberation - Isabel Wollaston (University of Birmingham, UK)
16. D-Day and the Great Crusade: The Image and Idea of the Normandy Landings - Michael Dolski (JPAC, USA)
17. Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index