History

You are looking at 91 - 100 of 212 items for :

  • Manchester Digital Textbooks x
  • Refine by access: All content x
Clear All
Abstract only
Anna Green
and
Kathleen Troup

This chapter briefly outlines understandings about the nature of memory and remembering and looks at key developments in the analysis and interpretation of oral histories and oral traditions. There are three subsets of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. What is particularly important for oral historians is the long-term memory. Increasingly oral historians began to look at the role of imagination and myth in story-telling. The chapter presents an example in which Canadian anthropologist Julie Cruikshank explored the ways in which myth continued to play a critical role in oral tradition. Development in oral history interpretive theory draws upon the ideas of poststructuralism. The chapter also presents an article, by Alistair Thomson, which explores the links between private and public memory for one Australia New Zealand Army Corps soldier.

in The houses of history
Abstract only
P.G. Maxwell-Stuart

This section presents Part I of The Malleus Maleficarum, one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches, written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris. Part I is addressed to fellow theologians, and is devoted to showing that the conspiratorial pact between workers of harmful magic and evil spirits is no fantasy but a present reality, and that the cause of the increasing numbers of witches lies in the sexual relations between women and evil spirits. It is thus an extended essay in demonology rather than a handbook.

in The Malleus Maleficarum
Abstract only
P.G. Maxwell-Stuart

This section presents Part II of The Malleus Maleficarum, one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches, written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris. Part II is intended for preachers and certainly contains a large number of anecdotes and instances which they could use in their sermons, but it is far from being a mere collection of useful stories. Its constant thrust not only repeats the messages of Part I, but also makes clear an important step in Institoris’s general argument – that the many popular beliefs and practices there presented, in one form or another, show that one cannot distinguish between a practitioner of magic of whatever kind she or he might be and a heretical devotee of Satan.

in The Malleus Maleficarum
Abstract only
P.G. Maxwell-Stuart

This section presents Part IIII of The Malleus Maleficarum, one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches, written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris. Part III is indeed more like a manual. Addressed to judges both ecclesiastical and secular, it covers a large number of technical points anent the arrest, examination, and sentencing of workers of harmful magic, offering examples of the appropriate formulae to be used in whatever circumstance the examining and sentencing judge might fi nd himself. This part could, in fact, almost be detached from the rest of the treatise without affecting the other two.

in The Malleus Maleficarum
Kevern Verney

The preoccupation with Martin Luther King in early studies on the post-war Civil Rights Movement can be explained by a number of factors. When eschewing a biographical approach, early historians of the Civil Rights Movement typically sought to achieve insights into their subject through traditional political and institutional studies. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s raised difficult ethical issues for religious leaders of all faiths, but the moral challenge was perhaps most painful of all for southern Jewish communities. The relationship between black civil rights and US foreign policy was another little-explored area that attracted the attention of scholars in the 1990s. Members of a long persecuted minority it was easy for Jews in the region to empathize with the experiences of African Americans. At the same time active support for the civil rights campaign carried the risk of provoking anti-Semitic violence and retaliation by segregationist groups.

in The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America
Anna Green
and
Kathleen Troup

This chapter looks at the work and perspectives of historians in the field of postcolonial history. Colonialism sanctioned the spread of Europeans throughout the world on both economic and cultural grounds. Postcolonial perspectives extend far beyond the white settler states to include the histories of cultures and societies that have experienced European colonial domination in other parts of the world. The chapter provides a discussion on the influential 'subaltern studies' historians, Ranajit Guha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Vinay Lal of India. It presents an essay by Henrietta Whiteman, whose research has examined the 'forced assimilation' of the Cheyenne-Arapaho through the system of education. In the essay Whiteman included both an emic and etic perspective in her historical interpretation. She concluded that the 'Cheyenne sense of history is one of power, majesty, mystery, and awe'.

in The houses of history
Anna Green
and
Kathleen Troup

One of the most controversial areas of historiography has been the use of psychoanalysis for understanding historical personalities, groups, or trends. This chapter focuses on the use of psychoanalysis in history. Psychoanalytic theory was developed by Sigmund Freud in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Freud's theory has sometimes been seen as deterministic, in that he saw an adult as a product of a small group of people, the family, who interpreted the nature of society for her or him. Erik Erikson's theory of ego psychology, developed in the United States, suggested fruitful amalgamations of history and psychoanalysis. According to Peter Loewenberg, ego psychology and character analysis are particularly important and welcome to historians because they are based on the evidence of adult behaviour. Psychoanalytic approaches can explain more than the irrational in history. Many historians are committed to explanations based on individual or group self-interest.

in The houses of history
Abstract only
Anna Green
and
Kathleen Troup

This chapter explores the contemporary uses of history in the public sphere. It focuses on collective relationships with the past. The chapter briefly outlines what is included under the rubric of public history and heritage. It also explores how the concepts of 'imagined community', 'collective memory', 'historical consciousness' and 'performativity' help us understand popular engagement with the past. Public history is important because it fulfils the responsibility of historians to engage society in understanding the past. The chapter presents two case studies to demonstrate the connections in public history between imagined national communities, the processes of collective memory, and historical consciousness. The first case study is Yael Zerubavel's exploration of Israeli 'collective memory', described by Sander Gilman as 'the story of an "imagined community" writ large. The second case study is Annie Coombes' comparison of two museums in South Africa: Robben Island Museum and the District Six Museum in Capetown.

in The houses of history
Anna Green
and
Kathleen Troup

The term 'quantitative history' covers a range of methodologies and theoretical bases, linked by their reliance on numerical data. Almost all historical writing involves quantification, however, whether implicit or explicit. Less methodologically controversial than the new economic history is the use of data to produce historical series, that is, serial history. The French Annales historians in particular used serial history to throw light on cultural as well as economic and demographic phenomena. This chapter discusses historical demography which gives access to a much greater proportion of historical societies than does the analysis of most historical documents. From a structuralist point of view, demography has been linked with social structures and political stability in primarily agrarian societies to consider medium term secular cycles. Simultaneously, historians are considering the theoretical and methodological impacts of the digital age on history research and writing.

in The houses of history
Anna Green
and
Kathleen Troup

Narrative is central to the explanation of change over time, one of the most important dimensions of historical research and writing, and is also the principal means by which historians seek to achieve empirical 'coherence' or logical consistency. This chapter identifies the key questions posed by historians and philosophers of history concerning the narrativization of the past, with a particular focus upon a critical intervention made by Hayden White that continues to resonate in scholarly debates. There have been many criticisms of the narrative form as a means of representing the past. First of all narratives focus upon human action and conduct and may overplay human agency. Secondly, because events happen in sequence does not necessarily indicate cause and effect. The chapter presents an essay by Hayden White for readers to consider the extent to which he suggested that 'the discourse of the historian' and fictional writing share common features.

in The houses of history