The classic way of studying history in high school and many college courses is by memorizing facts, regurgitating them, and throwing in a little analysis that was also memorized. However, history is more than just dates and facts. History is the why behind the facts and events. History is how people felt about the events, and whether they were expected or unexpected, and what the responses to those events were. And studying history is more than just textbooks. Classically, history relied on primary sources with secondary sources to describe them. In the past 100 years, the study of history has expanded, and historians began to specialize in using other forms of media as well, such as broadcasts and movies. These newer forms of media
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Sources could have an untrusted narrator, for example, if Aaron Burr had written something about Alexander Hamilton, it could be colored by their personal and political differences, and we would not be able to trust it, even though it is an authentic source. Moreover, Woodrow Wilson was widely known to hold discriminatory views on African Americans, so we would not want to necessarily take something he said in one of his textbooks as fact, because his work was influenced by his racist views. Another issue with using primary sources is that the sources only record people who can keep records. Many of the primary sources from colonial times are thus about, and by, white men. For example, in Wendy Warren’s essay The Cause of Her Grief": The Rape of a Slave in Early New England, she analyzes a single passage about the rape of a slave from a single diary entry from a man’s travels through colonial Boston.
About the [slave owner and traveler], at least, some evidence exists. Their sex, race, class, and literacy combined to ensure that some record of their lives survived their times. As for the [slaves], no written document other than the paragraph above mentions their existence (Warren …show more content…
Spielberg’s classic Saving Private Ryan is one of the best-known movies from WWII, and it is due to the emotions that it elicits. The viewer begins in one of the most iconic war movie scenes in history on the beaches of Normandy, placing the audience in the middle of rocking ships that face machine gun fire as soon as they open their doors, and the movie ends with the entire company that the audience has gotten to know being decimated in France, Ryan the only survivor (Kuklick Week 11). No textbook or primary source can show the raw emotions of a historical event to an audience as well as an excellent film can. Another movie that shows an audience a historical period is Dances with Wolves. During the movie, the audience gets to know the Native Americans and their life. When the tribe discovers the skinned buffalo rotting, the audience feels the anguish for the tribe, and grows a hatred for the white settlers. Again, the movie invokes sadness in the viewers when the soldiers shoot Two Socks. Dances with Wolves has also been praised by critics everywhere for its accurate representation of the Plains Indian culture, and the audience gets a chance to experience the authentic Lakota culture and language. Films can invoke an emotional response from an audience that other forms of media simply cannot.
Historians can reconstruct the lives and events of history with more detail than ever before by considering the
Sources could have an untrusted narrator, for example, if Aaron Burr had written something about Alexander Hamilton, it could be colored by their personal and political differences, and we would not be able to trust it, even though it is an authentic source. Moreover, Woodrow Wilson was widely known to hold discriminatory views on African Americans, so we would not want to necessarily take something he said in one of his textbooks as fact, because his work was influenced by his racist views. Another issue with using primary sources is that the sources only record people who can keep records. Many of the primary sources from colonial times are thus about, and by, white men. For example, in Wendy Warren’s essay The Cause of Her Grief": The Rape of a Slave in Early New England, she analyzes a single passage about the rape of a slave from a single diary entry from a man’s travels through colonial Boston.
About the [slave owner and traveler], at least, some evidence exists. Their sex, race, class, and literacy combined to ensure that some record of their lives survived their times. As for the [slaves], no written document other than the paragraph above mentions their existence (Warren …show more content…
Spielberg’s classic Saving Private Ryan is one of the best-known movies from WWII, and it is due to the emotions that it elicits. The viewer begins in one of the most iconic war movie scenes in history on the beaches of Normandy, placing the audience in the middle of rocking ships that face machine gun fire as soon as they open their doors, and the movie ends with the entire company that the audience has gotten to know being decimated in France, Ryan the only survivor (Kuklick Week 11). No textbook or primary source can show the raw emotions of a historical event to an audience as well as an excellent film can. Another movie that shows an audience a historical period is Dances with Wolves. During the movie, the audience gets to know the Native Americans and their life. When the tribe discovers the skinned buffalo rotting, the audience feels the anguish for the tribe, and grows a hatred for the white settlers. Again, the movie invokes sadness in the viewers when the soldiers shoot Two Socks. Dances with Wolves has also been praised by critics everywhere for its accurate representation of the Plains Indian culture, and the audience gets a chance to experience the authentic Lakota culture and language. Films can invoke an emotional response from an audience that other forms of media simply cannot.
Historians can reconstruct the lives and events of history with more detail than ever before by considering the