History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | film

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Bridging the gap between the academic and non-academic worlds III: Sharing local histories

By on February 20, 2023 in Alumni, Employability, Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus, Uncategorized

In this blog Josh Wintle, who graduated with a History degree from Portsmouth last year (well done, Josh!), discusses a project he worked on in his second year with some of his fellow History students for the module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Dr Mike Esbester. As part of their project, the students looked into how academic historians take their work ‘out of the academy’ and into the public realm. Josh and his fellow students interviewed our Dr Rob James, who researches leisure history, to find out how he has tried to engage the wider public in the history he researches. The aim of the interviews we conducted with […]

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History Film Club – having a conversation about history and film

By on April 19, 2021 in Events, Public History

Our level 5 students have taken over running the UoP history film club, which launched in January.  Below Emily, Kieran, Harry and Ben tell you about their exciting plans.  Hi there – hopefully if you’re reading this blog piece you are interested in our student-run History Film Club (and for good reason)! Four of us who are studying History have started a film club that is run through our Discord server (more on that later), for which we have so-far received positive feedback. We would like to extend our invitation to any student who is interested in attending – you don’t have to come to every screening, just when you’d […]

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International Women’s Day 2021: Katherine Johnson: Mathematician at NASA

By on March 8, 2021 in Public History

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we are delighted that UoP history graduate Ian Atkins has written this profile of pioneering NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson. For International Women’s Day I have chosen to write about Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician, most famous for her work in calculation of the trajectory for manned space orbits, and subsequent lunar expeditions.[1] Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia on the 26th August 1918. She was the youngest of four children, her mother a teacher and her father an all-purpose odd job man.[2] Katherine had always excelled at maths and was ahead of her class from an early age. Margot Lee Shetterly indicates that […]

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“There are no revolutions in well-governed countries” – British film and the Russian Revolution

By on February 1, 2021 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

In this blog, Rob James explores how the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution impacted British film production in the mid-twentieth century. Rob tells us that the chance of a film being made depicting those tumultuous events depended on how they were presented. If the film demonstrated any sympathy towards the revolutionaries, then a ban was inevitable. Rob’s research covers society’s leisure activities and how they were shaped and controlled from both within and outside the entertainment industry. His research feeds into a number of optional and specialist modules that he teaches in the second and third year. In the 1934 film Princess Charming, produced by Michael Balcon, one of […]

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Have yourself a (not quite so) very merry Christmas film

By on December 11, 2020 in Research in Focus

In this blog, UoP Senior Lecturer Rob James reflects on the changing popularity of the, now well-regarded, festive classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Rob tells us that the film’s success was not predetermined, and that it took a mixture of chance and luck, along with a well-told story of course, for the film to achieve its status as a seasonal favourite. Rob’s research covers society’s leisure activities and this feeds into a number of optional and specialist modules he teaches in the second and third year. In a recent poll featured in The Independent newspaper of the ‘Best Christmas Movies’, the 1946 Hollywood-produced film It’s a Wonderful Life came in […]

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Using Visual Sources: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

By on May 6, 2019 in Learning in Focus

Mark Cleverly, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on the 1960 ‘New Wave’ film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Mark discusses how the film reveals much about changing social attitudes in the ‘swinging sixties’. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. The proverb ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is certainly a cliché in the modern era, but it superficially highlights the value that can be found in visual sources. If a still image can muster this level of inquiry, then what of […]

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