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dunkirk

Re-using the past: history on film.

By on August 4, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Public History

In this blog Dr Rob James, senior lecturer in history, reflects on the issue of ‘truth’ in historical feature films, revealing how filmmakers have frequently used past events to comment about contemporary situations. Rob specialises in researching people’s leisure pursuits, and teaches a number of units on film and the cinema, including his second year option unit ‘The Way to the Stars: Film and cinema-going in Britain, c. 1900-c. 2000’ and the final year Special Subject strand ‘Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945’. As James Chapman has noted in his masterly book Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film, ‘a historical feature film will often have as much […]

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Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Infantry Division wade ashore on Omaha Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944

Personal Experiences of D-Day: Told through the words of the veterans by Jessica Harper and Katy Hodges

By on June 6, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus

Jessica Harper and Katy Hodges, third year history students at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on the research they conducted as part of a final year group research project. Along with fellow final year students Hannah Coulouras and Phillip Gerrish, Jessica and Katy looked into veterans’ experiences of D-Day in June 1944. As well as presenting their findings as part of the unit’s assessment, the students also gave a public presentation at Portsmouth City Museum. The final year group research unit is co-ordinated by Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural History at Portsmouth. Personal Experiences of D-Day: Told Through the Words of the […]

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leeds-armitage-retribution

Using Visual Sources: Edward Armitage’s Retribution (1858)

By on June 1, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Rozene Smith, a second year history student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on how historians can use Retribution (1858) to reflect on representations of the British Empire for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit.  The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. Studying a “Museum of Empire” unearths a reality of the British Empire as a cornucopia of peoples and cultures, and an ‘archive’ equally monumental and multifarious.[1] W. J. T. Mitchell championed the ‘pictorial turn’ and the resurgent ubiquity of images in what became an increasingly visual-oriented culture.[2] The work in question is that of Edward Armitage, student of […]

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Chadwick Table

Using Official Sources: The Chadwick Report (1843)

By on May 4, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Rozene Smith, a second year history student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on how historians can use The Chadwick Report (1843) to understand 19th century social reform for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit.  The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. The nineteenth century witnessed an obsessive fixation on empirical and factual data, culminating in a fetishisation of valuable official documents.[1] Consecutive parliamentary acts passed in this period secured centralised funding for official state record-keeping and began the process of establishing a governmentally-sanctioned Public Record Office.[2] Between 1832 and 1846, over one hundred Royal and Parliamentary commissions […]

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Using Official sources – The Merchant Ship Movement Card of SS Athenia

Using Official sources – The Merchant Ship Movement Card of SS Athenia

By on February 28, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Anna-Lena Schneider, second year history student at Portsmouth, wrote the following article on the use of merchant ship cards to shed light on the circumstances behind the sinking of merchant ships during World War One for the Introduction to Historical Research Module.  The module is coordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. Using Official sources: the merchant ship movement card of SS Athenia When thinking of official sources, one usually refers to the very basic formats of those, such as acts, identification documents, or taxation forms. However, there are less commonly used types of official sources historians can draw upon their research, such as […]

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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Using Oral Sources; Recovering the History of the Roma Holocaust

By on January 14, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Aron Fridvalszky, second year history student at Portsmouth, wrote the following article on the Hungarian Roma holocaust for the Introduction to Historical Research Module.  The module is coordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. Using Oral Sources: Recovering the history of the Hungarian Roma Holocaust In a speech in 2014, the Minister of Human Capacities of Hungary, Zoltán Balog claimed that none of the Romany people were deported from Hungary during the Holocaust [1]. Challenging this, the Hungarian Roma Press Centre published extracts from six interviews with Gipsy Holocaust survivors, citing these from a book, Porrajmos, which includes recollections of the survivors. In addition […]

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