History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | memory

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 […]

Continue Reading 0

How to ‘forget’ difficult pasts: slavery, memory, and the maritime frame

By on May 25, 2017 in Research in Focus

In Theresa May’s ‘Brexit speech’, on January 17th 2017, the prime minister suggested that Britain’s “history and culture is profoundly internationalist” [1]. This is certainly one way of framing Britain’s historic relationship with the rest of the world. Alternatively, you might suggest that May spelt “centuries of colonial rule, oppression, slavery and genocide” wrong. As cultural sociologist Iwona Irwin-Zarecka argues, the range of possible interpretations of historic events and themes can be limited through processes of ‘framing’ [2]. Such ‘framing’ doesn’t necessarily block out other possible interpretations, but it does act to restrict the range of meanings. The past can be ‘framed’ in certain ways, and certain interpretations and narratives […]

Continue Reading 0