Popular history, also called pop history, is a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistinction to professional academic or scholarly history writing which is usually more specialized and technical and thus less accessible to the general reader.
It is proposed that popular history is a "moral science" in the sense that recreates the past not only for its own sake but also to underscore how history could facilitate an ethically responsible present. [1] Some view it as history produced by authors who are better interlocutors capable of translating the language of scientificity to ordinary everyday language. [2]
Some scholars partly attributed the development of popular history to the increase of writers-turned-historians such as Benson Lossing, David Pae, and Mary Botham Howitt,[ globalize ] who wrote historical events "in good style" and, thus, more appealing to the public. [1]
Some popular historians are without academic affiliation while others are academics, or former academics, who have (according to one writer) "become somehow abstracted from the academic arena, becoming cultural commentators." [3] Many worked as journalists, perhaps after taking an initial degree in history. Popular historians may become nationally renowned or best-selling authors and may or may not serve the interests of particular political viewpoints in their roles as historians that write for a wide-ranging readership. Many authors of supposed official histories and authorized biographies would qualify as popular historians serving the interests of particular institutions or public figures.
Popular historians aim to appear on the "general lists" of general publishers, rather than the university presses that have dominated academic publishing in recent years. Increasingly, popular historians have taken to television where they are able, often accompanying a series of documentaries with a tie-in book.
Recent examples of American popular historians with academic affiliations include Daniel J. Boorstin, Stephen E. Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Pauline Maier.
Recent examples of British popular historians who are also academics include Niall Ferguson, Mary Beard, Christopher Hibbert, David Starkey, Dan Jones, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Simon Schama, and – from a previous generation – Eric Hobsbawm, Paul Johnson, E. P. Thompson, A. J. P. Taylor (a pioneer of history on television) and Christopher Hill. Podcaster and pop history author Tom Holland, while not holding any formal qualifications in the field, does retain an academic affiliation. [4] Much of Hugh Trevor-Roper's output was also directed at a popular audience. There is also Stella Tillyard and her work Aristocrats, which combined scholarly research with the popular method of presentation. [5]
Canadian academics whose work has crossed over to public consciousness are few. Examples might include Michael Bliss, Donald Creighton, Desmond Morton, J. L. Granatstein, or Margaret MacMillan. In French Canada the influence of Father Lionel Groulx in the historical thought of the twentieth century was preponderant.
American non-academics include Walter Lord, Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, David McCullough, Max Cutler, Ron Cutler, and Barbara W. Tuchman. Podcasting has become a new medium for the dissemination of popular history, in which the contributions of Americans Dan Carlin and Robert Evans are notable.
John Julius Norwich, Charles Allen, and Tariq Ali are popular British historians who have never been academics.
English-Canadian writers of popular histories include journalists Pierre Berton and Peter C. Newman, humourist Will Ferguson, folklorist and pulp fiction writer Thomas P. Kelley, and television presenter Patrick Watson. François-Xavier Garneau was the leading historian in nineteenth century French Canada from outside the academy. Polemicists in the national unity debate have also written influentially about Canadian history, notably militant Pierre Vallières and journalist Normand Lester critiquing the Canadian state and novelist Mordecai Richler critiquing Quebec nationalist historians as anti-Semitic. Notably, Canada has produced several writers who have written popular histories of specific ethnic communities, including Ken McGoogan (Scots and Irish), Myrna Kostash (Ukrainians), etc.
Feminist history refers to the re-reading of history from a woman's perspective. It is not the same as the history of feminism, which outlines the origins and evolution of the feminist movement. It also differs from women's history, which focuses on the role of women in historical events. The goal of feminist history is to explore and illuminate the female viewpoint of history through rediscovery of female writers, artists, philosophers, etc., in order to recover and demonstrate the significance of women's voices and choices in the past. Feminist History seeks to change the nature of history to include gender into all aspects of historical analysis, while also looking through a critical feminist lens. Jill Matthews states "the purpose of that change is political: to challenge the practices of the historical discipline that have belittled and oppressed women, and to create practices that allow women an autonomy and space for self-definition"
David Gaub McCullough was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.
University of Alberta Press is a publishing house and a division of the University of Alberta that engages in academic publishing.
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in the United States with a national focus. Its main building, known as Antiquarian Hall, is a U.S. National Historic Landmark in recognition of this legacy. The mission of the AAS is to collect, preserve and make available for study all printed records of what is now known as the United States of America. This includes materials from the first European settlement through the year 1876.
Public history is a broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings. Public history practice is deeply rooted in the areas of historic preservation, archival science, oral history, museum curatorship, and other related fields. The field has become increasingly professionalized in the United States and Canada since the late 1970s. Some of the most common settings for the practice of public history are museums, historic homes and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives, film and television companies, new media, and all levels of government.
An article or piece is a written work published in a print or electronic medium, for the propagation of news, research results, academic analysis or debate.
American Heritage is a magazine dedicated to covering the history of the United States for a mainstream readership. Until 2007, the magazine was published by Forbes. Since that time, Edwin S. Grosvenor has been its editor and publisher. Print publication was suspended early in 2013, but the magazine relaunched in digital format with the Summer 2017 issue after a Kickstarter campaign raised $31,203 from 587 backers. The 70th Anniversary issue of the magazine on the subject "What Makes America Great?" includes essays by such historians as Fergus Bordewich, Douglas Brinkley, Joseph Ellis, and David S. Reynolds.
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is North America's oldest society and largest organization devoted to the world of archaeology. AIA professionals have carried out archaeological fieldwork around the world and AIA has established research centers and schools in seven countries. As of 2019, the society had more than 6,100 members and more than 100 affiliated local societies in the United States and overseas. AIA members include professional archaeologists and members of the public.
George Lippard was a 19th-century American novelist, journalist, playwright, social activist, and labor organizer. He was a popular author in antebellum America.
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains offices in London, New York, Shanghai, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi and Johannesburg.
Pauline Alice Maier was a revisionist historian of the American Revolution, whose work also addressed the late colonial period and the history of the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. She was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Canadian Literature is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of criticism and review, founded in 1959 and owned by the University of British Columbia. The journal publishes articles of criticism and reviews about Canadian literature in English and French by Canadian and international scholars. It also publishes around 24 original poems a year and occasional interviews with writers. Each issue contains an extensive book reviews section. Rather than focusing on a single theoretical approach, Canadian Literature contains articles on all subjects relating to writers and writing in Canada. Each issue contains content from a range of contributors, and the journal has been described as "critically eclectic".
The portrayal of women inAmerican comic books has often been a subject of controversy since the medium's beginning. Critics have noted that both lead and supporting female characters are substantially more subjected to gender stereotypes than the characters of men.
The University of North Carolina Press, founded in 1922, is a not-for-profit university press associated with the University of North Carolina. It was the first university press founded in the southern United States. It is a member of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) and publishes both scholarly and general-interest publications, as well as academic journals, in subjects that include southern/US history, military history, political science, gender studies, religion, Latin American/Caribbean studies, sociology, food studies, and books of regional interest. It receives some financial support from the state of North Carolina and an endowment fund. Its office is located in Chapel Hill.
Joseph Ferdinand Gould was an American eccentric, also known as Professor Seagull. Often homeless, he claimed to be the author of the longest book ever written, An Oral History of the Contemporary World, also known as An Oral History of Our Time or Meo Tempore. He inspired the book Joe Gould's Secret (1965) by Joseph Mitchell, and its film adaptation (2000), and is a character in the 2009 computer game The Blackwell Convergence.
Jill Lepore is an American historian and journalist. She is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American history, law, literature, and politics.
The Society of American Historians, founded in 1939, encourages and honors literary distinction in the writing of history and biography about American topics. The approximately 300 members include professional historians, independent scholars, journalists, film and documentary makers, novelists, poets, and biographers, all of whom were selected for membership based on the literary excellence as well as the intellectual strength of their writing or presentation of American history.
Alicia Margaret Tyssen Amherst, Baroness Rockley was an English horticulturist, botanist, and author of the first scholarly account of English gardening history.
Panzer Aces is an English-language book series by the German author Franz Kurowski. Originally released in 1992 by J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, a Canadian publisher of military literature, it was licensed in 2002 by the firm to American publishers Ballantine Books and Stackpole Books. The series' books were a commercial success and enjoyed a wide readership among the American public.
Adversarial journalism refers to a kind of journalism or a journalistic role where the journalist adopts an oppositional and combative style of reporting and interviewing. The goal of adversarial journalism is to reveal supposed wrongdoings of actors under investigation. Instead of being completely impartial, adversarial journalists take sides in what they believe to be true. They deliberately combine information with commentary or opinion in their writing. In particular, adversarial journalists remain relentlessly hostile and highly skeptical regarding government, big business companies, and political events, questions, institutions and personalities. Adversarial journalism is thought to be traditional in liberal democracies where journalism is regarded as a "Fourth Estate". It is also considered an extreme form of participant journalism or advocacy journalism. It has been contrasted with public or civic journalism.
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