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Since 1970: Histories of Contemporary America
Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History That Talks Back
Recent history—the very phrase seems like an oxymoron. Yet historians have been writing accounts of the recent past since printed history acquired a modern audience, and in the last several years interest in recent topics has grown exponentially. With subjects as diverse as Walmart and disco, and personalities as disparate as Chavez and Schlafly, books about the history of our own time have become arguably the most exciting and talked-about part of the discipline.
Despite this rich tradition and growing popularity, historians have engaged in little discussion about the specific methodological, political, and ethical issues related to writing about the recent past. The twelve essays in this collection explore the challenges of writing histories of recent events where visibility is inherently imperfect, hindsight and perspective are lacking, and historiography is underdeveloped.
Those who write about events that have taken place since 1970 encounter exciting challenges that are both familiar and foreign to scholars of a more distant past, including suspicions that their research is not historical enough, negotiation with living witnesses who have a very strong stake in their own representation, and the task of working with new electronic sources. Contributors to this collection consider a wide range of these challenges. They question how sources like television and video games can be better utilized in historical research, explore the role and regulation of doing oral histories, consider the ethics of writing about living subjects, discuss how historians can best navigate questions of privacy and copyright law, and imagine the possibilities that new technologies offer for creating transnational and translingual research opportunities. Doing Recent History offers guidance and insight to any researcher considering tackling the not-so-distant past.
Despite this rich tradition and growing popularity, historians have engaged in little discussion about the specific methodological, political, and ethical issues related to writing about the recent past. The twelve essays in this collection explore the challenges of writing histories of recent events where visibility is inherently imperfect, hindsight and perspective are lacking, and historiography is underdeveloped.
Those who write about events that have taken place since 1970 encounter exciting challenges that are both familiar and foreign to scholars of a more distant past, including suspicions that their research is not historical enough, negotiation with living witnesses who have a very strong stake in their own representation, and the task of working with new electronic sources. Contributors to this collection consider a wide range of these challenges. They question how sources like television and video games can be better utilized in historical research, explore the role and regulation of doing oral histories, consider the ethics of writing about living subjects, discuss how historians can best navigate questions of privacy and copyright law, and imagine the possibilities that new technologies offer for creating transnational and translingual research opportunities. Doing Recent History offers guidance and insight to any researcher considering tackling the not-so-distant past.
- GenresHistoryWritingNonfiction
296 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 15, 2019
Most people writing recent history will benefit from reading at least one of these essays; few will benefit from reading most of them. This is a book to be sampled by historians (and student historians) who are doing oral history, who are concerned about archival access, or who are incorporating in their work unusual primary sources, such as TV news and video games. Simply considering the challenges of writing about the last forty years or so would be a worthwhile endeavor for most students of history.
Of course, the writing varies, but overall the prose is better than most collections of academic essays, and they should be comprehensible to a majority of upper-level undergraduates. I could wish that historians of the contemporary world wouldn't lean so reflexively left, but we tiny few on the right have learned to practice intellectual triangulation.
Of course, the writing varies, but overall the prose is better than most collections of academic essays, and they should be comprehensible to a majority of upper-level undergraduates. I could wish that historians of the contemporary world wouldn't lean so reflexively left, but we tiny few on the right have learned to practice intellectual triangulation.
August 2, 2024
Helpful, especially for those historians, like me, who are straying into recent decades after a career spent studying the long-dead.
June 2, 2017
Fascinating book that covers a terrain sorely lacking scholarship. For those of us who are looking at studying, writing, and /or discussing recent history and the challenges the field presents, this book is a must have. Set up as a collection of first hand narratives from historians who have been confronted within their own work with question of copyright, ownership, privacy, race, sex, radicalism, and the like, the essays offer a unique perspective that was immensely helpful when I was designing my first research project that involved an archive at the New Public Library. Dealing with "history talks back" is no easy feat, but with this book I felt like I was given a pathway to avoid some of the minefields that inevitably line the road.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews