History is an invention in the present, as much as a representation and interpretation of the past. This has opened up innovative approaches to the research and writing of history, and it is the two ideas central to this theme – that culture is historically conditioned and history culturally conditioned – that this book explores.
Both theoretical and practical in its approach, this volume explains the development of cultural history, and its impact on current teaching. Part One examines the ways in which conceptions of historical meaning have been challenged via developments in a range of disciplines (including literary and linguistic theory, history, sociology, anthropology, media and cultural studies). Part Two looks at four case studies drawn from America and Britain: the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, the music of the Beatles, the social documentary of George Orwell, and the political polemics of nineteenth-century British radical women.
Table of Content
Preface
Part One: In search of Cultural History
1. Schools, Methods, Disciplines, Influences by T.G. Ashplant and Gerry Smyth
Part Two. Case studies
2. ‘What Right Have Women To Interfere With Politics?’ Address of the Female Political Union of Birmingham to the Women of England (1838) by Helen Rogers
3. ‘A Secret Conviction that Nothing can be Changed’, or’ Abolishing a Part of Yourself’? by T. G. Ashplant
4. ‘The Wings of an Abstract Bird’ or ‘A Black Gash of Shame’?: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) by Joanna Price
5. ‘I’d Love to Turn you On’: The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (1967) by Gerry Smyth
Index
About the author
Gerry Smyth is a lecturer in cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University, teaching colonialism, post-colonialism and contemporary Irish fiction. He has published on Joyce, Arnold, Irish traditional music, and contemporary Irish cultural criticism.
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