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de Groot, Jerome. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. London, New York: Routledge, 2008. 
Added by: joachim (8/5/14, 6:35 PM)   
Resource type: Book
Language: en: English
ID no. (ISBN etc.): 978-0-415-39946-3
BibTeX citation key: deGroot2008
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 Categories: General
Keywords: "From Hell", "Maus", Campbell. Eddie, History comics, Moore. Alan, Spiegelman. Art, United Kingdom, USA
Creators: de Groot
Publisher: Routledge (London, New York)		 Views: 50/907
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Abstract
Non-academic history – ‘public history’ – is a complex, dynamic entity which impacts on the popular understanding of the past at all levels.
In Consuming History, Jerome de Groot examines how society consumes history and how a reading of this consumption can help us understand popular culture and issues of representation. This book analyzes a wide range of cultural entities – from computer games to daytime television, from blockbuster fictional narratives such as Da Vinci Code to DNA genealogical tools – to analyze how history works in contemporary popular culture.
Jerome de Groot probes how museums have responded to the heritage debate and the way in which new technologies have brought about a shift in access to history, from online game playing to internet genealogy. He discusses the often conflicted relationship between ‘public’ and academic history, and raises important questions about the theory and practice of history as a discipline.
Whilst mainly focussing on the UK, the book also compares the experiences of the USA, France and Germany. Consuming History is an important and engaging analysis of the social consumption of history and offers an essential path through the debates for readers interested in history, cultural studies and the media.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements (ix)

Introduction: history and popular culture (1)
The prizewinning past (7)
Selling historically (8)
Desiring history (10)
Historiocopia/Historioglossia (11)

Part I. The popular historian (15)

1. The public historian, the historian in public (17)
The ‘new gardening’ and the publicity historian (17)
History, historians, historiography, and celebrity: Great Britons (22)
The David Irving libel trial and aftermath ()

2. Popular history in print (31)
Narrative History (32)
Political Diaries and witness accounts (33)
Autobiography, personal memoir and biography (35)
Historical biography (38)
The past for children: Horrible Histories (39)
The status of the popular history author (42)
Popular circulation: magazines (44)
Reception and consumption: Reading Groups and reader-reviews (46)

3. The historian in popular culture (49)
‘That’s you, that is’: historian as child, adventurer, and hero (49)
The Da Vinci Code (53)

Part II. Enfranchisement, ownership and consumption: ‘Amateur’ histories (59)

4. The everyday historical: local history, metal detecting, antiques (62)
Local history (62)
Metal detecting, popular archaeology, treasure hunting (65)
History as hobby: collecting and antiquing (67)
Antiques on television: Antiques Roadshow, Flog It!, Bargain Hunt (68)

5. Genealogy: leisure, politics, science (73)
‘I’m getting more and more Jewish as this goes on’: self-identity and celebrity revelation (77)
Roots, identity genealogy and America (84)
Science: genetic genealogy and daytime detection (86)

6. Digital History: archives, information architecture, encyclopaedias, community websites and search engines (90)
New sources, new tools, new archives (90)
Networked interfaces with information: search engines, Wikipedia (93)
Hacking history: Google Earth (98)
Open source code and community websites (99)

Part III. Performing and playing history (103)

7. Historical re-enactment (105)
Combat re-enactment: NARES and the Sealed Knot (105)
Re-enactment and place as historical evidence: documentary (109)
Living theatre: museums, live and Living History (116)
Getting medievalish: anachronism, faires and banquets (119)

8. Recycling culture and re-enactment/ cultural re-enactment (124)
Music, performance, and remakes (124)
The first time as atonement, the second time as art: Lifeline and Jeremy Deller (127)
The ‘extreme historian’: reinhabiting the past (129)

9. History Games (133)
First person shoot ‘em up history (133)
Role playing and history as identity (139)
Civilization and disc contents: strategy games (141)
Wargames and scale models (144)

Part IV. History on television (147)

10. Contemporary historical documentary (149)
Documentary as form: self-consciousness and diversion (149)
‘Neither wholly fictional nor wholly factual’: History on television (150)
‘Contemporary, lively and egalitarian’: Schama and Starkey (154)
History on international television (160)

11. Reality History (163)
Empathy, authenticity and identity (163)
Reality TV (165)
Historical difference and ideology (172)
Authenticity and the historical revelation of self (176)

Part V. The ‘historical’ as cultural genre (181)

12. Historical television: classic serial, costume drama and comedy (184)
Adaptation and costume drama (185)
Queering the genre: Tipping the Velvet and The Line of Beauty (192)
Boy’s own authentic drama: Sharpe and Hornblower (196)
Innovation and obscenity: Rome and Deadwood (199)
‘Good Moaning’: comedy and time-travel (201)

13. Historical film (208)
National cinema, international audiences and historical film (208)
The heritage debate and British film (211)
History, complexity and horror: Atonement and The Wind the Shakes the Barley (214)

14. Imagined histories: novels, plays and comics (217)
‘A bodice-ripper with a bibliography’: historical novels (217)
Graphic novels and hybrid genres (225)
Historical Stage Drama (228)

Part VI. Artefact and interpretation (233)

13. Museums and physical encounters with the past (236)
Museums and government policy (236)
Digitisation and economics (240)

Conclusions: nostalgia isn’t what it used to be (248)

Notes (258)
Index (287)


Added by: joachim  Last edited by: joachim
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