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The first collection of essays on public history in the American West.
Bringing together the most significant papers on the interpretation of objects and collections, this volume examines how people relate to material culture and why they collect things.
The country's leading authority on use of artifactual evidence in historical research collects twenty-five classic essays and gives his overview of the field of material culture.
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In one of Common Sense’s most ringing phrases, Thomas Paine declared it "absurd" for "a continent to be perpetually governed by an island." Such powerful words, coupled with powerful ideas, helped spur the United States to independence. In The Nation's Nature, James D. Drake examines how a relatively small number of inhabitants of the Americas, huddled along North America’s east coast, came to mentally appropriate the entire continent and to think of their nation as America. Drake demonstrates how British North American colonists’ participation in scientific debates and imperial contests shaped their notions of global geography. These ideas, in turn, solidified American nationalism, spurred a revolution, and shaped the ratification of the Constitution. Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth–century studies
A Companion to Popular Culture is a landmark survey of contemporary research in popular culture studies that offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the field. Includes over two dozen essays covering the spectrum of popular culture studies from food to folklore and from TV to technology Features contributions from established and up-and-coming scholars from a range of disciplines Offers a detailed history of the study of popular culture Balances new perspectives on the politics of culture with in-depth analysis of topics at the forefront of popular culture studies
This volume brings together for the first time the most significant papers on the interpretation of objects and collections and examines how people relate to material culture and why they collect things. The first section of the book discusses the interpretation of objects, setting the philosophical and historical context of object interpretation. Papers are included which discuss objects variously as historical documents, functioning material, and as semiotic texts, as well as those which examine the politics of objects and the methodology of object study. The second section, on the interpretation of collections, looks at the study of collections in their historical and conceptual context. Many topics are covered such as the study of collecting to structure individual identity, its affect on time and space and the construction of gender. There are also papers discussing collection and ideology, collection and social action and the methodology of collection study. This unique anthology of articles and extracts will be of inestimable value to all students and professionals involved in the interpretation of objects and collections.
Historians are increasingly looking beyond the traditional, and turning to visual, oral, aural, and virtual sources to inform their work. The challenges these sources pose require new skills of interpretation and require historians to consider alternative theoretical and practical approaches. In order to help historians successfully move beyond traditional text, Sarah Barber and Corinna Peniston-Bird bring together chapters from historical specialists in the fields of fine art, photography, film, oral history, architecture, virtual sources, music, cartoons, landscape and material culture to explain why, when and how these less traditional sources can be used. Each chapter introduces the read...