The Nature of History Reader

Invitation to historians: the historiographical turn of a practicing (sport) historian

“…Phillips' presentation was revelatory and introduced me to a radical historiography that extended beyond White (e.g. Jenkins 1991Jenkins and Munslow 2004;Munslow 1997). In this historiography, I located my practice as a form of emancipatory social history that espoused freedom from constraining social structures and repressive political systems.…”

Evidence revisited: Interpreting historical materials in sport history

“…The first outlines three different sets of epistemological assumptions that operate in contemporary history as propounded by Alun Munslow (1997) and modified by Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow (2004). While regular readers of Rethinking History may be familiar with Munslow's tri-partite classification, any claims of it having penetrated mainstream social history would be an exaggeration; certainly it has received minimal attention in sport history.…”

“…Historical Models Munslow (1997) and Jenkins and Munslow (2004) identify three basic models of historical inquiry: reconstructionism, constructionism, and deconstructionism. Table 1 schematically represents the objectives and epistemological assumptions of each model.…”

Creativity and commerce: Michael Klinger and new film history

“…For a generation now, the discipline has been unsettled by the challenge of post-structuralist theories that have called into question its assumptions, protocols and conventional procedures. There is now a widespread scepticism concerning the possibility of objective knowledge about the past and an even more pronounced retreat from the construction of coherent explanatory and teleological narratives (see Attridge, Bennington andYoung 1987 andJenkins 1997). This questioning has had an impact on the more specific practice of film history in which the grand, evolutionary narratives that characterised earlier accounts have given way to local and micro histories, ones in which gaps and ruptures are foregrounded rather than smoothed over, and where the fragments of the past are understood not as transparent data or facts but problematic forms of "evidence" subject to contestation (Sobchack 2000, 301).…”