{"title":"Teaching Modern British Political History in a Politically Polarised and ‘Post-Truth’ Environment","authors":"Richard Jobson","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000269","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article assesses the challenges that university-level teachers of modern British political history currently face in what is often described as a ‘post-truth’ and polarised political environment. It argues that, whilst these challenges do not always present entirely new pedagogical considerations, the sociocultural and political terrain in Britain today requires careful navigation, particularly in an academic field which addresses recent historical topics that are routinely politicised and contested in contemporary discourse. Although there is a lack of scholarly literature on the topic of teaching modern British political history in a higher education setting, this article draws upon a wide array of educational studies to map out the contours of a successful pedagogical strategy that could facilitate ‘deep’ learning in the current contextual environment. To this end, it suggests that by utilising modern British political history's interdisciplinary foundations, applying teaching techniques that help students to explore topics from multiple viewpoints, devising new and stimulating interactive tasks, and capitalising on the opportunities afforded by the Internet age, learning can be enhanced and many of the more academically problematic features and characteristics of the current political climate can be counteracted.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136114610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Waiting to Die? Old Age in the Late Imperial Russian Village","authors":"Sarah Badcock","doi":"10.1017/s008044012300021x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s008044012300021x","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract What was daily life like for old people in Russian villages at the turn of the twentieth century? Elderly people feature as an integral part of Russian rural family life in literary and in scholarly accounts, and are predominantly framed as able, skilled, omniscient community members. This article suggests that constructions of old age that see the elderly retaining physical prowess and community leadership overlook the lived realities of ageing. As elderly people lost physical and mental capacity, they slipped out of view in the Russian village, desexed, unseen and unremarked. The experience of the frail elderly allows us to explore the values accorded individuals within rural communities, and the extent to which families, communities and legal structures could and did intervene in the private sphere.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"214 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135202668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decolonising Universities? Myth-Histories of the Nation and Challenges to Academic Freedom in Aotearoa New Zealand","authors":"Miranda Johnson","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000117","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Can decolonising the university create possibilities for new stories to come into being, in the wake of the devastation wrought by colonisation? In Aotearoa New Zealand a particular instance of decolonising universities is under way. This is one that highlights how engagement with decolonising approaches may end up harming academic work. In New Zealand, public universities have involved themselves in negotiating a delicate compromise between activism and the demands of the state. This compromise brings into question the robustness of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. Conjoining the activist idea of decolonising with language that refers to a distinctive form of state governance foregrounding a political relationship between the Crown (executive government) and Māori, several universities have committed themselves to a ‘Treaty partnership’ with Māori. The idea is rooted in recent interpretations of the colonial Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed in 1840. The Treaty is and has been a contested text, event and idea. When universities invoke a particular idea of the Treaty as if it is a consensus view in order to advance social objectives, they risk thwarting the role and responsibility of academics, and particularly historians, to the common good as ‘critic and conscience’ of society.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49003677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stuart Ward's Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain","authors":"S. Nasar","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000178","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Unpicking Britishness on a global stage: a review of Stuart Ward's Untied Kingdom.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43468338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unravelling Britishness","authors":"W. Webster","doi":"10.1017/s008044012300018x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s008044012300018x","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This piece follows Stuart Ward's Untied Kingdom as it traverses a collapsing British Empire and an increasingly disunited United Kingdom to tell the complex history of Britishness in retreat across the world, mainly between 1945 and the early twenty-first century. It reviews some of the shifting meanings of Britishness that Ward charts in different contexts, different territories and at different moments in this history and the dwindling resonance of Britishness almost everywhere. It reviews other main themes that thread through the book: language, migration, race, belonging and unbelonging, nationalism, violence, and the impact of imperialism and colonialism on cultures, societies and mindsets.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44487302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Paradox Postponed","authors":"Erin F. Delaney","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000191","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 A review of Stuart Ward's Untied Kingdom","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42704332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creeping up on the Roman Provincial","authors":"Benedict G. E. Wiedemann","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000166","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Around the year 1200, the court of the Roman pope produced a list of all the bishops – and hence of all the cities – in the Christian world. For the next three centuries this text was copied and updated by kings, priests, lawyers and academics across Europe. The numerous surviving manuscripts of this text – the so–called ‘Roman provincial’ – have received some attention from scholars, but the sheer number of manuscripts has meant that any attempt to catalogue and study them en masse is all but destined to fail. This article suggests a different approach: that the most interesting feature of the provincial manuscripts is their differences; the ways in which copyists changed the ecclesiastical and political geography of Europe to meet their own preferences and expectations. Political geographers and modern historians have long been aware of ‘contested cartographies’ and battles over borders on maps; by studying the Roman provincial we can apply such lenses to the medieval world too. Thirteenth-century kings were quite as aware as we are that maps and lists constitute, rather than just describe, political realities.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44220248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Archival Intimacies: Empathy and Historical Practice in 2023","authors":"S. Fox","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000099","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the use of empathy in historical research. Using evidence collected from a number of academic historians working in UK higher education institutions in 2022, this article uses empathy as a window into historians’ attitudes towards the professional self, the appearance of objectivity and their relationship to the historical subject. It explores the role of empathy in learning history, teaching history, in historical research including the selection of sources, and in the communication of historical research to different audiences. It discusses empathetic historical approaches, suggesting that these can be categorised into three distinct taxonomies: historical empathy, where the researcher engages with the historical subject using professional detachment to manage their affective response; historicised empathy, where the researcher employs deep knowledge of historical context to understand and appreciate the worldview of their historical subject; and empathy as historical approach, so person-centred (rather than system-centred) accounts of history. Finally, this article tests its hypotheses by exploring histories in which empathy is absent.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46643956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Statues, Spatial Syntax and Surrealism: ‘History’ and Heritagescapes in Public Space","authors":"Pippa Catterall","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000105","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The purpose of statues in public spaces has recently become a matter of controversy. Using a 1937 quotation from the artist Paul Nash and the surrealist leader André Breton, this paper explores the circumstances in which a statue is read as appropriately – ‘in its right mind’ in their terms – situated in public space. In doing so, it draws primarily on examples from Britain, Europe and North America during the rapid expansion in the number of statues in public space from the eighteenth century onwards. The rightmindedness of a statue is shown as primarily determined not by the subject of the statue itself, or by its reception among the public, but by ways in which public authorities and local elites authorise the use of public space. Yet these authorities’ understanding of the fit between a statue and public space can vary over time. Shifts in the political context often prompt changes to where statues are seen as appropriately located. However, picking up on Nash/Breton's phrase, to place a statue in ‘a state of surrealism’ involves more than mere relocation. This is shown to require additional disruption to a statue's artistic language and/or spatial syntax.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46049531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Celtic Nationalisms and the Global Break-up of Britain","authors":"B. Jackson","doi":"10.1017/s0080440123000142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440123000142","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This response to Stuart Ward's Untied Kingdom examines his treatment of Scottish and Welsh nationalisms. This is a crucial part of the book because it is here that Ward completes his narrative arc, which depicts the loss of empire as a fundamentally destabilising force for the UK state and its basis in a shared British identity. So how should we think about the pressure that decolonisation places on British identity within Britain? While admiring much of Ward's treatment of this question, this response suggests that he underestimates the importance of post-war social democracy as a possible alternative basis for British identity and the decay of that social democracy as a causal factor in the rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalisms.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47686429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}