How Materials can be Used to Make History

09/02/13 • 23 min

The cultural ‘turn’ of the 1990s remains one of the most powerful influences in modern history writing. Cultural historians often emphasise everyday life within historical societies and rely on methodologies borrowed from anthropology.

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The Telling of Civil Rights

The history of civil rights in the US has been dominated by debates on the role of Martin Luther King. Some historians have argued for a longer history of civil rights extending from well before King’s speech. Such a history incorporates, for example, the work of the union movement amongst black workers in the 1940s North and South.

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The Importance of Women's History

Women’s history closely aligns with cultural and social history in its inclusive approach. It emerged alongside the cultural turn in the 1990s as key-defining category of historical inquiry. Women’s history often analyses modes of private vs. public activity amongst women and the ways in which women negotiated gendered assumptions within the historical circles.