scholarly journals In Visioning the City: Urban History Techniques Through Historical Photographs

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
David Mattison
Keyword(s):  
Urban History ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
External Evidence ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
Historical Photographs ◽  
The City

The past is always present in photographs. Unique visual statements and readily reproducible photographs assist in reconstructing the past through the transmission of information by sight. One of the more important, yet often neglected, areas of scholarship is the documentary photograph taken for or representing a certain place or event in history. Provided its context and accuracy are determined and verified through external evidence, the photograph is primary source material whose judicious use by historians can relay information not available through other kinds of records.

Art and archives

1978 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Whalley ◽  
Clive Wainwright ◽  
Sarah Fox-Rtt
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
National Register ◽  
Siegfried Sassoon ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Kind ◽  
Victoria And Albert Museum ◽  
Active Policy

The Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum has always collected primary source material. This consists of artists’ letters, diaries, sitters’ books and various personal papers. Or it may be material of a more general kind: inventories, bills, unpublished articles, recipes for paints and varnishes and similar items of use to the Museum departments or to other readers. Occasionally in the past we have been offered material relating to a firm, a person, or a society, which consisted of a mixture of printed matter, photographs, original drawings, manuscript letters etc., which, when received in the Museum, would be divided among the relevant departments — the Library and the Department of Prints and Drawings in particular. The Library continues to acquire manuscript material of the kind mentioned above, and indeed in the last two years has pursued an active policy in this field. As a result we have acquired such varied items as the wardrobe accounts of the Empress Josephine for 1809 (2 large boxes of them), a 16th century herald’s sketchbook, an unpublished history of jade, and a letter from Sir William Nicholson to Siegfried Sassoon agreeing to illustrate ‘Memoirs of a fox-hunting man’. A list of the English accessions is published annually, and all acquisitions are notified to the National Register of Archives. Most of the items were acquired by purchase (e.g. from booksellers’ lists or auction sales), but there have also been some welcome donations.

Art and Society in England and France in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Two Paintings before the Public

1972 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 119-139
Author(s):  
Alan Bowness
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The State ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Art And Society ◽  
The Moment ◽  
State Of Art

The primary source material for the art historian is of course the work of art, and this in itself places him in a fortunate position because the permanent relevance of the work of art is, I take it, self-evident. For the art historian, the work of art is an historical fact, pre-selected for generally accepted aesthetic reasons. But the work of art has no absolute meaning: it does not exist in a vacuum. It has both what we might call a history and a geography—the history being that record of interpretation and evaluation which accrues to the work of art from the moment of its creation down to the present day; and the geography being the particular artistic and social context of its original creation. The history can at times be very misleading: it is obvious that each generation is going to interpret the past as it wishes, and no judgment can be objective. So it is the geography that is more important, and this is extremely difficult to define. But if we are to understand the work of art, we need to enquire into the circumstances of its creation: we must ask, what did this painting or sculpture or building signify when it first appeared? Only from such specific investigations can one proceed to general propositions about the state of art at any particular moment, and perhaps also about the state of society which produced the art.

Bombay Before Mumbai

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
The City

‘City of Gold’, ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’, ‘Maximum City’: no Indian metropolis has captivated the public imagination quite like Mumbai. The past decade has seen an explosion of historical writing on the city that was once Bombay. This book, featuring new essays by its finest historians, presents a rich sample of Bombay’s palimpsestic pasts. It considers the making of urban communities and spaces, the workings of power and the nationalist makeover of the colonial city. In addressing these themes, the contributors to this volume engage critically with the scholarship of a distinguished historian of this frenetic metropolis. For over five decades, Jim Masselos has brought to life with skill and empathy Bombay’s hidden histories. His books and essays have traversed an extraordinarily diverse range of subjects, from the actions of the city’s elites to the struggles of its most humble denizens. His pioneering research has opened up new perspectives and inspired those who have followed in his wake. Bombay Before Mumbai is a fitting tribute to Masselos’ enduring contribution to South Asian urban history

After Nationalism? Urban History and East European History

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 774-778
Author(s):  
Chad Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Urban History ◽  
European History ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Final Part ◽  
East European ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The City

Urban history in our field has taken many different forms in the past few decades. Many such works, no doubt, have drawn great inspiration from scholars outside our area specialization. Many, however, have looked within our area specialization for inspiration, thus giving urban histories of our region several peculiar characteristics. The first part of this article discusses how urban historians have provided new perspectives on a topic long dear to Eastern Europeanist hearts—nationalism. Here the article looks at the ways in which Gary Cohen’s Politics of Ethnic Survival has influenced how historians have studied nationalism and the city. The second part will briefly survey other forms of urban history that have predominated within the field, many of which recall the questions and approaches first found in Carl Schorske’s Fin-de-siècle Vienna. The final part concludes with some thoughts about what the rise of urban history among Eastern Europeanists might mean for the future our field.

scholarly journals URBAN HISTORY IN 4 DIMENSIONS – SUPPORTING RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

2017 ◽  
Vol XLII-2/W5 ◽  
pp. 525-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Münster ◽  
K. Friedrichs ◽  
C. Kröber ◽  
J. Bruschke ◽  
F. Henze ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban History ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Prototype Model ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
New Research ◽  
Historical Photographs ◽  
The City

The new research group on the four-dimensional research and communication of urban history (Urban History 4D) aims to investigate and develop methods and technologies to access extensive repositories of historical media and their contextual information in a spatial model, with an additional temporal component. This will make content accessible to different target groups, researchers and the public, via a 4D browser. A location-dependent augmented-reality representation can be used as an information base, research tool, and means of communicating historical knowledge. The data resources for this research include extensive holdings of historical photographs of Dresden, which have documented the city over the decades, and digitized map collections from the Deutsche Fotothek (German photographic collection) platform. These will lay the foundation for a prototype model which will give users a virtual experience of historic parts of Dresden.

A Scotsman in Cuba, 1811-1812

1972 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-245
Author(s):  
Raymond A. Mohl
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American History ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alexander Von Humboldt ◽  
Travel Accounts

Traditionally, historians of the Americas have found essential primary source material in the published diaries, journals, and travel accounts of European visitors and tourists. The pungent nineteenth-century commentaries of Alexis de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce are rarely omitted from general accounts of American history. The extensive writings of Alexander von Humboldt, partially scientific in nature and covering his travels during the first decade after 1800, similarly add to the perspectives of Latin American historians. When taken in conjunction with other sources, and when used carefully, the penetrating insights and strong impressions of such travelers can help reconstruct the past in a more detailed, often more colorful, way.

scholarly journals Wartime Housing and Boarding

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-116
Author(s):  
Jennifer Dunkerson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Source Material ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Shortage ◽  
Tax Assessment ◽  
The City

In this study of boarding during World War II, new primary source material is used to reveal a tendency for necessary boarding arrangements in overcrowded, industrial, urban areas. The names, occupations and marital status of boarders were included in the tax assessment rolls for the city of Hamilton in the years spanning 1939 to 1951. Based on contemporary housing studies and more recent analyses of housing and boarding in our industrial past, a correlation may be found between the existence of boarders in a specific area of Hamilton and the nationwide trends of housing shortage, family formation, and wartime production.

Shifting ground: A case study in researching an artist's collection

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-89
Author(s):  
Kerri Klumpp
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Text And Image ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Over Time

Writers, artists and academics have long used primary source material to inspire creative projects or uncover new evidence. Over time, different approaches have been taken to investigate and interpret one particular artist's collection, the Daphne Mayo Papers (UQFL119) at the Fryer Library, University of Queensland.1 Mapping the shift in research approaches, using text and image as well as more speculative modes of working, this article provides a case study into the past, present and future adaptation of the Daphne Mayo Papers as physical modes converge with digital ones.

Desire or Displacement? Working-Class Notions of Urban Belonging in Late-Nineteenth-Century Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1193-1211
Author(s):  
Philipp Reick
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

The displacement of working-class residents from center to periphery constitutes a crucial element of late-nineteenth-century urbanization. Yet urban historiography has paid little attention to how this process was perceived by those most directly affected. Analyzing primary source material from late-nineteenth-century Germany, this article argues that working-class urbanites opposed suburbanization not only because of their jobs or to remain close to places of entertainment and leisure. Rather, the nascent working-class movement also criticized suburbanization because they feared it jeopardized opportunities for political participation and collective action. Against this backdrop, I argue that contemporary discussions around the “Right to the City” differ considerably from earlier rhetoric. In particular, I show that working-class communities suffering from displacement in present-day cities are deprived of some of the most influential framings of the past. The paper, thus, illustrates how interdisciplinary perspectives open new avenues for critical research on notions of urban belonging.

Byzantine Aphrodisias: changing the symbolic map of a city

1990 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 26-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Cormack
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The City ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

The excavation of Aphrodisias in Caria has now uncovered so substantial an area of the city that the site must now feature in studies of both the Ancient and Byzantine city. Aphrodisias offers an example of a city whose history runs from the second half of the first century BC (when the settlement first prospered as a Free City in the fertile plain around the shrine of Aphrodite) until the late Middle Ages. But the chronological range of the surviving material also sets a familiar problem of urban history. How can such studies interpret buildings and settings which existed and functioned over many centuries, maintaining a presence in the city as its history passed from one historical ‘period’ to another? Can their permanence be recognised as a ‘continuity’; or should one look for clues of change and discontinuity? Is indeed the dichotomy of continuity and discontinuity an inevitable part of the vocabulary of urban history? The words have certainly dominated discussion of ‘capital’ cities like Rome and Constantinople in which much stress has been laid on identifying ‘continuities’, the strength of ‘tradition’, and significant ‘renewals’ of the past.

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