A Delayed Response: Historians and the Study of Film

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Film is today widely used by many historians to investigate past and present social, cultural and political currents. Film historians make use of the traditional primary source materials—production records, scripts, trade journals, the diaries and memories of film-makers, and publicity records such as box-office sales and film reviews—but the main sources for film historians are the films themselves. This creates a unique dilemma, because films are complex cultural texts that are in many ways different from traditional historical sources such as letters and government records or even traditional literary texts such as novels. As such the analysis of film requires specialist methods and skills that are unique to film history.

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Anyone Can Cook: AskHistorians and Engaging with History

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One of the recurring themes of Clio's Current is history in the digital age. As the existence of our blog suggests, we are continually trying to map out the space historians occupy in 2014 where we are no longer restrained to the “real world.” The virtual world of the internet is a diverse, complex and often chaotic space. Our blog is a “work in progress” as we seek to define these new boundaries. Regardless, there will always be a responsibility for historians to communicate history to the public. This post examines one aspect of the new digital “tool set” of historians, how we use it to fulfil that responsibility, and the online community where historians of all stripes are doing the same: /r/AskHistorians.

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Film Reviews in the Digital Age and the History of IMDB

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Times of great change are always appealing to historians – if only because change gives us much more to talk about than its sibling, continuity. Changes over time, large or small, is the bread and butter of history. Perhaps that is why the advent of digital society is so intriguing. We've talked before about some of the transformation of digital society. Today we can witness a vast array of transformations all happening at once. Even seemingly innocuous facets of our lives have been affected, such as how we choose what movies to see.

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