This virtual special issue of History Workshop Journal tells the histories of states in their interlocking national, international, local, and archival dimensions, and as political and legal contestations of sovereign power.
Tag: archives
Speculation, Magic Realism, and Minding the Gaps
A speculative methodology can also be a deeply political response to the conventions of archival research, argues Sonja Boon in our Writing Radically series.
Catching the Activist Archivist Fever
The archive has been portrayed by historians for many years as a ‘magical’ place of neutral enquiry. In fact, it has historically been used in the perpetuation of many abuses by the state and continues to play a role in privileging some narratives above others at the expense of disadvantaged groups within society. Increasingly, a new breed of activist archivists are paying attention to what can be done to correct the imbalances within the archival record.
Archives of the Anthropocene
How is the Anthropocene – the epoch in which humans have become a major force changing earth systems – changing the nature of historians’ evidence base?
‘I was a few years back a slave on your property’: a letter from Mary Williamson to her former owner
Thus begins a letter from a Jamaican formerly enslaved woman, Mary Williamson, written to her former owner in 1809…
12 May 2016: Capture this day for the Mass Observation Archive
On Thursday 12th May 2016, the Mass Observation Archive is repeating this call for people from across the country, including readers of History Workshop Online, to submit an account of their day to the Archive.
Historians in the Face of Disaster: History as a form of Psychosocial Support after 3.11 in Miyagi, Japan
John Morris, historian and member of the Board of Directors of Miyagi Shiryō Net asks, what can historians do in the face of overwhelming disaster?
