- Making Sense of Documentary Photography (History Matters, CHNM and ASHP)
- A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you need to know how to analyze the picture to gain any understanding of it at all. Making Sense of Documentary Photography provides a place for students and teachers to grapple with the documentary images that often illustrate textbooks but are almost never considered as historical evidence in their own right. Written by James Curtis, this guide offers a brief history of documentary photography, examples of what questions to ask when examining a documentary photograph, and an annotated bibliography and list of online resources for documentary photography.
- Making Sense of Advertisements (History Matters, CHNM and ASHP)
- Advertisements are all around us today and have been for a long time; advertising-free "good old days" just don't exist. This guide offers an overview of advertisements as historical sources and how historians use them, a brief history of advertising, questions to ask when interpreting ads as historical evidence, an annotated bibliography, and a guide to finding advertisements online. Author Daniel Pope has taught at the University of Oregon since 1975 and is currently Associate Professor.
- Unpacking Material Culture, Images (World History Sources, CHNM)
- Images are depictions. What is not so simple is perceiving an image. We learn to perceive images, that is, to recognize them with understanding, through the filter of cultural experience. Image Our cultural values give meaning to both the content of images and their physical form. These values change over time and place and they vary according to the position of the viewer within a society. As a result, the same image can be perceived in alternate ways by people at the same time and can also be valued differently over time.
- Unpacking Material Culture, Objects (World History Sources, CHNM)
- This essay explores ways to use material objects in the study of history. "Material objects" include items with physical substance. They are primarily shaped or produced by human action, though objects created by nature can also play an important role in the history of human societies.
