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Histories on Screen

The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television

  • Textbook
Histories on Screen cover

Histories on Screen

The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television

  • Textbook
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Pre-order. Available Dec 24 2026
$131.85 RRP $146.50 Website price saving $14.65 (10%)

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Description

What can historical films and period television tell us about history? How reliable are these sources? How, as historians, should we 'read' a film? This second edition of Histories on Screen gets to the heart of these questions and more in a comprehensive volume which greatly enhances our understanding of the relationship between film/television and history.

The book begins with a theoretical 'Thinking about Film' section that explores the ways in which film and television can be analyzed and interrogated as either primary sources, secondary sources or indeed as both. The much larger 'Using Film' segment of the book then provides diverse case studies which put this theory into practice. It explores vital areas of historical analysis in the process, including gender, class, race, war, genocide, sexuality, propaganda, national identity and memory. Documentaries, films and television from Britain and the United States are examined and there is a jargon-free emphasis on the skills and methods needed to analyze films in historical study that features prominently throughout the text.

This new edition includes six brand new chapters exploring the following key topics:

* Depictions of women in period dramas
* Black British history on film
* LGBTQ+ history and documentary film production
* The Holocaust, film and post-genocidal trauma
* US Civil Rights and television
* The Hollywood Western and the Cold War

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Thinking about Film and Television
1. The Moving Image as Primary Source: Author, Text and Context, Michael Dolski (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Command, USA)
2. The Moving Image as a Secondary Source: Truth, Authenticity and Narrative, Faye Sayer (University of Birmingham, UK)
3. The Moving Image as Memory: Past and Present on Screen, Sam Edwards (Loughborough University, UK)
Part II: Using Film and Television: Case Studies
The Lens of History: Race, Class and Gender on Screen
4. CASE STUDY: 'The Way We Are': Class and Britishness on Film, Marcus Morris (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
5. CASE STUDY: Were Fires Started? Exploring Gender in British Cinema of the Second World War, Corinna Penniston-Bird (Lancaster University, UK)
6. CASE STUDY: Screening Multicultural Britain: Blair, Britishness and Bend it Like Beckham, Sarah Ilot (Teeside University, UK)
7. CASE STUDY: Mammy, Mandingo, Django and Solomon: A Century of American Slavery in Cinema from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Twelve Years a Slave, Lydia Plath (Canterbury Christ Church University, UK)
8. CASE STUDY: “If I am unable to find a husband, I shall be worthless”: Reading the roles of Women in the worlds of Bridgerton and Sanditon, Lizzie Rogers (Independent Scholar)
9. CASE STUDY: Watching a Black Screen: Cinema and Race in Britain, Clive Webb (University of Sussex, UK)
Reel Life and Real Life: Documenting and Narrating the Past
10. CASE STUDY: The Empire at the Movies: India in Newsreels, c. 1911 to 1947, Tilman Frasch (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
11. CASE STUDY: 'Truth' and 'Interiority': Screening and Interpreting the Early Modern Era, Jonathan Spangler (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
12. CASE STUDY: Hollywood Musicals Make History, Nicholas Gebhardt (Birmingham City University, UK)
13. CASE STUDY: The Hollywood Western in the Cold War (author tbc)
14. CASE STUDY: 'Moving' Images: Educational Uses of D-Day Imagery, Michael Dolski (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Command, USA)
15. CASE STUDY: CASE STUDY: Using Televisual Sources to Understand the History of the Civil Rights Movement, Sage Goodwin (Harvard University, USA)
Making Memory and Identity: The Politics and Purpose of Film and TV
16. CASE STUDY: Do It Yourself: Community Programming, Documentary Filmmaking and Lesbian, Gay and Trans Campaigning in Postwar Britain, Marcus Collins (Loughborough University, UK)
17. CASE STUDY: Superhero Films and American National Identity, Michael Goodrum (University of Essex, UK)
18. CASE STUDY: After the Holocaust: Post-Genocidal Trauma on Screen, Tereza Valny (University of Edinburgh, UK)
19. CASE STUDY: 'We Will Remember Them?': Film, Television and the First World War in British Memory, Sam Edwards (Loughborough University, UK)
20. CASE STUDY: Presenting the Past: New Directions in Television History, Nicola Bishop (Loughborough University, UK)
Filmography
Bibliography
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Dec 24 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 2nd
Pages 432
ISBN 9781350539150
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 31 bw illus
Dimensions 234 x 156 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Sam Edwards

Sam Edwards is Reader in Modern Political History…

Anthology Editor

Michael Dolski

Michael Dolski is a historian with the Joint Priso…

Anthology Editor

Faye Sayer

Faye Sayer is Associate Professor in Heritage and…

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