Historical Research, Creative Writing, and the Past

Download or read book Historical Research, Creative Writing, and the Past written by Kevin A. Morrison and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although historical research undertaken in different disciplines often requires speculation and imagination, it remains relatively rare for scholars to foreground these processes explicitly as a knowing method. Historical Research, Creative Writing, and the Past brings together researchers in a wide array of disciplines, including literary studies and history, ethnography, design, film, and sound studies, who employ imagination, creativity, or fiction in their own historical scholarship or who analyze the use of imagination, creativity, or fiction to make historical claims by others. This volume is organized into four topical sections related to representations of the past—textual and conceptual approaches; material and emotional approaches; speculative and experiential approaches; and embodied methodologies—and covers a variety of temporal periods and geographical contexts. Reflecting on the methodological, theoretical, and ethical underpinnings of writing history creatively or speculatively, the essays situate themselves within current debates over epistemology and interdisciplinarity. They yield new insights into historical research methods, including archival investigations and source criticisms, while offering readers tangible examples of how to do history differently.