Workshop leaders: Mark De Geest (VRT) and Lynn De Palmenaer
Bringing the Great War to the larger audience. Researching the borders between popular culture and academical research and the ways in which history is portrayed.
One can easily assume that the larger masses consume historical knowledge not from difficult and often hard-to-obtain academical articles but from entertaining movies, series and books. The great success of movies like ‘Valkyrie’, documentaries like the BBC’s ‘The Great War’ and the whole genre of historical novels, go to show that the general audiences are keen to learn about the past. Using popular media is a great way to entertain people while at the same time teaching them something about history. But frequently we notice that after these productions appear, articles are published of historians pointing out the inaccuracies in them. Which poses an interesting question to us, historians; where are the borders between popular culture and academical research and what is the role of historical research in today’s society?
Research about World War I has undergone a great historiographical evolution in the past century. The research landscape has evolved from military history and myth busting to a diverse transnational perspective with an eye for all of the subgroups participating in this Great War. The portrayal of the Great War is influenced not only by the unique experiences that each country had, but also by general trends and “what sells”. Popular media have an advantage to academical research because it reaches a broader target audience, but exactly because of its broader aim it cannot delve in as much detail and nuance, or does it? The field of popular media is broad and only in recent years researchers have started analysing documentaries and popculture sensations and the way in which they portray the Great War.
For this seminar we want the participants to pick an item that discovers World War I and can be considered to be part of ‘pop culture’. From blockbusters and series like ‘War Horse’ and ‘Parade’s End’ to books like ‘Birdsong’ or documentary series like ‘Brave Little Belgium’, the choice is up to them. However, the seminar will be more interesting when the participants choose items that are popular in and representative for their home countries.
In the first part of the seminar we shall discuss the general tendencies and developments in the historiography throughout the past century and analyse and demonstrate them with a couple of documentary fragments. We shall also discuss the evolution of the documentary and delve deeper into the Belgian case and the documentary series “Brave Little Belgium”.
In the second part of the seminar it’s up to the participants to present their chosen book/movie/documentary. Participants shall briefly describe what’s unique about the World War research in their country and explain their choice. They can then read or show a part of their chosen book/movie/documentary of approximately 5 minutes. After which they point out the general lines of their chosen book/movie/documentary and point out which topics are highlighted. Is it about social movements? Women? Children? War tactics? Politics? Do these choices reflect the popular topics about war research in their country? What makes it popular according to them? What’s its value according to them? At the end of the seminar we shall have a discussion in which we can compare the contexts in which our pop culture examples have come to exist, the national differences and we shall try to form a conclusion about the representation of history in popular culture and its contribution to academical research. To conclude we shall try and discover some research possibilities in the barely discovered field of popular culture.
One can easily assume that the larger masses consume historical knowledge not from difficult and often hard-to-obtain academical articles but from entertaining movies, series and books. The great success of movies like ‘Valkyrie’, documentaries like the BBC’s ‘The Great War’ and the whole genre of historical novels, go to show that the general audiences are keen to learn about the past. Using popular media is a great way to entertain people while at the same time teaching them something about history. But frequently we notice that after these productions appear, articles are published of historians pointing out the inaccuracies in them. Which poses an interesting question to us, historians; where are the borders between popular culture and academical research and what is the role of historical research in today’s society?
Research about World War I has undergone a great historiographical evolution in the past century. The research landscape has evolved from military history and myth busting to a diverse transnational perspective with an eye for all of the subgroups participating in this Great War. The portrayal of the Great War is influenced not only by the unique experiences that each country had, but also by general trends and “what sells”. Popular media have an advantage to academical research because it reaches a broader target audience, but exactly because of its broader aim it cannot delve in as much detail and nuance, or does it? The field of popular media is broad and only in recent years researchers have started analysing documentaries and popculture sensations and the way in which they portray the Great War.
For this seminar we want the participants to pick an item that discovers World War I and can be considered to be part of ‘pop culture’. From blockbusters and series like ‘War Horse’ and ‘Parade’s End’ to books like ‘Birdsong’ or documentary series like ‘Brave Little Belgium’, the choice is up to them. However, the seminar will be more interesting when the participants choose items that are popular in and representative for their home countries.
In the first part of the seminar we shall discuss the general tendencies and developments in the historiography throughout the past century and analyse and demonstrate them with a couple of documentary fragments. We shall also discuss the evolution of the documentary and delve deeper into the Belgian case and the documentary series “Brave Little Belgium”.
In the second part of the seminar it’s up to the participants to present their chosen book/movie/documentary. Participants shall briefly describe what’s unique about the World War research in their country and explain their choice. They can then read or show a part of their chosen book/movie/documentary of approximately 5 minutes. After which they point out the general lines of their chosen book/movie/documentary and point out which topics are highlighted. Is it about social movements? Women? Children? War tactics? Politics? Do these choices reflect the popular topics about war research in their country? What makes it popular according to them? What’s its value according to them? At the end of the seminar we shall have a discussion in which we can compare the contexts in which our pop culture examples have come to exist, the national differences and we shall try to form a conclusion about the representation of history in popular culture and its contribution to academical research. To conclude we shall try and discover some research possibilities in the barely discovered field of popular culture.
Mark De Geest is a director, scenario writer and documentary maker with a special interest for the First World War. He has made many documentaries, series and other tv programs for the VRT, which is the public broadcasting company of Flanders; the Flemish equivalent of the BBC. He has also been their program manager for the fiction genre and coordinated the four-year long media memorial project "2014-2018 The Great War - 100 years later".
The most notorious productions that he worked on include well-known Flemish documentaries and series like "Brave Little Belgium", "In Vlaamse Velden", "Windkracht 10", "Flikken", "Stille Waters" and "De Zaak Alzheimer". With Brave Little Belgium, he won the IAMHIST - Michael Nelson Prize for a work in Media and History" in 2015. |
Lynn De Palmenaer is currently working on her Master’s degree in History at Ghent University. She minored in Art History and specialises in the relationship between scientific research and popular culture, focusing especially on the use of images for the general audiences throughout history. She strongly believes in interdisciplinary research and the use of multimedia sources as an enrichment for academical research. Her education was focused on Early Modern and Modern Times, developments in storytelling and international history.
This will be her first ISHA project as she usually focuses on educational matters in the History Course Committee and the student council for her faculty as Vice President. |