Making Histories

In this blog, Esther Wright (Senior Lecturer in Digital History), Steph Ward (Senior Lecturer in Modern Welsh History), and 10 students reflect on their experiences of writing group projects for the new core History module, Making History

In 2023-24, Making History: Historians, Evidence, Audiences was a brand-new core module for our 2^nd year History students. This double-semester module was designed to give students hands-on experience of evaluating primary sources, introducing them to the range of different source types historians might work with, as well as the variety of approaches they adopt to interpret them. Making History is designed to prepare students for independent research projects that require close work with source materials and contextualising them within existing literature to make an original intervention. The idea is that this really pays off in their final year dissertations.

In seminars throughout the Autumn semester, students worked closely with Cardiff historians to explore digitised source collections based on their research expertise. These topics ranged from the Civil War Petitions website and the Sudan Open Archive, to AM Digital’s collections on Interwar Culture, London Low Life, and the American West. Building on this, in the Spring semester, students worked in groups on a project which asked them to design a public-facing guide to a source collection of their choosing. By developing this project, the groups put their source critique and interpretation skills into practice. But they also needed to consider the various different audiences, beyond academics, who might be interested in the rich variety of sources that can now be encountered digitally, and how to introduce non-experts to the sources and topics in an accessible and engaging way. As module convenors, we were delighted with the results.

The below posts are written by two of the student groups this year, reflecting on their experiences of putting this project together, and give insights into what their projects were about.

In their project, Lilli Edwards, Isabella Howdle, Ceri Murison, Lucy Omar, and Jennifer Wright designed a guide to English Civil War petitions. They write

For our project, we designed a guide to English Civil War widow petitions, which utilised data from the ‘Civil War Petitions’ database. Although these sources are often overlooked within public history, petitions are a fascinating topic of research. We focused in particular on the differences between the Royalist and Parliamentary petitions, comparing their language, outcome, and use of religious imagery.

By exploring the authorship and language of these petitions, we can better understand the lives of seventeenth-century women, shedding light on themes of motherhood and vulnerability, religion, and gender. Petitions were, according to David Appleby in his article entitled ‘Unnecessary Persons’, a ‘weapon of the weak,’ allowing war widows to provide for themselves and their families in the wake of their husband’s death.

Writing for a public audience was a significant challenge. Transitioning from an ‘essay-style’ aimed at an academic audience to writing for someone with little or no knowledge of the topic proved most difficult. To overcome this, we focused on categorising the petitions into key themes such as gender, location, authorship, and outcome to ensure that our guide is accessible to the public. We also provided necessary historical context. This included a summary of the English Civil War, petitioning in seventeenth-century England, and the aid available to war widows.

Link to the petition: https://www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk/petition/the-petition-of-elizabeth-blease-of-nantwich-cheshire-trinity-1651/

We used a PowerPoint format to enhance the appeal of the guide, which we designed to be displayed in a museum. We kept each section brief, used a variety of visual imagery, and provided further reading recommendations for those who wanted to dig a little deeper into petitioning. Through the embedded hyperlinks, visitors are able to explore the sections that they found particularly engaging.

Our introduction was designed to mimic the petitions in the database. By including the words and phrases often repeated in these petitions, the audience was immersed into the world of seventeenth-century petitioning. Although it may sound ridiculous to read aloud, this was the section we enjoyed writing the most!

Our most intriguing discovery was the issue of ‘multiple authorship.’ Through our further reading, we discovered that most war widow petitions were collaborative, as many women were illiterate. They enlisted the help of a scribe to pen the petition and were unable to read the statement submitted in their name. For historians, such findings help them question the authenticity of these petitions. However, as we showed in our project, the petitioner had significant control over the final text.

In their project, Emilia, Natasha, Ava, Emma, Cerys, and Charlotte explored interwar women and beauty. They write

Our project studied how interwar periodicals influenced women’s beauty standards, with a focus on diet and fitness, drawing on the ‘Interwar Culture’ collection from AM Explorer. This resource provides a wealth of different periodicals, which we used to research gendered expectations and how women’s roles and interests changed. We then made comparisons between modern and interwar women.

As a group we had a mutual interest in this area of study, which we felt that we could relate to. We found it particularly relevant to modern day society, having all experienced the pressures exerted by a new medium: social media. Though we found a plethora of sources to analyse, the length of the project led us to narrow our focus to women’s participation in sports and the growing contemporary interest in diet and nutrition.

In completing this public history project, we wanted to ensure that our work was accessible for a general audience. To do so, we drew inspiration from museum exhibitions, noting the use of non-academic language and structures. Regarding the layout, we mirrored the appearance of interwar periodicals to further immerse the reader into the topic and organised by theme to aid clarity. Whilst we did adhere to some scholarly conventions, such as including footnotes, we were careful to explain our arguments clearly to ensure accessibility.

We analysed four different articles from interwar periodicals, including The Strand and Women’s Pictorial. Two of the magazines we analysed were specifically aimed at women, demonstrating the differences in the conveyed information at the time. For example, under the diet section, The Housewife Magazine spoke more generally about diets for both genders, whilst Armchair Science placed a more obvious expectation on interwar women to upkeep their family’s nutrition through education about healthy eating. What became clear was how articles encouraged women to take more control over their diets. The fitness section of our project highlights the societal pressures placed upon women’s appearances. As we showed, many articles commented on how women should dress whilst partaking in sport. Furthermore, whilst the interwar period could be reviewed as a breakthrough for female liberation in sport, many traditional ideologies remained. In our project, we explained how female participation in competitive sport raised concerns over its effect on reproductivity.

Overall, our project allowed us to critically assess sources to understand how popular culture and media viewed women in the interwar period. This revealed the societal expectations forced upon women, simultaneously exploring how they began to take more control over their bodies through diet and fitness.