INTRODUCTION: History is a moving image
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2023
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Journal article
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Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image, 2023; 1-4
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Abstract
While technological changes may suggest that the authors are on a fast track to change through a series of numbered industrial revolutions, moving image histories abide as the public’s go to source for connecting with the past. Yet the worry persists that moving image-history ought not be considered history. Burkholder and Schaffer’s survey highlights that many viewers trust documentaries more than university professors, and more than non-fiction books, but less than unmediated objects found in museums and historic sights. The traditional questions of truth in history, vexing as they were before the shift from analogue to digital, now provoke further challenges, including newfound digital capabilities to seamlessly manipulate images. Moving image history is significant for the academic discipline of History. Some historians have embraced it, while others have decried it as an existential threat.