Categories
History

BBC History Magazine

“BBC History Magazine is essential reading for anyone with a keen interest in all things historical. Helping bring Britain and the world’s rich past to life, each issue provides you with accessible and informative features from leading academic historians.

BBC History Magazine was established to publish authoritative history in an accessible and attractive format. But we give you much more than that: our contributors are the leading experts in their fields, and so whether we’re exploring Ancient Egypt, Tudor England or the Second World War, we guarantee you’ll be reading the latest, most thought-provoking historical research. BBC History Magazine is first and foremost simply an enjoyable read for anyone who’s interested in the past.

FEATURES – Entertaining and informative features written by leading historians.

OUT & ABOUT – Our guide to:

  • historic places to visit
  • the latest exhibitions and events
  • holidays in history

NEWS & ANALYSIS – Gain a new perspective on current affairs as we explore the background to world events.

REVIEWS – Our pick of the best new books, plus history on TV and the radio.”

Categories
History

Academic Publishers

Information needs updating.

  • Adam Matthew Publications “Adam Matthew Publicationsis a scholarly publisher making available original manuscript collections, rare printed books and other primary source material in microform and electronic format.”
  • Ashgate “Ashgate is a highly regarded international publisher in the humanities, the social sciences, aviation/aviation psychology, and chemical references, with an outstanding reputation for producing high quality, specialized scholarly studies and collected essays.”
  • Blackwell Publishers “Part of the Blackwell Group, the world’s largest independently-held book and journal publishing company, our list spans the humanities, social sciences and business. Founded in 1926 we built our reputation publishing for the academic community in the English language. We are now known for our student textbooks, professional periodicals, and interactive software.”
  • Cambridge University Press “Today the Press is one of the largest academic and educational publishers in the world, publishing nearly 2,500 books and over 150 journals a year, which are sold in some 200 countries. For millions of people around the globe, the publications of the Press thus represent their only real link with the University of Cambridge.” Specifically the Humanities and Social Sciences: “Cambridge is one of the world’s largest and most prestigious academic publishers in the humanities and social sciences, publishing in the region of 1,000 new publications annually. This massive output encompasses a vast range of publishing from the successful Canto paperback imprint, aimed at both students and general readers, through undergraduate textbooks and a large range of upper-level academic paperbacks, to highly specialised monographic works of primary research.”
  • Clio “Reference solutions for history students and scholars: ABC-CLIO is a closely held publisher of educational and reference products. The company focuses on history and social studies resources for the scholar, student, teacher, and librarian in universities and secondary schools.”
  • Edinburgh University Press “Books published by the Press bear the imprimatur of one of Britain’s oldest and most distinguished centres of learning and enjoy the highest academic standards through the scholarly appraisal of the Press Committee. The Press has a reputation for publishing books and journals of an enviable high quality – in content and production – in the arts and social sciences.”
  • Fitzroy Dearborn “Fitzroy Dearborn offers reference books specifically designed for the needs of public, high school, college/university, and professional libraries. Our editorial staff and boards of advisers are committed to providing detailed and comprehensive analysis of subjects in the arts, humanities, business, and the sciences: all of our titles are international in scope and appropriate for the general reader as well as the serious researcher.”
  • Harvard University Press Editorial Programme: “Scholarly books and serious works of general interest in the humanities, the social and behavioral sciences, the natural sciences, and medicine. The press does not normally publish poetry, fiction, festschriften, memoirs, symposia, or unrevised doctoral dissertations.”
  • Hodder Headline “HEADLINE was founded in 1986 and five years later won the prestigious Publisher of the Year Award. The following year Headline acquired Hodder & Stoughton to form Hodder Headline Plc and now, as part of the WHSmith group, is one of the most dynamic consumer book publishers in Britain and a hugely successful sales network worldwide. Headline is one of the most successful and fastest-growing general publishers in the UK. It has established an outstanding track record in publishing both fiction and non-fiction books across a wide subject range.”
  • Manchester University Press “Manchester University Press serves the international academic community and promotes The University of Manchester by the publication of outstanding works of learning and scholarship that both reflect and enhance The University’s authority and reputation.”
  • Marston See Publishers that they represent
  • Microform Academic Publishers publishers of manuscript material, newspapers and primary sources for the worldwide higher education sector. All material is made available on microfilm and CD ROM and covers a wide variety of subject areas, including Fascist, Labour and British Association for American studies series.
  • New York University Press“With a backlist of over 1,200 titles, our program is notably strong in the areas of Politics, Law, History, Behavioral Science, Gender Studies, and Jewish Studies. Described recently by the Chronicle of Higher Education as “a major player in academic publishing,” the Press is currently expanding its lists in media and cultural studies, sociology, religion, law and legal studies, history, and psychology.”
  • Open Gate Press “Open Gate Press was founded in 1988 by a group of psychoanalysts, social psychiatrists and artists to provide a forum for psychoanalytic social studies – a branch of psychoanalysis which Freud hoped would be a major contribution to the ‘liberation of humanity from the pathology of civilisations.”
  • Oxford University Press “Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. It is the world’s largest university press. It publishes more than 4,500 new books a year, has a presence in over fifty countries, and employs some 3,700 people worldwide. Turnover in 1999/2000 was £324 million. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing programme that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children’s books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and journals.”
  • Palgrave “Palgrave is a global academic publisher serving learning and scholarship in the field of higher education, and publishing for the professional business and serious non-fiction markets. It has an established and distinguished track record of international academic publishing with considerable strength in the humanities, social sciences, and business and growing strength in computing and engineering. Combining the publishing and heritage of Macmillan Press, the British based publisher, and St. Martin’s Press Scholarly & Reference in the United States, Palgrave aims to be the academic publisher of choice for authors and customers around the world.”
  • Pearson Education “Pearson Education … is now the biggest educational publisher in the world. It boasts many of the most respected imprints in classrooms worldwide, with a full range of outstanding electronic, as well as print products and programmes. … Our wide ranging publishing programme covers all levels of Further and Higher Education. We also have some local language publishing for specific European markets.”
  • Penguin Books “Penguin is one of Britain’s top brand names. … It is the most significant brand in publishing with a 92% recognition factor amongst book consumers.” Online since 1995, the site has a fully searchable database of every Penguin author and title, and has a lot of extra information.
  • Phoenix Press “Phoenix Press is proud to present the best biographies, histories, diaries, spy stories and collections of poetry ever published. You will find an unrivalled library of classics as well as newly rediscovered gems; celebrated Nobel Prize winning volumes and celebrated hoaxes; books to whet the appetite of any reader with an interest in people, in history, in the past.”
  • Primary Source Microfilm “Primary Source Microfilm, an imprint of the Gale Group, has spent the past 35 years building one of the world’s largest microform archives of exclusive primary source materials in subject areas that include the humanities, social sciences and international news. Our purpose has been to provide access to rare, valuable research materials for libraries, scholars, faculty and students. Our work has grown and diversified since our modest beginnings as Research Publications in 1966. During the years, we have developed a highly regarded array of primary source materials and have published such landmark collections as The Times (London), The Sabin Collection, The Eighteenth Century Collection, Music Manuscripts from the Great English Collections and Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century Legal Treatises.”
  • Princetown University Press “We select for publication only scholarship of the highest quality on all levels regardless of commercial viability: specialized monographs making an original contribution to knowledge within a subdiscipline; titles appealing to a broader range of scholars and professionals in a single discipline; interdisciplinary academic works intended for readers in more than one subject area; and works by scholars aimed at bringing the findings of a discipline to the larger, well-educated reading public.”
  • Routledge. Part of the Taylor & Francis Group “Routledge was founded over 150 years ago, primarily as a book publisher. Through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions it has become one of the world’s leading publishers of academic books, particularly within the social science and humanities subject areas. It focuses on three academic sectors: undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate; research and reference; and professional education and development. Routledge publishes in the region of 1,000 new books each year and has a backlist of over 7,000 titles in print.”
  • Sutton Publishing Sutton Publishing focuses upon the following areas: “British, European and International History; Military, Naval and Aviation History; Biography, Cultural History and Heritage; Pictorial, Regional and Transport History”
  • Verbatim Books “We are publishers of high-quality reference books relating to the English language. We are specialty publishers, and we present a short list of serious, worthwhile books that English language learners, teachers, professional linguists, and language enthusiasts will wish to have in their libraries.”
  • Yale University Press “The London branch of the USA publishing company, site still largely under construction.
Categories
History

History Today

History Today is a unique cultural institution, bringing the best in historical writing and research to a wide audience. The magazine created the concept of popular history, mixing styles, genres and periods to achieve a fusion of intellectual excitement and readability.

As the world’s premier, and probably oldest, history magazine, we have been published monthly in London since January 1951. Our founder was the enigmatic Brendan Bracken, Minister of Information during the Second World War, publisher of the Financial Times and faithful lieutenant of Winston Churchill. We have been independently owned since 1980.

History Today publishes essays on all periods, regions and themes of history, many of them by the world’s leading scholars. All are carefully edited and illustrated to make the magazine a pleasurable, as well as an informative, read. The depth of our archives can be explored via the search option at the top of each page.”

One of those journals that spans the gulf between academic and popular, maybe getting an article in here is not so well regarded as that of an “truly academic”, but inspiring others to be interested in understanding who they are and how they got here (historical/cultural understanding) – I regard that as key. I have fun following History Today on Twitter!

Categories
History

Extract from “Chapter 2: Placing the British Experience of the Propaganda Poster in Context”

As I prepare materials for ‘Film History’, it seems a good time to go back to my thesis and access the section of the varying art movements leading to British graphic design styles as the Second World War broke out.

(c) Bex Lewis, 2004

This next section draws on the methodological framework outlined in chapter one to think about aspects of form and style. It sees poster design as an encoding through which ‘truths’ were produced, and form and style as social and political entities through which ‘power’ works. We will analyse the encoding of the visual in terms of the utilitarian, the disruption of traditional ideas, the political, and as a medium for transmitting ideas. Here, we will illustrate ways in which poster design disrupts notions of high art and images produced for the populace. This relates to one ‘contest’ between artists and designers over the power to define the poster and the way it later drew on older traditions of ‘high’ art. Here, we will trace the ‘institutionalisation’ of poster design in terms of groups’ power to produce posters. As the Introduction outlined, there is a wide ranging debate about the purpose of a poster, and indeed what constitutes a poster itself, is. This is partly dependent on the differing views as to what can be considered the predecessors and origins of the poster: ‘[i]n one sense the poster is a modern invention; in another it is as old as history.’ Some have identified forerunners and precedents for the poster. It ‘could be said that any pictorial representation publicly displayed has something of the poster in it, especially if the object is propaganda.’[1] This has led to diverse identifications such as cave paintings,[2] biblical precedents,[3] evidence from the previous ‘industrialised’ nations, [4] shop signs,[5] printed notices,[6] and political cartoons.[7] Most of these, however, were produced singly. It can be argued that the poster only became a truly modern mass medium in the nineteenth century, having developed as societies and technologies evolved.

Categories
History

The Social History Society

The Social History Society was founded in 1976 to encourage the study of the history of society and cultures by teaching, research, publication and other appropriate means. Since then it has organised a conference annually and acted to represent the interests of social and cultural history and of social and cultural historians both within higher education and in the wider community. The society is based in the UK but is concerned with social history internationally and it all its broadest forms. It welcomes not only contributions and members from overseas, but also historians and interested individuals from both inside and outside the formal academic community. It actively seeks to maintain links with other historical societies and bodies.

The Society produces the Social and Cultural History Journal.