Laura Carter, ‘Education, popular history, and everyday life in Britain, 1918-1979’ (28 oct.)

Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, Salle D421, de 17h à 18h30 (La séance aura lieu en présentiel uniquement. Un enregistrement sera diffusé ultérieurement sur la chaine youtube du séminaire).

Jeudi 28 octobre à 17h : Laura Carter (Université de Paris / LARCA), autour de son livre Histories of Everyday Life. The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979 (Oxford University Press, 2021)

Title: ‘Education, popular history, and everyday life in Britain, 1918-1979’

Abstract: This paper explores the argument put forth in my latest book, Histories of Everyday Life: The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979 (Oxford University Press, 2021). The history of social history in twentieth-century Britain usually begins in the 1960s, with the rise of ‘history from below’, emanating from universities. This paper presents an alternative, educational history of social history in modern Britain, focusing on popular publishing, the BBC, museums, and the state school classroom. It argues that after 1918 popular social history in Britain was primarily shaped by pedagogical ideas about how ‘ordinary’ people made sense of the past. This form of mass historical education defined mid-twentieth century attitudes to history, and gave female educators a prominent role in crafting historical narratives. It declined in the 1970s not because academics invented a better alternative, but because a more diverse educational public began to demand a different type of history, one that directly addressed issues of power.

Laura Carter est Maîtresse de Conférences en histoire britannique à l’Université de Paris et membre du LARCA.