The Power of Neo-Slave Fiction and Public History: From Slavery to the Enslaved

This book explores how historical fiction in text and film shapes attitudes towards understanding history,contributing to a public history. It examines the validity of historical fiction as a way of understanding history,supported by neo-slave counterfactual narratives and scholarly works. It suggests that this has re-shaped the historiography with a focus from slavery to the enslaved,opening new vistas for a public history.

Format: Hardback
Length: 220 pages
Publication date: 13 October 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Professional historians, schools, colleges, and universities are not the only entities involved in shaping higher-order understandings of history. The central thesis of this book is the belief that historical fiction in text and film plays a crucial role in shaping attitudes towards an understanding of history, shifting the focus from slavery to the enslaved—from the institution to the personal, familial, and feminist accounts. In a broader sense, this contributes to the development of public history.

Particularly, this book examines the notion of emerging slavery public history, exploring how it is defined by literature, film, and other forms of artistic expression rather than solely relying on non-fiction, popular, or scholarly works, and education in history within school systems. It also seeks to investigate the validity of historical fiction in print or film as a means of understanding history.

A focal point of this book is the hypothesis that neo-slave narratives, supported by selective triangulated readings and viewings of scholarly works and non-fiction, have significantly contributed to reshaping the historiography of antebellum slavery. This has led to a re-shaping of the historiography, with a greater emphasis on the experiences of the enslaved. Moreover, it has opened up new avenues for a public history, free from top-down authoritative scholarship.

This book is an essential and provocative read for students and scholars interested in understanding the history of slavery, its harrowing authoritative scholarship, and how it was culturally defined. It offers valuable insights into the ways in which historical fiction can shape our understanding of the past and contribute to a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of history.

Weight: 600g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032451275