Books in the Theory and History series

Looking at the complex relationship between the discipline of history and the writing of lives, this key textbook provides an original and insightful introduction to a growing and increasingly important area of historical scholarship and research.

It delineates the topic of body history and its origins in cultural history and gender history, distinguishing it from related disciplines such as the history of the self, the history of medicine, the history of emotion and gender history.

A concise yet authoritative introduction to the use of film for historians, designed to equip students with the methods both to analyse film texts and to understand the place of film in history and culture. Chapman explores the main theoretical debates and approaches, and charts the development of film history as a discipline in its own right.

Why did the British empire expand so dramatically in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - and why did it then collapse so rapidly after the Second World War?

What is gender and who has it? History, theory and gender are inextricably linked, but how exactly do they fit together? In this jargon-free introduction, Susan Kingsley Kent presents a student-friendly guide to the origins, conceptual framework, subjectmatter and methods of gender history.

Although some historians have been researching and writing history from a transnational perspective for more than a century, it is only recently that this approach has gained momentum.

Anna Green provides a coherent and accessible introduction to the major theoretical approaches and key concepts within this most diverse of historical fields. 'Cultural History' explores the conceptual, affective and imaginative worlds of human consciousness, as reflected in elite intellectual works as well as everyday social beliefs and practices.

Narrative and History explains the key concepts and practices in the composition and writing of history. It explores how knowledge of the ways in which historians author history affects many conventional understandings of its nature. Major concepts such as truth, objectivity, reference and representation are re-evaluated in radical ways.

This book examines the development of social history and the complex relationship between social history and social theory. It covers the major developments within social history, and offers an introduction to many of the most important social theorists, as well as to current debates within historiography.