Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.

231-240 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]

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231) Most [American historical films] are assertions. They brook no argument. Assertion, except in the very simplest cases, is poor history. Most of even the simple events of American history are still surrounded by argument (motive, detail, meaning). A style that cannot embody argument cannot write good history. (Kenneth M. Cameron 236) [SoundBite #231]

232) If history is to be correctly taught, a film can't be used as the primary medium; there needs to be the written word to back up the pictures that we see. (James Clewley, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #232]

233) All histories . . . are suasive. History is always history for someone, and that someone cannot be the past itself for the past does not have a self. (Keith Jenkins, What 22) [SoundBite #233]

234) The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence. (T. S. Eliot, qtd. in Kammen, Mystic 5) [SoundBite #234]

235) History: philosophy teaching by experience. (old saying) [SoundBite #220]

236) [H]istory is a source of personal identity, a means of acquiring a sense of "connectedness" with a tradition, a community, a past. It is a way of locating ourselves in time and space, of acquiring the values and ideals by which to live our lives, and of returning to the wellsprings of our being as a people and a nation. (William J. Bennett, Children 165) [SoundBite #236]

237) Frantz Fanon's classic investigation of national identity in The Wretched of the Earth argues that it is the purpose of national culture "to make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens." Ideally, the national culture feeds the "passionate" fantasy of the citizen to be empowered by a collective activity and identification that is also realized and preserved by a politically legitimate nation-state. (Lauren Berlant 21) [SoundBite #237]

238) History functions to satisfy a variety of human needs: 1. History as memory and as a source of personal identity . . . . 2. History as collective immortality. . . . 3. History as cultural tradition. . . . 4. History as explanation. (Gerda Lerner 106-7) [SoundBite #238]

239) Anna Comnena described history as a "bulwark" against the "stream of time" which carries everything away into "the depths of oblivion." (Peter Burke 97) [SoundBite #239]

240) Watching movies about American history makes us challenge what we know and what we have been told. Movies often provide new interpretations that are enlightening and therefore should be part of the normal curriculum in history classes. (Dana Shakked, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #2537]