Although there has been a surge of interest in South African cinema studies since the end of apartheid, relatively little has been written on documentary film and apartheid era resistance. During the apartheid era, documentary film was used to capture both the atrocities of apartheid and resistance to it. These films not only created a historical record of events in South Africa, but they also became important political tools in mobilizing support against the apartheid regime. In the post-apartheid era, the anti-apartheid movement remains a popular theme in documentary film, serving as a site for reflecting on and reclaiming history. This article provides an overview of apartheid and resistance in documentary films produced both during and after apartheid, and suggests how these films can broaden our understanding of South African history and be used as guideposts for addressing some of the challenges that face South Africa today.

This article proceeds in three steps. First it draws out some possibilities for a study of emotions and discusses how advice literature can be used as a source, not only for feeling rules, but also for emotion knowledge, which sets the framework for the possible perception and expression of emotions. Second it places advice literature in early twentieth century India in its historical context, looking notably at the different traditions for giving advice, from which authors drew: moral philosophy, the Sufi tradition and legal sources. Third it focuses on two sermons on anger which one of the most prolific Urdu writers, the reformer and Sufi Ashraf Ali Thanawi, addressed to a male and a female audience respectively.

Accessing and controlling environments underpinned British imperialism. Imperialism gave Britain control over millions of hectares of cropland and access to countless other resources. In the search for efficient ways of using natural resources, British imperialism shifted flora, fauna and commodities around the world. Ecological disruption and radical environmental changes never before experienced in history resulted. Imperialism also contributed to the production of many modern attitudes and disciplines through which we now understand nature. Given the fundamental importance of the use and role of natural resources in British imperialism, this article presents an overview of its environmental historiography, examining issues of agency, scale and exchange.

Popular newspapers have not, in general, featured prominently in histories of modern Britain. In recent years, however, a number of scholars, many inspired by the ‘cultural turn’ and the increased scholarly focus on language, meaning and identity, have reassessed the value of the popular press as a historical source. Newspapers provide one of the most effective ways of exploring the representations and narratives that circulated throughout British society. The ‘spectacular heterogeneity’ of their contents, moreover, ensures that newspapers are a potentially rich source of information on a wide range of subjects. This growing interest in the popular press as a historical source has been dramatically reinforced in the last decade by the digitisation of a vast number of newspapers and periodicals from the seventeenth to the 21st centuries. Millions of pages of content, rapidly searchable by keyword, are now available, at least for those fortunate enough to have individual or institutional subscriptions. The revolution in the accessibility and usability of newspaper archives has transformed scholars’ enthusiasm for them. This article assesses how these developments have affected the writing of modern British history, and suggests likely future directions for the field.

Our understanding and perceptions of the conquest period in Latin American history have been profoundly altered by the scholarship of the past twenty years. The traditional triumphalist narrative of the Spanish Conquest focused heavily on the conquistadors in Mexico and Peru, and emphasized the inevitability and rapidity of military victory, religious conversion (the Spiritual Conquest), and colonization. The revisionist New Conquest History – which emerged in part from a renewed emphasis on archival and paleographic work and in part from the New Philology, a school of scholarship based on the analysis of colonial-period primary sources in Mesoamerican languages – complicates that narrative by emphasizing multiple protagonists and accounts, new source materials, the roles and interpretations of indigenous and black men and women, and the examination of understudied regions of the Americas.

Since the early 1980s, historians have increasingly turned their attention toward the topics of sodomy and “homosexuality” in colonial Latin America. Contemporaries referred to such crimes – prosecuted by criminal courts or the Holy Office of the Inquisition, depending on locale and jurisdiction – as either the pecado nefando (the nefarious sin), the pecado contra natura (sin against nature), or sodomía (sodomy). This, however, has not dissuaded historians from applying the terms “lesbian,”“gay,”“homosexual,” and “queer” to historical subjects. This paper highlights some of the major trends and debates that have shaped the historiography of sodomy in colonial Latin America, focusing on disagreements over which partner (“active” or “passive”) was punished more harshly, whether sodomy was seen as a form of heresy, and how to best identify and characterize historical subjects in the past. The essay concludes by offering some suggestions for the future development of the field, and advocates for historians to focus on the category of the “unnatural” (contra natura) rather than limit themselves to same-sex sexuality. A focus on the unnatural essentially allows historians to speak of autoeroticism, erotic religious visions, same-sex solicitation, sodomy, and bestiality in conjunction with one another, thus offering a more nuanced view of the intersections of gender, sexuality, desire, and colonialism between the late 16th and early 19th centuries.

International migration is changing the face of Europe, and the rapidly growing presence of the Chinese diaspora in Italy illustrates how longstanding migratory patterns are subject to global socioeconomic changes. Both Italy and China are traditionally points of emigration, but today, there is a unique juncture in the historical experience whereupon one community, the Italians, has become host to the other, the Chinese. Italy, with its promise of new or underdeveloped economic niches and relatively lax immigration policies, has served as a particular draw for Chinese migrants over the last two decades. The following article seeks to present a clearer picture of 20th century Chinese migration to Italy. First, I will establish the present state of immigration in Italy followed by an overview of contemporary Chinese migration to Italy. Second, I will consider the Zhejiangese migration to Europe, including Italy, and the motivations behind these global movements. Third, I will examine the traces of historical influence on the livelihoods of the Chinese residing in Italy today. The development of the Chinese community in Italy touches upon the need to learn from the past as Italy, and Europe, determines how to administer to and integrate the newest members of its society.

In recent decades, research has pointed to an early modern period, in which great transformation took place. By focusing on local studies, scholars have recognized that Jews and Christians residing in Europe interacted with one another, sharing daily experiences as well as important cultural developments. The Jews living in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries experienced many changes, first and foremost among them demographic migrations. Developments such as the Renaissance, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, and the invention of moveable type altered life for Jews and Christians of Europe alike. Further research in this field should include social history, as well as the transregional connections between Jews living in different regions.

Approaches to scholarship on the early 20th century black press has marginalized gender and sexuality in the historiography of black newspapers. Historians of black newspapers published between 1910 and 1945, the peak of black newspapers’ popularity, emphasize the political role of the black press. This image has continued to predominate in African American historiography. Scholars have made very little effort to integrate an analysis of gender and sexuality into the work on black newspapers. Consequently, the persistent focus on the political role of the black press has narrowed the definition of “political” in African American historiography and grossly overlooked the value of understanding the black press through its coverage of gender and sexuality.