A new book co-edited by Kim Nelson, associate professor and director of the Humanities Research Group and the Live Doc Project, takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding history in moving images.

The Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image engages this popular and dynamic field that has evolved rapidly from film and television to digital streaming into the age of user-created content.

“The volume grew out of the online symposium ‘Moving Histories: An International Symposium on Screened History’ that I organized and ran with the support of UWindsor film students Alyssa Ferrara, Rachel Graston, and history MA alum Ron Leary in October 2022 with funding from SSHRC Connection and the Canadian Ministry of Heritage under the Initiative for Digital Citizen Research,” says Dr. Nelson.

Her chapter, “Live Documentary: Social Cinema and the Cinepoetics of Doubt,” considers the emerging digital hybrid film and performance model, the live documentary, and how this form of spectatorship offers a compelling method for history expressed through moving images. There are two other chapters in the book co-written by Nelson. Chapter six, by Prof. Nick Hector, “The Hero Myth and the Cutting Room Floor,” explores how production pressures and incentives shape how history is depicted in documentaries.

The book examines technological and ethical concerns stemming from today’s media landscape, but it also considers the artificial construction of the boundaries between professional expertise and amateur production. Each contributor’s unique approach highlights the necessity of engaging with moving images for the academic discipline of history.

The collection, written for a global audience, offers accessible discussions of historiography and a compelling resource for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in history, film and media studies, and communications.

The book is accessible through the Leddy Library.