Who Tells Your Story?: (Mis)representing the Past in Works of Historical Fiction
Channel: AskHistorians
Date: 2021-10-20

Unlike most traditional forms of history writing, historical fiction offers immersion into the lived experience of what the past was ‘like’. Through a blend of imagination and historical knowledge, it’s possible to bring the past alive on the page or screen and offer a way for wider audiences to engage with historical settings and characters. This panel reflects on the complexities involved in analysing and discussing these works with a particular focus on what it means to be realistic, how historical fiction shapes our understanding of historical figures and events, and both the joy and pitfalls involved when fans use historical fiction as a launchpad for their own research.

Learn more about this panel at https://www.askhistorians.com/fiction

This panel includes a live Q+A with the panelists 21 October 2021, 7-9 PM EDT, on https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians

Featured in this panel are:
"'I Can Be Put Off Instantly if Something Is Not Accurate': Examinations of Historical Fiction Audiences and Historical Knowledge" by Hilary Jane Locke
"Lady Franklin’s Legacy, or, The Fictional Afterlives of a Polar Explorer’s Widow" by Kathryn Stutz
"Sexual Skylarking: From Speculation to Historical Truth in Franklin Expedition Scholarship" by Edmund Wuyts

Moderated by Stuart Ellis-Gorman

This panel is part of the AskHistorians 2021 Digital Conference. For more Conference content, please go to: https://www.askhistorians.com/2021-digital-conference

Land Acknowledgement:

The AskHistorians Digital Conference (AHDC) Organizing and Diversity and Inclusion Committees acknowledge that the AHDC 2021 is being produced in and viewed from various locations across the world. Many of these locations include lands that are the ancestral, unceded, and treaty territories of Indigenous Peoples from Turtle Island, Abya Yala  [ab-EE-ah ee-AH-lah], and the Americas in their entirety to the traditional lands of Indigenous Peoples in Sweden, Australia, and across the globe. We acknowledge that these lands have been stewarded by these Indigenous communities and nations since time immemorial and we offer our gratitude to these Peoples. We, moreover, recognize that, five hundred years later, settler colonial nations continue to benefit from the brutal realities of genocide and forced removal that enabled the original settler colonizers and conquistadores to seize these lands.

The AHDC organizers acknowledge both the land upon which we are virtually hosting this conference, those lands from which the conference is being viewed, and the deep-rooted and long-lasting wounds caused by white imperialism and settler colonialism. The harmful effects of these actions continue to hurt Indigenous communities across the world. We recognize the responsibility we have as historians to amplify Indigenous Voices and speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves. We also acknowledge that while we pursue this goal, academia itself has often been at the forefront of colonial domination and must therefore reckon with its own injustices. Understanding this, we have chosen to make a donation to the Indigenous organization, Forest Peoples Programme, in an effort to give back to Indigenous communities around the world. While we appreciate that Indigenous political, trade, and kinship relationships extend beyond the geographic boundaries that we commonly assign to distinct communities and nations, we would like to particularly acknowledge the Indigenous Peoples upon whose ancestral lands the AHDC 2021 has been produced or hosted as follows:

Doeg
Eora
Nentego (Nanticoke)
Piscataway
Susquehannock