Telling History on YouTube. From the effervescence of History to narrative videography
06 December 2022
Whether it is the object of a fiction, instrumentalized by politicians, or reappropriated by video artists on YouTube, it is clear that History in public spaces is not often the work of historians, who are relatively absent. However, History is today as visible and protean as it is multilingual. This is not surprising, since History has never been the monopoly of historians and, from the beginning, it has been disseminated in many « forms » – a term that we will try to define. These forms surprise – and detonate – not only from the point of view of methodology and the polysemy that accompanies the term « History », but also by their circulation, their potential, their success and their performance. This is why in this seminar we propose to describe and interrogate the ways in which YouTubers running a History channel organize and reappropriate the historical sciences.
