Miniatures

Demonstrates that the ‘big picture’ in history is best seen through the study of individual and local stories. By collecting a diverse range of primary sources alongside critical commentaries from the researchers who use them, we demonstrate the appeal and potential of studying everyday life as a means of understanding how history unfolded.

This documentary history is the first to present readers with the rich and innovative source base deployed by everyday life historians, at a time when everyday life history approaches are gaining ever-increasing traction in historical research and history syllabi. The reader comprises (approx.) 30-40 primary sources alongside short commentaries provided by researchers working on the history of everyday life, often in extraordinary, unusual, or turbulent times from the late nineteenth century through to the twenty-first century. The sources are carefully selected to offer detailed and textured explorations of micro-scale situations and practices – what the German historian Alf Ludtke called ‘miniatures’ – thereby demonstrating the appeal, fascination, and potential of everyday life history.

Introduction: Miniature Perspectives on Big Historical Pictures Huw Halstead and Kate Ferris
DOI: 10.47788/FJXP9208
1. Michel Gnimagnon’s Captivity Report: A Handwritten Account of a French Colonial POW, 1941 Sarah Frank
DOI: 10.47788/JWQN9945
2. Atmosphere, the City and Everyday Life in Barcelona, 1909: The Journal of the Widow of Trias Matthew Kerry
DOI: 10.47788/MJRZ9746
3. Sound and Experience: Mass-Observation and an Exploration of the Senses in Inter-War Britain Jen Purcell
DOI: 10.47788/YJFZ6040
4. Diary of a British Schoolboy in Nazi Germany Helen Roche
DOI: 10.47788/LYTQ5054
5. Wolfgang Jahn’s Handwritten Letter to the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR): ‘Coming Out’ in 1970s West Germany Craig Griffiths
DOI: 10.47788/YIWB8860
6. The Emotional Lives of Letters: Soviet Sexual Morality and Archival Encounters Hannah Parker
DOI: 10.47788/QZPR5289
7. Writing Letters to the State: The Normalization of Salazar’s Political Police Duncan Simpson
DOI: 10.47788/PDSM5638
8. Reading Ways of Manoeuvring, Mediating and Evading Dictatorship in a Memoir of Everyday Life in Fascist Italy Kate Ferris
DOI: 10.47788/IUHD5017
9. Wife Notices, Oral Testimonies and Intimate Partner Violence in the Caribbean: Since the 1930s O’Neil Joseph
DOI: 10.47788/NBQD5734
10. Statesman at Home: The Space and Family of a Japanese Governing Elite in the 1960s Seen Through Floor Plans and Video Oral Testimonies Shin Sato
DOI: 10.47788/ZJYP8355
11. Ethnokafenology: Oral Testimony, Space and the Noise of the Everyday in Western Thrace, Greece (c.1939–2013) Huw Halstead
DOI: 10.47788/GCUM1547
12. Incanting Revolution: A Sonic History of a Six-Word Slogan in Istanbul since the 1970s Christopher Houston
DOI: 10.47788/YUCU5505
13. An Ethnographic Bricolage: Mapping Everyday Space on the Urban Periphery in Chongqing, China in the Twenty-First Century Asa Roast
DOI: 10.47788/OPCH7709
14. Layers of Knowledge Production and the Archives of Everyday Life in Apartheid South Africa Andile Magengelele and Franziska Rueedi
DOI: 10.47788/URRQ3075
15. The Fabric of Everyday Culture: The Lives of a Green Leather Jacket since the 1980s Helen Ahner and Karin Bürkert
DOI: 10.47788/NVOG7312
16. Material Culture, Seaside Souvenirs and French ‘Taste’: The Transnational Journey of a Seashell Box in Post-War France and the USA Ludivine Broch
DOI: 10.47788/KZMA8995
17. Cut-Throat: Italian Fascist Colonialism According to Razor Blades Diana Garvin
DOI: 10.47788/MQMX5814
18. A Photographic Snapshot of Balsall Heath: Race, Sex and Space in 1960s Birmingham Kieran Connell
DOI: 10.47788/HTBB7375
19. Docile Bodies? Reflections on a Recruitment Photograph from India during the Second World War Diya Gupta
DOI: 10.47788/ZPDY9911
20. Marginalization in Fragments: Photojournalistic Depictions of Loss, Destitution and (Imperial) Mobilities of Portuguese Ciganos under the Salazar Regime Yannick Lengkeek
DOI: 10.47788/PUSC5636
21. Everyday Life under the Greek Junta (1967–1974) Through Vassilis Maros’s Documentary Film To Bouzouki Eleni Kallimopoulou and Kostis Kornetis
DOI: 10.47788/EJVA9674
22. We Just Demolished Their Story: Using Drawing and Storytelling to Understand the Changing Post-Soviet City in Tajikistan Carl A. Smith
DOI: 10.47788/KOPM1040
23. Comprehensive School Magazines from Bristol and Cardiff, 1960s–1980s Laura Carter
DOI: 10.47788/QIIJ8488
24. The Children’s Section of the Finnish North American Socialist Women’s Newspaper Toveritar Samira Saramo
DOI: 10.47788/ULJR6027
25. Finding Meaning in ‘Peripheral’ Sources: Subscription Lists and ‘Everyday Anarchism’ in Late Nineteenth-Century Argentina Nathaniel Andrews
DOI: 10.47788/OBXB3980
26. A ‘Miniature’ Carnival in Franco’s Spain: Official Investigative Reports on the Celebration of the ‘Burial of the Sardine’ in Albanchez (Almería) in 1950 Gloria Román Ruiz
DOI: 10.47788/CARX7872
27. Playful Engagements on WhatsApp in Twenty-First-Century Zimbabwe Ushehwedu Kufakurinani
DOI: 10.47788/XXOA8526
28. Mapping Memory: Using Google Maps to Understand Lima’s Contemporary Memoryscape Daniel Willis
DOI: 10.47788/XEVZ4231

• Edited by Kate Ferris
• Edited by Huw Halstead