Visual vs. Textual Evidence: Case Studies in Historiographic Detective Work

Teachers of Digital Age history students need to equip them to ask new questions about assessing the validity of words and images, alone and in combination. Do contemporary students believe the image or visual evidence to be a more potent historical record to the exclusion of the less immediately accessible textual evidence? Global themes such as political identity, gender roles, and cultural tensions such as modernity vs. tradition have been analyzed using historiographical techniques developed before the age of the Internet. Do older instructors rely more heavily on the written primary source as a result of the point of view of historians before the advent of Google image? The presentation will feature several contemporary case studies that illustrate the issues regarding reliability of both text and image. How does American historiography reflect the changing availability of evidence in a global context? The presentation will address the need for critical student examination and juxtaposition of both visual and textual evidence to analyze the past or present by using case studies: The Opium War: European Capitalism and Chinese Confucianism, Gender and Identities in Latin America: the Codex Mendoza, Don Francisco and Sor Juana, Nelson Mandela: Prisoner and President, and Twenty-first Century US Ethics: Photographs of Barak Obama and Roger Clemens. The presentation will conclude with the premise that historical narrative can no longer be taught with simply the written word. The image not only corroborates the text and vice versa, together they both amplify understanding by suggesting different questions to be asked by students and instructors alike.