This panel examines the potential of video essays for historical enquiry. It brings together historians with leading practitioners in videographic screen studies to present work and discuss the benefits, theoretical underpinnings, practical applications, and challenges associated with employing video essays as a methodology. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, scholars are increasingly turning to multimedia formats to engage audiences and present historical narratives in fresh immersive ways. In film and television studies, the video essay has emerged as an innovative way to conduct and disseminate scholarship, not least through a network of peer reviewed journals, and as a valuable method of student assessment. This panel contends that that videographic approaches can be of great value in other disciplines, and explores some of the affordances of the methodology for the study of history.

A video essay serves as a collage of visual fragments and traces, resonating with the intersecting temporal and spatial implications of photographic images, akin to the concept of "travelling memory." By employing the "reuse, recycling, appropriation, and borrowing of archival material," the video essay embraces what Catherine Russell terms "archiveology" (Russell 2018). Russell argues that the archive, as a mode of transmission, offers a distinctive means of displaying and accessing historical memory, profoundly impacting our conception of cultural history. The video essay, functioning as an archiveological tool, engages in both historiographic interrogation and poetic reflection. It navigates between archival presences and absences, insides and outsides, curating its collage of images and sounds (the video itself) along with the sources it draws upon (selected films and texts referenced beyond the presented fragments). Moreover, the digital nature of the video essay challenges Derrida's notion that archives, in collecting objects for preservation, also remove them from present circulation (Derrida 1996). This digital excavation, or digging, as explained by Kreutzer and Stiassy (2022) provides a phenomenological and archaeological "meta-methodology," enabling the video maker to interact with archival material in an immediate, almost tactile manner. In turn, the video conveys this experience through images and sounds, embodying the "agency" of the digital in crafting coherent (meta) histories. The panel will cover various aspects of essay creation, including the use of archival footage, visual storytelling techniques, and the integration of sound and music to understand the past. Using examples from their own scholarship, panellists will share insights into how this multimedia format enables researchers to convey complex historical narratives, foster critical thinking, and resonate with diverse audience. Additionally, the panel will address the ethical considerations inherent in the use of video essays for historical scholarship, such as the potential for manipulation and the responsibility of historians to maintain accuracy and integrity in storytelling. Ultimately, this panel seeks to inspire scholars to consider the video essay as a powerful and accessible tool for enriching historical narratives and fostering a deeper connection between the past and the present in the digital age.