Textbook History: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. History Survey Textbook Narratives of Slavery and Their Representations of Shifts in Historical Inquiry Between 1950 and 2010
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to analyze the shifts in U.S. history survey textbook narratives of slavery between 1950 and 2010. These analyses will be compared with contemporary shifts in academic approaches to the study of slavery in order to illustrate the representative relationships between the changing approaches of historians and the changing state of textbook narratives. In order to complete this goal a sample of 12 textbooks has been collected, with each decade being represented by two textbooks in the sample. Analysis of these textbooks has been completed through careful attention given to their organizational framework, their use of primary source lived experiences, their use of quantitative data, and the intentionality of their narratives. Through this analysis, it has become clear that U.S. history survey textbook narratives of slavery are representative of shifts in academic approaches to the study of slavery in almost every case. The results of this study show that U.S. history survey textbooks can be viewed as historical documents that reflect contemporary shifts in academic approach, and when they do not reflect these contemporary shifts in approach an inquiry can be made into why that discrepancy occurred.