Long gone are the days when political history was only described from official state documents. In today’s historical practice a great deal of attention is paid to multi-perspectivity, seeking opportunities to hear different voices. No one doubts the relevance of looking beyond the text and incorporating visual, auditory and material sources. In addition, new approaches and rapidly developing digital techniques shed fresh light on classical sources and open different possibilities for organizing, analyzing and presenting sources on a larger scale. What does this mean for writing political history today?

In this course, students develop a broad view of the potential of resources to analyze the history of politics and the political. Students also learn to critically reflect on the limitations of various types of sources, archives, and datasets, and to recognize their ‘political’ nature. What were the roles of e.g. the state and social movements in collecting and archiving materials? What blank spots does this leave in the archives and analyses?