Drawing the Line: Using Cartoons as Historical Evidence

Drawing the Line: Using Cartoons as Historical Evidence brings together essays from international scholars working with cartoons in their research and teaching. It is a showcase for some of the best recent scholarship in this field, with articles exploring racial and ethnic stereotypes, as well as representations of youth, gender and class across a number of key historical epochs. Cartoons are among the most vivid and familiar images of past politics and opinion, but tend to be used merely as ‘illustrations’ for historical works. Drawing the Line, however, provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of cartoons as sources in their own right. The British Regency Crisis, post-Civil War US politics, Anglo-Iraqi interaction in the Second World War, and Yugoslav Communist propaganda are just some of the themes through which the effective use of cartoons in historical writing is explored. Readers will also find guidance and suggestions for further research on cartoons in the extensive introductory and concluding sections. The book includes more than one hundred examples of the most brilliant cartoon art of the past, from eighteenth-century satirical prints, to the formalised satire of Punch, to the new and ever-evolving medium of webcomics. It will be an essential resource for students and teachers wanting to explore visual representations of the past, and will appeal to all readers interested in innovative ways of writing history.

Marian Quartly has taught and researched Australian history at Monash University for longer than she cares to remember. Her publications include the co-authored Creating a Nation, a feminist history of Australia. She is currently writing about gendered citizenship (male and female), about museums and virtual communities, and about the history of adoption in Australia. Her interest in visual representations of gendered citizens – in this case of workers and capitalists – arises out of the need to relate to a visually oriented generation of students. Richard Scully has been active in the writing and teaching of history at tertiary level since 2004, when he commenced at Monash University as a PhD candidate and sessional tutor. His research interests centre on representations of Germany and the Germans in Britain, 1860–1914, of which those presented in cartoons are only one aspect – albeit the most interesting. After receiving his PhD from Monash in 2008, Richard was appointed Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of New England, Armidale, in 2009.