Doing History in the Age of Downton Abbey

As representations of history, period dramas perform serious work, and can be used to discuss both historical and contemporary issues (voting rights, war and trauma, reproductive rights). The contributors challenge the narrow view of period drama TV as conservative nostalgia; through sharing their experiences with these series (as consultants, bloggers and public speakers) they suggest ways in which historians can navigate the boundaries between academic and public history.

Christine Geraghty is Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Glasgow. She has published on British Cinema of the 1950/60s, on television fiction particularly soap operas, and on classic adaptations.

Julie Anne Taddeo teaches British history at University of Maryland, College Park, USA. She is the author of Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity (Haworth, 2002); She has edited and co-edited the following collections: Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey (with James Leggott; Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology (with Cynthia J. Miller, Scarecrow, 2012); Catherine Cookson Country: On the Borders of Legitimacy, Fiction and History (Ashgate 2012); The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV & History (with Ken Dvorak, University Press of Kentucky, 2009). She is an Associate Editor for The Journal of Popular Television (published by Intellect) and is Secretary of the Middle Atlantic Conference on British Studies (MACBS).