Bringing History to Life: Teaching Fact and Fiction

Marc-André Éthier and David Lefrançois (editors), Judith Weisz Woodsworth (translation)

University of Ottawa Press/January 2025

Reviewed by Tabitha de Bruin

March 27, 2025

History faculties at Western universities are in trouble, as departments are downsized or closed completely. In Canada, humanities enrolment has declined dramatically, particularly in subjects like history. According to a 2024 article in University Affairs, the number of history majors has fallen 35 per cent in the 21st century, and applications for graduate studies have declined owing to poor employment prospects and a dearth of potential supervisors. In history departments across the country, retiring faculty are not replaced, as falling enrolment has affected funding. And at the elementary and secondary level, provincial curricula include few courses in the subject.

Yet many Canadians love to read about and immerse themselves in historical worlds, real or imagined. Historical figures and themes feature prominently in the novels they read (e.g., Heather Marshall’s The Secret History of Audrey James), the films they watch (Darkest Hour), and the series they stream (Bridgerton). History also features in the video games (A Plague Tale) and social feeds that consume the waking hours of many Canadian students. Sales of popular history books are booming, and history podcasts are growing in number and audience reach — The Rest is History podcast, for example, is downloaded 12.5 million times per month (The Business of History is Booming, Bloomberg, January 2025).

Moreover, Canadians arguably care more about their history now than ever before. For example, conversations around the legacy of residential schools and leaders such as Sir John A. Macdonald dominate popular discourse. But in this digital age, the history Canadians consume can be one-sided, poorly researched, or even deliberately manipulative. Canadians face conflicting narratives about our history, and the stakes are high — particularly in the context of issues such as racism, sexism and (de)colonization. In academia and the public sphere, debate is stifled by accusations of prejudice and fears of personal and professional injury.

In this context, Bringing History to Life: Teaching Fact and Fiction is a welcome read. A collection of essays about the use of different media in the classroom, the book’s goal is to show how popular history can be used to teach students critical thinking, thereby facilitating their development as informed citizens. Such historical literacy is crucial in this age of polarization, digital manipulation, artificial intelligence, and censorship. Although the book is geared toward history educators, it’s a worthwhile read for the layperson as well. For those who fall in the latter camp, I particularly recommend the book’s introduction and first two chapters, titled “History: Town and Gown” (Valérie Theis and Étienne Anheim) and “Understanding, Creating, and Learning History” (David Lefrançois and Marc-André Éthier).

Now is the time to insist on reasoned argument, rigorous methodology, and healthy skepticism — both of ourselves and of the next generation. History can be manipulated. It was easy enough in the analog age, but we are now acutely vulnerable.

As Theis and Anheim point out in Chapter 1, “For better or for worse, everyone has a stake in the past.”  The temptation is great to turn history into a “crucible for shaping collective identities,” or to substitute one grand narrative for another in a “teleology of replacement.” Politicians on the right and left alike have used history to promote a variety of causes, from nationalism to revolution. “This shift from historical rigour to political catechism,” they write, “arises from a misunderstanding”:

Although it confers astonishing powers on both academic and public history, it misses its mark by refusing to see that history, as we have known and practiced it since the end of the nineteenth century, requires a scientific methodology, just like physics or the life and earth sciences. This is what should justify the promotion of history, much more than its role in fostering community cohesion and individual edification, which it can occasionally play but which has no place in the social sciences.

How, then, can we teach students to think historically? How do we give them the tools to critically examine historical narratives and assess media portrayals of history? The authors of Bringing History to Life make a convincing case that educators must engage with different media in the classroom, guiding their students as they navigate a bewildering array of competing narratives and truth claims. As Theis and Anheim argue, popular history can be complementary to scholarly history, “pav[ing] the way for the development of history into a common good, not so much as collective memory or a tool for promoting identity, but as a shared body of critical knowledge that examines the evolution of human society over time.”

There is a growing literature on the use of fiction and other forms of media in the history classroom. In 2020, for example, Penney Clark and Alan Sears published The Arts and the Teaching of History: Historical F(r)ictions, arguing for the integration of fiction, visual arts and commemorative works into history curricula. (They also wrote the foreword to this book.) As Bringing History to Life clearly demonstrates, francophone scholars are engaged in this work as well. The book is organized into sections of three chapters each. Chapters 3 through 5 address the performing arts (television, film and theatre), while video games are the focus of Chapters 6 through 8. The authors of Chapters 9 through 11 explore the representations of history in novels (including graphic novels), songs and poetry. The final three chapters address public heritage (museums and monuments, re-enactments, built heritage and local history).

As editors Marc-Andrew Éthier and David Lefrançois assert, the purpose of scholarly history is “to seek the truth – however biased, incomplete, or transitory.” History is, moreover, a science:

Like other sciences, scholarly history comprises a set of rational activities that enable past, contemporary, and future researchers, regardless of whether they have institutional or professional status, to debate, with rigour and tolerance – asynchronously or in real time – the relevance and robustness of questions and answers regarding the past. This process is based on codes, criteria, standards, and practices shared by these researchers with respect to building and analyzing a body of sources (identification and critique), formulating and checking facts (evidence and interpretation), and determining the consistency of their arguments with the problems and conclusions being proposed.

Now is the time to insist on reasoned argument, rigorous methodology, and healthy skepticism — both of ourselves and of the next generation. History can be manipulated. It was easy enough in the analog age, but we are now acutely vulnerable. Canadians young and old receive much of their information via social media, the algorithms feeding them a steady stream of material that merely confirms their biases. Students increasingly use generative AI (such as ChatGPT) to summarize historical information; the effect is to emphasize and legitimize the most popular narrative(s) available on the internet at any time.

Media literacy is becoming both increasingly challenging and important, given polarization and sometimes bitter arguments about our country’s history and future. The authors of Bringing History to Life remind us that historical thinking is both necessary and valuable, and that it can be taught — by engaging with the very media through which many Canadians encounter and consume their history.

Tabitha de Bruin is the history editor at The Canadian Encyclopedia. She holds a PhD in history from McMaster University.