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Lecturers using the Oxford DNBThree lecturers explain how they use the Oxford DNB, either as background to their teaching or as the basis for specific courses:
Joanna Innes at Somerville College, OxfordThe Oxford DNB is a favourite reference source for students taking my third-year history special subject: ‘Politics, reform and imperial crisis 1774–84’. This course focuses on the interconnections between domestic politics, policy, and war in the period of the American War of Independence—which also saw crises in Britain's relationships with Ireland and India. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with a large body of documentary material, including reports of parliamentary debates, letters, pamphlets and cartoons, as well as with the secondary literature. They're expected to approach the documents as researchers: identifying their authors and the circumstances of their composition and publication, working out the meanings of references, and decoding explicit and implicit messages and assumptions. The Oxford DNB helps them to do this, because it supplies them with a readily accessible, up-to-date source of information about the authors of most of their documents and many other figures mentioned or depicted within them. The encyclopaedic character of the entries is good for the students. Whereas the secondary literature they read characteristically develops an argument, which they may adopt for themselves or contest, the Oxford DNB supplies them with a wealth of information, like a scattering of clues, whose possible implications, and cross-links to other people or things they've studied, they have to work out for themselves. Rosemary Mitchell at Trinity and All Saints College, LeedsTeaching history at Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds, allows many opportunities to use the Oxford DNB. I teach a level 1 survey course that includes a semester focusing on the changing role of the English monarchy. The course includes case studies of individual monarchs: for instance, in session 2, groups of students consider to what extent Anglo-Saxon kings such as Offa of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and Aethelred the Unready measured up to the role of dark age ruler. To the lives and careers of these kings they apply criteria previously established through analysis of extracts from primary sources such as Beowulf and Wulfstan of York's Institutes of Polity. The Oxford DNB lives of these figures offer an excellent starting point for such case studies. At level 2 the Oxford DNB is a key resource for a research module on popular religion in later medieval England: not only does it offer succinct lives of key figures like Richard Rolle and leading Lollards, it also helps students with primary source criticism: the article on Margery Kempe, for instance, reveals how and when her religious experiences were recorded, giving students the chance to consider the problems of transmission and memory. But the Oxford DNB is still more valuable for the level 3 dissertation and the college's MA in Victorian studies. Such candidates find it a vital resource as they begin their research: by just one quick reference to the online edition, a student who, for instance, is researching a minor Victorian artist or author, can find out not only what previous and current scholarship has to offer on this individual, but also the location of key works and archival collections relating to the subject. On the rare occasions when a subject has not been included in the Oxford DNB, the student is excited to discover that he or she has located a genuinely new field for research. But there are hundreds of other ways in which the Oxford DNB adds research: by a simple keyword search, student can identify groups of individuals who have, for instance, written about the Indian Mutiny or contributed to The Saturday Review. Students who have discovered the Oxford DNB are commonly addicted: librarians in our Learning Centre have commented on the rave reviews it has received from the newly initiated! Rosemary Mitchell, senior lecturer in history, Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds Professor Seth Koven at Villanova University, PennsylvaniaAt Villanova University in Pennsylvania, I teach a capstone seminar for history majors, ‘The history of biography, biography as history’. The new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is proving a provocative and enjoyable tool for getting students to think critically about biography as a form of historical writing with its own generic conventions, implicit theoretical investments, and evolving history. I developed a list of approximately twenty names from the Oxford DNB—with dates of birth and death, and a short description of the person, e.g. ‘politician’, ‘actor’, ‘social reformer’—and deliberately selected several people excluded from the original DNB. I then ask students to pick three names from this list and to write single-page essays about each which compare and contrast the style and content of the Oxford DNB entries with those in the original. My goal is to encourage students to grapple with the principles of selection underlying these two closely related but also very different versions and visions of the DNB. Students who choose a person not deemed worthy of inclusion the first time around obviously cannot make comparisons. Instead, I ask them to speculate about why the editors have included a person in the new dictionary. In what ways does inclusion reflect shifting ideas about value? What does the selection say about who and what contributed to making the ‘nation’ or about the very boundaries of the ‘nation’ itself? We then use the students' short essays to answer a series of questions: what information do both entries have in common? Does the core information, such as parental details or wealth at time of death, reflect historically specific understandings of how individuals come to be who they are? I ask students to explain the principles that appear to determine the order in which information and arguments are presented in an article. What has been added to or removed from the Oxford DNB entry when compared to the original? What sources were used? We then collectively analyse how these various choices reflect changes—and continuities—in historical methodology, and the impact of these changes on the overarching interpretation of the person's life and significance. Because most Oxford DNB entries are concise and packed with both basic information and pointed interpretations, the exercise allows students to ground abstract ideas about biography in specific examples of the kinds of disciplined choices good biographical writing demands. Seth Koven, associate professor of history at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, USA |
