The Different Lenses in History

   Matthew Zang

   When learning history in high school, we usually look at history as though it is unbiased and that the author's thoughts play no part in the formation of the text. This is obviously not true because no piece of literature is truly unbiased, however, we look at history as though it is. This is why academics have developed the concept of lenses through which an individual can look at history. There are, in total, eight lenses which are commonly used in historical reading. 

Photo Courtesy of www.instructables.com

   The first is the Historical Lens. This is what you read in historical textbooks and other material seeking to purely describe events. This lens can also be applied when reading when one wishes to only learn what happened during a certain time or event.

   The second is the Socio-Economic Lens. Sometimes referred to as the Marxist Lens, this gives tries to describe class struggle and how the economy affected society during a given time period. This lens can be used to identify the class bias of the author of a certain piece. 

   The next lens is Reader Response. When one reads a text, this is often the lens that they use because of its simplicity. The purpose is to view the text one is reading in regards to their own life. How does it compare? What is the same and what has remained constant? These are questions that a reader will ask themselves when using this lens.

   After that we have the Gender Lens. This is also know as the Feminist Lens and is often used to spotlight the disparities between men and women during a certain era. However, this can also be used to challenge androcentric ideas about the past. We see example of this in archaeology, where archaeologist have determined that women were fighting just as much as men in Viking settlements.

  The Race Lens is the next in our list. This view of history seeks to discover how race, heritage and ethnicity have played a role in forming history and how those differences are portrayed. What stereotypes are at play in a text? This lens also analyses the conflicts between difference races or ethnicities.

Photo Courtesy of www.whatsyourgrief.org

   The Psychological Lens is determined in analyzing human behavior and looks for common patterns which emerge throughout the course of centuries. It often asks why people followed the course of action that they took and the surrounding experiences that contributed to that decision.

   The next lens is that of New Criticism. This lens does not look to analyse the content of the text but rather the text itself. This is often used in studies of personalities where the author has written something not relating to themselves but can be analyzed to reveal the inner workings of the author at the time.

   The last is the Spiritual Lens, where the reader seeks to find religious or spiritual meaning in a text. One of the most common texts for this lens is The Bible but can also be applied to any other text which the reader finds spiritual meaning in.

All these lenses give us a broader view of history that can further our current knowledge more than any reevaluation of a textbook can!

Works Cited:

http://tinyurl.com/yaoyd59h

https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/teaching-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/through-the-lens-of-history-biafra-nigeria-the-west-and-the-world/why-study-about-biafra/the-lens-of-history