Edwards, Christopher. "Down the Foggy Ruins of Time: Bob Dylan and the Concept of Evidence." (2010)

An interest in the potential of song as a source of evidence in the history classroom has burgeoned recently. The five Bob Dylan songs that Christopher Edwards explores here are chosen not merely for their 'literary qualities' and 'emotional charge'; they also provide a powerful commentary on the US Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s and were — arguably, at least — integral to the tumultuous events of that period. While fully recognizing their creative power and capacity to capture students' interest, Edwards' greatest concern is to exploit their potential as evidence. More specifically, building on the understanding that Lee and Shemilt's research has given us of students' misconceptions about the use of sources (Teaching History 113, December 2003), Edwards sets out to explore how compelling collections of this kind can be used quite deliberately to help students develop more powerful ways of thinking about our knowledge of the past.