The Public and Corporate Use of History: Commemorative Books at Catholic Schools

Abstract

The present research is framed within the study of Catholic schools and more specifically, in the commemorative books that these centres promoted and published. In order to carry out the study, a total of 34 books have been analysed. They all deal with the history of different Catholic schools in the Balearic Islands (Spain). The involvement of educational community members (students, alumni, teachers, families, ecc.) in the production of the books, together with the institutional and reputational use made of them, link these historiographical products to both the genre of public history and the field of corporate history. In order to understand the nature of these links, as well as the idiosyncrasy of these monographs, this study aims to shed light on the “who”, “what” and “how”, that is, on the authorship, content and format of the commemorative books in question. The results obtained show that the commemorative books, apart from offering a wealth of useful data regarding the past of Catholic schools, help to better understand the evolution of a historiographical practice that has formed the basis of “new” historiographical genres related to the public and corporate use of history.