Which parts of history are relevant today and what meaning should we ascribe to them? Which interpretations are accepted as cultural truths, which are met with incomprehension and which prove to be controversial? These questions will be explored by the project team, which will analyse how contested issues are addressed by educational media and in history lessons.
The starting point is a deliberately broad definition of educational media. In addition to analogue and digital textbooks, serious games and memes are also included in the investigation, insofar as they are included in history lessons. The project works with two key conceptional terms. Using the concept of appropriation, as understood in media studies, the project team will analyse how different media present historical content, taking their specific structures into account, but will also explore how teachers and learners position themselves in relation to media content. Following the concept of agonistic memory discussed in memory research, the team will also address the question of how media products, usage scenarios and memory-cultural constellations should be designed in order to initiate educational processes that can transform the relationship with the self and the world through productive irritations.
- Social Relevance
Current societies have become more diverse as a result of globalisation and migration. In an age of individualism it is difficult for collectively binding standards to be unquestionably accepted. The present, which shapes our view of the past, is changing rapidly and has become confused, meaning that it is increasingly difficult to form a consensus about definitive terms. History is no longer just something in a museum, in intellectual feuilletons, in textbooks or at history conferences. Media channels that reflect on and argue about history have multiplied around the world. The cultural elite are no longer alone in their attempts to offer interpretations, they now have competition. All these elements present new challenges for history teaching.
- Empirical Focus
This project uses a systematic and comparative perspective to examine how pupils and teachers address these challenges.
- Its thematic focus is on the Second World War, the Vietnam War, socialism and the years of radical change in the 1990s.
- The methodology of the project includes discourse analysis, interviews with teachers and students and, using qualitative methods, reconstructs practices of appropriation in selected educational media, both in history classes and in laboratory situations, such as in The Basement.
- The geographic focus is on eastern and western European societies.
- Publications
- Christophe, B. (accepted): 'Mapping the Teaching of Transition: Germany'. In: A. Formozov, L. Sichtermann, eds.: Teaching the History of Transition: A Handbook for History and Civic Education, Berlin: Austausch, 14-20.
- Christophe, B. (accepted) (with Veronika Ludwig): 'Germany – Victims and Perpetrators in the Trials against the so-called Wall-Shooters: How Can a Constitutional State Judge Past Injustices'. In: A. Formozov, L. Sichtermann, eds.: Teaching the History of Transition: A Handbook for History and Civic Education, Berlin: Austausch, 154-165.
- Christophe, B. (accepted): 'Teaching Transition: Reflections on Challenges, Strategies and Conceptual Approaches'. In: A. Formozov, L. Sichermann, eds.: Teaching the History of Transition: A Handbook for History and Civic Education, Berlin: Austausch, 234-249.
- Christophe, B. (2022): 'Agonistic memory as a relational concept: Remembering socialism in Lithuania'. In: Memory Studies,First Published: August 2, 2022, Open Access: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/17506980221114083?casa_token=abY0-JQrpTwAAAAA:JLMiSelSxEaxaHozofs3ac-mGcTNsRB6nMPnZZCIxJ5hG5T2Ju5QRhbYdxs9Bsdf3mg2LztVMck9mw
- Christophe, B. (2022): 'Vertrauen und Misstrauen im Geschichtsunterricht: Empirische Beobachtungen zu einer prekären Balance'. In: E. Fuch, M. Otto, eds.: In Education We trust? Vertrauen in Bildung und Bildungsmedien, Göttingen V&R unipress, 163-180.
- Christophe, B. (2022) (with H. Liebau): 'Postkolonialismus'. In: M. Sabrow, A. Saupe, eds.: Handbuch Historische Authentizität, Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 357-366.
- Christophe, B. (2021): 'Victims or Perpetrators or Both? How do History Textbooks and History Teachers in Post-Soviet Lithuania Remember the Post-War Partisans?' In: R. Hansen, A. Saupe, A. Wirsching, D. Yang, eds.: Historical Authenticity and Victimhood in Twentieth-Century History and Commemorative Culture, Toronto: Toronto University Press.
- Kohl, C., Christophe, B., Liebau, H., Saupe, A., eds., 2021: Politics of Authenticity and Populist Discourses. Brazil, India and Ukraine, (London: Palgrave Macmillan)
- Christophe, B. Kohl, C., Liebau, H. Saupe, A. (2021): 'Claims to Authenticity in Populist Discourses'. In: C. Kohl/B. Christophe/H. Liebau/A. Saupe, eds. Politics of Authenticity and Populist Discourses. Media and Education in Brazil, India and Ukraine, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 3-30.
- Christophe, B. (2021): 'Educational Media and Populism'. In: Kohl, C., Christophe, B., Liebau, H., Saupe, A., eds., 2021: Politics of Authenticity and Populist Discourses. Brazil, India and Ukraine, (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 163-173.
- Christophe, B. (2021): 'Remembering the Second World War In Post-Soviet Educational Media'. In: Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 13:1, 1-12.
- Christophe, B. (2021): 'De-Orientalizing the Western Gaze on Eastern Europe. The First Soviet Occupation in Lithuanian History Textbooks'. In: Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 13:1, 136-162.
- Christophe, B. (2021) (with Nadine Ritzer): 'Erinnerung und Geschichtsunterricht in der Kontingenzgesellschaft: Was war der Vietnamkrieg?' In: Zeitschrift für die Didaktik der Gesellschaftswissenschaften 12:2, 160-180.
