1st Edition
Engaging with Historical Traumas Experiential Learning and Pedagogies of Resilience
This book provides case-studies of how teachers and practitioners have attempted to develop more effective ‘experiential learning’ strategies in order to better equip students for their voluntary engagements in communities, working for sustainable peace and a tolerant society free of discrimination.
All chapters revolve around this central theme, testing and trying various paradigms and experimenting with different practices, in a wide range of geographical and historical arenas. They demonstrate the innovative potentials of connecting know-how from different disciplines and combining experiences from various practitioners in this field of shaping historical memory, including non-formal and formal sectors of education, non-governmental workers, professionals from memorial sites and museums, local and global activists, artists, and engaged individuals. In so doing, they address the topic of collective historical traumas in ways that go beyond conventional classroom methods.
Interdisciplinary in approach, the book provides a combination of theoretical reflections and concrete pedagogical suggestions that will appeal to educators working across history, sociology, political science, peace education and civil awareness education, as well as memory activists and remembrance practitioners.
Introduction
Part 1: Creative Engagements with ‘Ghosts from the Past’ in Traditional Classroom Contexts
1. Why would you use a Fascist Greeting to Celebrate a Football Victory? Discussing Historical Revisionism and Genocide Memory with Danish High School Teenagers
Tea Sindbæk Andersen and Tippe Eisner
2. Breaking the Nationalistic Master-Narrative: The Case of Teaching History in Contemporary Croatia
Stevo Djurašković
3. Fictional Family Tree: Storytelling and Short Film Project
Elina Mäkilä and Taina Kilpelä
4. From Traditional to the Moving Classroom: Empathy as a Key Component of the Classroom Teaching
Alma Jeftić
Part 2: Places of Pain as Sites of Critical Knowledge Production
5. The Last Ones: Serbian and Russian Prisoners on the Alpine Front
Niccolò Caranti, Luisa Chiodi, and Marco Abram
6. #Never Forget: Teaching Trauma Experience at Historical Places
Neringa Latvytė
7. Exploring the 1991 Battle of Vukovar through experiential learning
Sandra Cvikić
8. Speak Your Mind but Mind Your Speech
Benedikt Hielscher
Part 3: Using Artistic Strategies to Respond, Reflect, and Overcome
9. Atomic Poetry and Active Learning: From Japan to Newfoundland
Shoshannah Ganz
10. "Through the Refugee’s Eyes’: Experiences with the Experiential and Interactive Theatre Show
Manca Šetinc Vernik
11. The Gestalt of Historical Research, Art, and Education: The Circus Theme and Performing Arts in Remembering the Tyranny of the National Socialist Regime
Malte Gasche
Part 4: Healing and Embodied Strategies of Learning
12. Utilising the Breath as an Experiential Tool to Teach, Learn and Manage Trauma
Anna Walker
13. Art Therapy and Integral Education with Traumatized Youths in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Anna Druka and Hannah Scaramella
14. Poetry Against Trump: Shared Experience and Creative Resistance
Adam Beardsworths
Part 5: Playing (with) the Past, Rehearsing (for) the Future
15. Performative Experiential Learning Strategies: Reenacting the Historical, Enacting the Everyday
Ger Duijzings, Frederik Lange, and Eva-Maria Walther
16. Escaping the Thucydides Trap in IR class
Mikael Mattlin
17. Designing Videogames for Teaching about Transmission of Historical Traumas: A Case Study of Memory Gliders
Nena Močnik
18. In Memory of Memory Gliders: Preservation of EU-Funded Serious Games as Digital Heritage
Maria B. Garda and Jaakko Suominen
Biography
Nena Močnik is a researcher at CY Cergy Paris Université, France. She is the author of “Sexuality after War Rape: From Embodied to Narrative Research” and “Trauma Transmission and Sexual Violence: Peacebuilding and Reconciliation in Post-Conflict Societies.”
Ger Duijzings is Professor of Social Anthropology (with focus on southeastern and eastern Europe) at Universität Regensburg, Germany. He has published extensively on the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, and was a researcher and expert witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Hanna Meretoja is Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of SELMA: Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory at the University of Turku, Finland. She has authored The Ethics of Storytelling (2018) and co-edited (with Colin Davis) The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma (2020).
Bonface Njeresa Beti is an African multidisciplinary practitioner. He has co-published book chapters and journal articles. He is a committee member of NADTA and board member of Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed. He has an MA degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Manitoba in Canada and has been admitted to the European Graduate School to pursue his PHD.
