Call for Papers for the Workshop:
How We Look at It: Visual Literacy, New Media and the Teaching of History.

This call for papers seeks contributions about the latest findings in the field of educational research on visual learning, discussions of pedagogical/didactical considerations about the use of images of violence in national memory cultures and reflections on the development and research of the latest generation of computer-based teaching materials. In the workshop these threads shall be connected in order to allow for a fruitful exchange on theory and practice.

We learn about images, and we learn from them. When students in a history class grapple with visuals – photographs, charts, moving images, websites – they acquire facts, emotions, shared beliefs and personal attitudes, often only implicitly connected to well-known iconic images of the past, that form a visual narrative. Especially in the context of trauma and violence, themes that are central elements of national memory cultures, teachers chose to introduce, illustrate and deepen the subject through images or film. Scholars from different fields have responded to the educational use of imagery and critically examined their use. Do images of past violence need a specific pedagogical approach that is different from the one chosen for ‚other’ visuals?

Exciting new teaching materials are currently being developed that take the notion of visual learning even further: Web-based learning sites, software and new media applications such as the ipad seemingly transform learning into a mainly visual experience. The fact, that in recent years the number and presence of pictures, illustrations and photographs in textbooks clearly increased, is a development that these new learning resources can almost effortlessly refine. Do these new tools influence or change the way students work with visuals or how they get introduced to memory cultures about past violence in terms of pedagogy? Or, looking at the question from the other side: What kind of pedagogical framework would be useful for developers of tablet-text-books for history classes that deal with very unsettling, controversial imagery?

This interdisciplinary workshop seeks exchange among scholars who are currently working on (either) visual literacy, the development of new textbooks, or violence in the context of national memory culture. Please send an abstract of 250 words by January 1st 2012.