Maria Grever has been invited to present a paper at the symposium 'Coming of Age: Life / Time / History' organized by the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). This symposium will be held on March 12, 2016 to honour the career of Peter Seixas, the director of the Centre.
More information about the symposium can be found here.
During her presentation, Maria Grever will talk about the use of difficult heritage in educational settings to enhance historical thinking (see abstract below).
Maria Grever
Enhancing Historical Thinking with Difficult Heritage (abstract)
In 1994, Andreas Huyssen pointed to the public dimensions of the monument and its dialogical potentiality. The current rehabilitation of material culture offers interesting opportunities to involve tangible heritage as a primary source in history education. The starting point of this trend is not so much the touchable thing as a 'permanent reality in stone' but rather the dynamic, intertextual representation. On the basis of Peter Seixas' historical thinking concepts, students can study the biography of an object or monument and discuss diverse perspectives of historical actors. This is all the more important because several countries face a so-called "war of monuments": conflicts about difficult heritage of colonial leaders, racists, perpetrators or failed war "heroes". In South-Africa (Tshwane) some people even suggest the creation of a memorial park for undesirable statues. This paper focuses on how a critical use of difficult heritage in education might enhance historical thinking.