This year the Center for Historical Culture (CHC) at Erasmus University Rotterdam celebrates its tenth anniversary. In 2006, Maria Grever founded the Center with her colleagues to conduct academic research on historical culture – the various ways people, communities and societies make sense of the past. In ten years, the Center has received funding for national and international research projects on canonization processes, national identity, heritage education, historiographic analysis of history textbooks, and popular memorization of armed conflicts. This research resulted in numerous publications and PhD theses on historiography, autobiographical writing, memory cultures, concepts of history, and historical distance. Over the years, the Center has established close contacts with other research institutes and institutions beyond academia in the fields of museums, heritage, and education. The CHC also contributed to public debates about the future of history education.
Conference Vital Postwar Cities
The tenth anniversary will be celebrated with a reception at the end of the conference Vital Postwar Cities. Sensitive Heritage in a Globalizing Historical Culture, on May 17 in De Doelen in Rotterdam. The conference is organized by the CHC and the research groupWar! Popular Culture and European Heritage of Major Armed Conflicts. Renowned speakers such as Peter Seixas (University of British Columbia), Angela Bermúdez (Deusto University), Berber Bevernage (Ghent University) and Mario Carretero (Universidad Autonoma) will discuss issues related to the collective memory of war and violence. Furthermore, several workshops will go deeper into the remembrance of war in video games, (urban) landscapes and family memories of the aerial bombing of cities.
Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education
In September this year, the Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education will be published, to which many associates of the Center for Historical Culture have contributed. The handbook – edited by Mario Carretero, Stefan Berger and Maria Grever – provides a broad overview of current research and theories on historical culture and education. It consists of four parts: I. Historical Culture and Public Uses of History; II. The Appeal of the Nation in History Education of Postcolonial Societies; III. Reflections on History Learning and Teaching; IV. Educational Resources: Curricula, Textbooks and New Media. The handbook integrates contributions of researchers from history, historical theory, education, collective memory, museum studies, heritage, social and cognitive psychology, and other social sciences, stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue. Contributors come from various countries of Northern and Southern America, Europe, North-Africa, Australia and Asia, providing an international perspective that does justice to the complexity of this field of study. The Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education provides state-of-the-art research, focusing on how citizens and societies make sense of the past through different ways of representing it.