Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, tilburg university
PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
Seeking
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
RELATED TOPICS
- Digital
- Public engagement
- Teaching and training
ABSTRACT
In the fall of 2021, Margaret Rung (Roosevelt University, Chicago) and I (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) will jointly teach a 15 weeks online course for second year students of both universities on the way in which, on both sides of the Atlantic, specific audiences have dealt with historic events, periods, or developments considered to be collective or cultural traumas. The course aims to have students present their individual or joint projects (re)presenting a specific topic for a particular audience, as a practice in public and applied history.
The course format consists of seminars assessing the state of the art in public and applied history theory and practice; student assignments and presentations; hands-on work.
DESCRIPTION
In this round table, I would like to present our evaluation of this transatlantic course and ask for the participants’ feedback and suggestions for next year.
An alternative might be to have other panelists share their experiences with similar courses, training undergraduate students in taking stock of public and applied history, as well as hands-on designing a product or project targeted at a specific audience, online or offline; in writing, video, sound, images, interactive maps, as an educational project, app, (digital) walking tour, exhibition, blog/vlog, et cetera, aiming to reconstruct, contextualize, and represent a specific topic.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Tilburg University, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 1, 2021. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Could you also share syllabi for those that might wish to emulate such a pedagogical approach?
Dear Colleague,
Our syllabus is still in the making but I would be happy to share it with you. Please drop me an e-mail at [email protected].
Kind regards, Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld
If you haven’t done so already, you might want to connect with someone from the International Federation for Public History. I would recommend connecting with Thomas Cauvin (https://www.c2dh.uni.lu/people/thomas-cauvin), who is the current president of that organization. Last year (or maybe in 2019?!) he hosted a series of conversations with public historians from all over the world who would be able to provide good feedback on this course, or, as you suggest, share their own perspectives as panelists. I’m happy to connect you with Thomas if you’d like.
Thank you, excellent idea. I participated in one of Thomas’s sessions a few years ago in Baltimore. Kind regards!
Dear colleague, I am teaching an international blended learning seminar (second round now, third to come) together with 5 colleagues from Poland, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands and Germany for international students from these countries on postcolonial memory in Europe. For more information see: https://portal.uni-koeln.de/international/uzk-weltweit/eduventure/eduventure-cologne-ivac/public-history). We might add a valuable perspective on international public history teaching. If you are interested, please let me know! Christine Gundermann, University of Cologne
Dear Colleague,
thank you for your response, which is very welcome! Yes, I am sure this would make a wonderful contribution to our round table. In the meantime, Thomas Cauvin has accepted to chair this session, which is excellent as well. Bram De Ridder, of Leuven University, opted to serve as a respondent as well, looking at the contribution of (recently graduated) PhD’s to research and society. So we will have you, assessing a course at the master’s level, Bram looking at PhD’s, and me assessing a brand new course at the bachelor’s level. I’ll contact you shortly for the details required to fill out the proposal form!
Mit nochmaligem Dank, Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld