Historical Affect: an exploration of the affective turn and history education

Abstract:

This seminar explores the affective turn and its implications for history education and history education research.

Peter Nelson asks: what does separating “affect” from “emotion” or “feeling” provide history education researchers and teachers? His presentation explores this question, discussing a range of curricular and pedagogical provisions afforded by theorizing affect as distinct from emotion. Building from the work of sociocultural theorists like Raymond Williams, Lauren Berlant, Brian Massumi, and Kathleen Stewart, his work offers a theory of affect that aims to be particularly attuned to history education curriculum, pedagogy, and the affective landscape that is the classroom. Peter’s presentation is grounded in his recent and ongoing research, what are conceptual and empirical projects that explore affect from diverse vantage points.

In conversation with Peter’s presentation, Katherine Wallace considers what, or where, the past is when affect is in conversation with history and history education. Drawing on sociocultural theorists as well as Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence, her presentation builds on both her MA and doctoral studies to imagine what a shift from possible pasts to a potential past, facilitated by affect, might afford the history classroom.