Engaging with Historical Traumas

This book provides case-studies of how teachers and practitioners have attempted to develop more effective 'experiential learning' strategies in order to better equip students for their voluntary engagements in communities, working for sustainable peace and a tolerant society free of discrimination.
All chapters revolve around this central theme, testing and trying various paradigms and experimenting with different practices, in a wide range of geographical and historical arenas. They demonstrate the innovative potentials of connecting know-how from different disciplines and combining experiences from various practitioners in this field of shaping historical memory, including non-formal and formal sectors of education, non-governmental workers, professionals from memorial sites and museums, local and global activists, artists, and engaged individuals. In so doing, they address the topic of collective historical traumas in ways that go beyond conventional classroom methods.
Interdisciplinary in approach, the book provides a combination of theoretical reflections and concrete pedagogical suggestions that will appeal to educators working across history, sociology, political science, peace education and civil awareness education, as well as memory activists and remembrance practitioners.

Introduction Part 1: Creative Engagements with 'Ghosts from the Past' in Traditional Classroom Contexts 1. Why would you use a Fascist Greeting to Celebrate a Football Victory? Discussing Historical Revisionism and Genocide Memory with Danish High School Teenagers 2. Breaking the Nationalistic Master-Narrative: The Case of Teaching History in Contemporary Croatia 3. Fictional Family Tree: Storytelling and Short Film Project 4. From Traditional to the Moving Classroom: Empathy as a Key Component of the Classroom Teaching Part 2: Places of Pain as Sites of Critical Knowledge Production 5. The Last Ones: Serbian and Russian Prisoners on the Alpine Front 6. #Never Forget: Teaching Trauma Experience at Historical Places 7. Exploring the 1991 Battle of Vukovar through experiential learning 8. Speak Your Mind but Mind Your Speech Part 3: Using Artistic Strategies to Respond, Reflect, and Overcome 9. Atomic Poetry and Active Learning: From Japan to Newfoundland 10. "Through the Refugee's Eyes': Experiences with the Experiential and Interactive Theatre Show 11. The Gestalt of Historical Research, Art, and Education: The Circus Theme and Performing Arts in Remembering the Tyranny of the National Socialist Regime Part 4: Healing and Embodied Strategies of Learning 12. Utilising the Breath as an Experiential Tool to Teach, Learn and Manage Trauma 13. Art Therapy and Integral Education with Traumatized Youths in Bosnia and Herzegovina 14. Poetry Against Trump: Shared Experience and Creative Resistance Part 5: Playing (with) the Past, Rehearsing (for) the Future 15. Performative Experiential Learning Strategies: Reenacting the Historical, Enacting the Everyday 16. Escaping the Thucydides Trap in IR class 17. Designing Videogames for Teaching about Transmission of Historical Traumas: A Case Study of Memory Gliders 18. In Memory of Memory Gliders: Preservation of EU-Funded Serious Games as Digital Heritage