Kontaktzonen der Geschichtsvermittlung Transnationales Lernen

Contact zones of mediating history. Transnational learning about the Holocaust
in the post-Nazi migration society
How can the mass crimes by the Nazis and the Second World War be mediated in
today’s migration society? What is the role of young people and pupils in this
process? In what kind of ways can the national traditions of historiography be extended
and questioned by transnational perspectives? What is their meaning for the present?
In her PhD thesis Nora Sternfeld develops a theoretical framework for a new
approach to the current practice of mediating the history of the Holocaust. Her analysis
focuses on perspectives that derive from the recognition of the migration society
and its implications for the cultures of remembrance in a shared present.
The thesis is located between theory and practice and based on the research
and education project “’And what does this have to do with me?’ Transnational
images of NS–history”, which was conducted between September 2009 and August
2011 by trafo.K – a Viennese office for education and critical knowledge production –
and financially supported by the funding programme Sparkling Science of the Federal
Ministry for Science and Research.
Against the background of experiences in the practice of mediating history,
developments and approaches of teaching history, Holocaust Education, pedagogy of
memorials, historical-political education, migration pedagogy and cultural mediation
are meticulously examined and critically reflected.
To do this, Nora Sternfeld uses the concept of “contact zones”, developed by
Mary Louise Pratt and James Clifford, which serves as a tool that is used in recent
years to think of museums and the learning process as sites of negotiating shared
histories. These postcolonial claims are considered and rethought for memorials and
educational situations.
This process creates spaces in which it is possible to debate what has happened
and to negotiate about the meaning of the past for the present.
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