Call for contributions for a symposium on “Teaching science with light projection: regimes of vision in the classroom, 1880-1940”
Here is a call for contributions for a symposium on
“Teaching science with light projection: regimes of vision in the classroom, 1880-1940”
at the ESHS in Bologna, 31 August-3 September 2020.
Organizers: Nelleke Teughels and Wouter Egelmeers
In the early 19th
century, the ideas of reform pedagogues such as Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi (1746-1827) gave rise to a didactic turn towards the visual
that criticized
an exclusive textual mediation of knowledge through books and lectures
(Depaepe 1999). The pedagogues and policymakers who strove for a more
child-centred approach to teaching were soon joined by media producers
and marketers in their aim to transform the
classroom into a multimodal space for learning.
By the late 19th
century, photographic images had taken up an important role in
facilitating this visual turn in educational theory and practice.
They were seen as direct representations of
reality, ‘evidence of a novel kind’ and, above all, as visual ‘facts’.
(Nelson 2000: 427).
From the turn of the 20th
century onwards, teachers were increasingly pressured to incorporate
high-profile media technologies such as stereoscopes, lantern
projectors, epi(dia)scopes
and film projectors into their lessons (Cuban 1986). The accuracy of photographic images and the flawless projections enabled by these new technologies inaugurated
new regimes of vision and sensoriality that equated light
with truth and vision with knowledge (Eisenhower 2006). At the same
time, projection-aided lessons provided powerful commentaries on what
was shown, conditioning pupils’ practices
of looking and giving rise to particular ways they were supposed to
understand the world (Good 2019).
We propose a symposium engaging
with educational uses of light projection from diverse perspectives. We
aim to explore this topic in relation to the material and practical
aspects of visual teaching and the various regimes
of vision that are engendered by the use of visual media like
stereographic photographs, lantern projection, the episcope or film
projection. Papers could center on a variety of aspects of projection
media in educational contexts, ranging from topics like
entertaining uses of the magic lantern to the specific modes of
scientific vision (Daston & Galison 2007), taught in educational
contexts varying from pre-school to secondary or higher education.
Please
send your abstract (max. 300 words including possible references) and a
short biographical note of the author(s) (max. 150 words) to Nelleke
Teughels (nelleke.teughels@kuleuven.be
) no later than 11 December 2019.
References
Cuban, Larry.
Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920. New York: Columbia universityTeachers college press, 1986.
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books; Distributed by the MIT Press.
Depaepe, Marc.
Order in Progress: Everyday Educational Practice in Primary Schools, Belgium, 1880 - 1970. Studia Paedagogica. N. S. 29. Leuven: university press, 2000.
Eisenhauer,
Jennifer F. (2006) Next Slide Please: The Magical, Scientific, and
Corporate Discourses of Visual Projection Technologies, Studies in Art
Education, 47:3, 198-214, DOI: 10.1080/00393541.2006.11650082
Nelson, Robert S. “The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art ‘History’ in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.
Critical Inquiry 26, nr. 3 (2000): 414–434.