Session Information
17 SES 03, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
At last year’s ECER, in his concluding comments, the organizer of a Network 17 symposium on past ‘learning processes and disabled identitites’ empathically called on all those present to engage in disability history in the future. One could discard such a passionate, but rather normative plea and wonder why anyone should venture into territory unrelated to one’s habitual research interests. Yet, one could also ask oneself: ‘why not’?
Assuming, perhaps naively, that disability histories to date for the most part remain the province of disabled people, much like gender and women’s histories are still primarily women’s field of expertise, men’s histories that of men, and queer histories that of non-heterosexuals (see, e.g.: Barton & Oliver, 1997; Walgenbach et al., 2007; Martschukat & Stieglitz, 2008; and AG Queer Studies, 2009), this paper is intended as a historiography of curiosity.
Contrary to what has recently been suggested in certain writings critical of current developments in academia, this paper does not believe that curiositas, as a primary condition and guiding principle of modern research (Benedict, 2001), has disappeared from the human sciences, in favour of strategical interests to do with marketing and networking (Alt, 2012). Rather, it is believed that over time the notion of curiosity itself has changed, and with it notions of truth, rationality and epistemology.
Our paper, then, sets out to investigate whether the marginalization of certain research can be related to a pluralization of curiosity and a prioritization of particular, historically shaped forms of curiosity. It further explores whether a consciously ‘situated’ and ‘embodied’ (Haraway, 1988) curiosity for the unfamiliar could stimulate freedom of thought, learning opportunities, and development for all educational histories imaginable.
For, as much as there is to be said on the extent to which ‘freedom, education and development for all’ have been championed (or not) and interpreted in the past by educational figures or institutes, other questions seem no less intriguing. For instance, to what extent does educational research, and particularly historical-pedagogical research, allow itself freedom to learn from its own course and to develop? Are certain research fields and their respective advocates given less freedom to learn and develop than other ones and, if so, what are the implications? What does it take for marginalized research to emancipate itself and to be placed on top of the agenda? Such issues will be at the forefront of our paper.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
AG Queer Studies (Ed.), Verqueerte Verhältnisse. Intersektionale, ökonomiekritische und strategische Interventionen. Hamburg: Männerschwarmverlag, 2009. Peter-André Alt, “Motive der Forschung. Ist der Kandidat denn auch gut vernetzt?” Frankfurter Allgemeine (Feuilleton), Tuesday 1 January 2012, http://www.faz.net/-gsn-6wmz6 (last accessed on 27 January 2012). Len Barton and Mike Oliver (Eds.), Disability Studies: Past, Present and Future, Leeds: The Disability Press, 1997. Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of of Early Modern Inquiry, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies, 14(3), 1988, pp. 575-599. Jürgen Martschukat and Olaf Stieglitz, Geschichte der Männlichkeiten. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2008. Kate Rousmaniere, “Questioning the Visual in the History of Education.” History of Education, 30(2), 2001, pp. 109-116. Katharina Walgenbach et al. (Eds.), Gender als interdependente Kategorie. Neue Perspektiven auf Intersektionalität, Diversität udn Heterogenität, Opladen and Farmington Hills, 2007.
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