Knowledge about Africa: Discourses and Practices of Textbook Production in Germany and England (1945-1995)

• Applicant: Dr. Robert Maier, since 10/2015
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262099283

The project explores continuities and changes in knowledge related to Africa, and in the political and social processes in which knowledge is debated, canonised and transmitted, in East and West Germany and England between 1945 and 1995. Textbooks are the project's central object of study and its key source. As mass media whose impact is perceived as far-reaching and which carry a powerful nimbus of objectivity, yet which exist within official state frameworks and are inevitably influenced by the political climate of their time, thus giving rise to debate, textbooks allow us to access important insights into dominant patterns of interpretation and knowledge structures in the societies and eras which produced them. The project will conduct synchronic and diachronic comparative analysis of curricular stipulations relating to, and textbook representations of, Africa, and draw up genealogies of Africa-related knowledge which alone promise to fill a significant research gap. The repositories of knowledge on Africa held by the three societies at the core of the project bear eloquent witness to these societies' self-descriptions; in this context, the project will go above and beyond documenting societal sets of knowledge on Africa by exploring discourses and practices around textbook production, with a specific focus on factors and stakeholders instrumental in identifying the knowledge deemed relevant, or, conversely, irrelevant and therefore negligible, to upcoming generations and, by implication, to societal futures. The project will thus harness innovative approaches to the history of knowledge and related research on cultural translation in order to generate new discoveries in historical research into education and textbooks. It will examine whether and how knowledge on Africa contained in textbooks circulated among fields of knowledge, experiencing cultural translation, inclusion in new contexts, and combination and re-combination. The project team will analyse corpora from textbook publishers which historical research has thus far barely accessed. The project's work will revolve around three key areas: 1. Curricula and textbooks published between 1945 and 1995, with analysis of text, images and student tasks relating to representations of Africa; 2. practices of textbook production, to be primarily explored using archive sources; and 3. societal debates on knowledge about Africa in textbooks, using sources including archive material, grey literature, recommendations on textbooks, petitions, and statements and decrees issued by national and transnational institutions. The researchers will turn an attentive eye to processes of knowledge transfer transcending boundaries between nations and even those drawn by the Cold War, and will be guided by questions closely associated with analytical perspectives previous research has identified as of key importance, such as the concepts of race and agency and historiographical narratives of progress.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Professorin Dr. Simone Lässig, until 9/2015