Angel of History. I can see for miles

Commissioned public artwork Focal Point Gallery, Southend 12 Sept - 22 Oct 2011 2.6 x 15M digital print for the railway bridge that spans Southend-on-Sea’s pedestrianised high street.

John of Worcester and the science of history

Although the ‘chronicle of chronicles’ compiled at Worcester c1095-c1140 is now firmly attributed to John of Worcester, rather than Florence, major questions remain. A central issue is that the semi-autograph manuscript of the chronicle (now Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Ms 157) underwent several alterations to its structure and contents, as codicological evidence demonstrates. These included the incorporation of important illuminations, which have been surprisingly little considered in their overall manuscript context. This article focuses on these illuminations, and will argue that their presence in this version of the chronicle makes it something even more distinctive than the learned, revisionist chronological work of Marianus Scotus upon which it was based. John of Worcester’s chosen images are linked not only to his political narrative but also to theological works and to cutting-edge science, newly translated from Arabic. The presence of such miniatures in a twelfth-century chronicle is unique, and they are central to the final form given to the Worcester chronicle by John of Worcester himself in this key manuscript. Their analysis thus brings into focus the impressive assembly of materials which the chronicle offered to readers, to shape their understanding of ongoing events.

Healing the wounds of war: memories of violence and the making of history in Zimbabwe's most recent past.

How does a society less than two decades after a liberation war which involved large sections of the population come to terms with the memories of violence and war — a war in which there was no clear distinction between insurgent and counter‐insurgent, liberator and oppressor and in which the majority of the casualties can be found among the rural civilian population? This was a predicament not exclusive to Zimbabwe, but one which also applies to Mozambique, South Africa and, more recently, to Rwanda. Since its independence Zimbabwe has been a prime example of successful reconciliation. Ranger has argued that spiritual healing has contributed importantly to coming to terms with the trauma of war through turning violence into history. Here it will be argued that an analysis of the intersections between memories of violence, healing, and history reveals a twofold process. Social healing is made possible by a shift from conviction and compensation to revealing without convicting. At the same time healing provides an arena for communities in which competing and contesting memories of violence are renegotiated. Through these processes sense is being made of the past; history is being made.

An Evaluation of”Middle Ages Dead or Live?”The first interactive exhibition at the National Museum of History

This is a study conducted at, and for, the National Museum of History in Stockholm. The aim of the study was to confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis that visitors in a traditional museum environment might not take part in interactivity in an interactive exhibition. And if they do the visitors might skip the texts and objects on display. To answer this and other questions a multiple method was used. Both non participant observations and exit interviews were conducted. After a description of the interactive exhibits, theory of knowledge and learning is presented before the gathered data is presented. All together 443 visitors were observed. In the observations the visitors were timed on how much time they spent in the room, the time spent on the interactivity, texts and objects. In the 40 interviews information about visitors’ participation in the interactivity was gathered. What interactivity the visitor found easiest, hardest, funniest and most boring.The result did not confirm the hypothesis. All kinds of visitors, children and adults, participated in the interactivities. The visitors took part in the texts and objects and the interactive exhibits.

English teaching and the uses of history

A brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. Discusses history as a way of rereading English in an attempt to reach a more complex understanding of what literacy and English teaching are. Explores the ways in which English teachers' background shaped not just their views on the subject but also their classroom practice, their stance toward new subjects, and their subjectivity as teachers immersed in and produced by particular configurations of what literature should be. (PM)

The architectural edifice and the phantoms of history

Starting with the literal and physical role of the "ground," this article attempts to bring this "ground" into a discursive arena. In particular, the author is thinking about the period at the end of a war, the period in between destruction and reconstruction, exemplified in some classic postwar films in which the architecture of the city is in a state of ruin—deformed, eroded, and dark—but there is no further destruction. The article calls this period "a gap of history" and its investigation is set against a claim that architecture is a reconstructive practice, that it is enlightening and aspiring. History, on the other hand, is captured by scenes of the battlefield and dominated by a narrative of war and destruction. The article makes reference to the real and fantasy desire for destruction (war and history) and reconstruction (architecture), and how through the connecting plane of the ground architecture is entangled in war and history of destruction as it figures in reconstruction. Architecture is contingent on history as discursive—history that is not unified, fixed, or evolutionary but rather contested and rewritten within a conflictual battlefield.