Toward Posthumanist Historical Thinking: History Education Beyond Anthropocentrism

• In Event: Engaging Students in History Through Multiple Means

Abstract

This paper (re)imagines the purposes/possibilities of history education through perspectives, practices, and potentialities of posthumanist ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling. Working within the subfield of history education concerned with historical thinking and historical consciousness, this paper offers posthumanist historical thinking (PHT) as a vitalist materialist approach to teaching and learning history. Posthumanist historical thinking moves beyond humanist and Anthropocentric relationships and presentations of the past. PHT invites learners to step into, think with, and feel the past as an opportunity to use responsibility, ethics, and imagination to care for human and more-than-human worlds. The paper outlines five enactments for posthumanist historical thinking that extend/complicate existing historical thinking skills/concepts that operate with/in humanist frameworks.

Authors

• Mark Helmsing, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Bretton A. Varga, California State University - Chico
  Presenting Author