Holding Water: An Index of Affectual Possibilities and Shuttling Intensities Across the Social Studies

• In Event: Child and Teacher Education From a Posthuman Lens

Abstract

This paper theorizes how affect—conceptualized as an embodied intensity of feeling distinct from emotion—can open up alternative pathways of inquiry in social studies classrooms. After discussing prior connections between SSE research and affect, emotion, and feeling, we focus our analysis on media texts covering two historically significant events: the boat evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11 and the U.S. Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. Through our analysis, we aim to demonstrate how affective readings of diverse texts can provide social studies teachers and students with lines of inquiry that could complement more prevalent foci on historical thinking, and we argue that using media can create multiplicitous pathways that veer toward teaching and learning about how history is felt.

Authors

• Peter M Nelson, University of British Columbia

• Bretton A. Varga, California State University - Chico