Tina van der Vlies is nominated for the shortlist of the "Graduate School Award for PhD Excellence" with her article ‘Multidirectional War Narratives in History Textbooks’, Paedagogica Historica 52:3, 300-314.
The present fundamentally affects how history is narrated and interpreted, but past events play an important role in understanding the present and future as well. An example is 9/11: following this event, the comparison with the Holocaust became widespread, paradoxically based on the notion that the events were “unimaginable” in nature. This demonstrates how the Holocaust can be seen as a 'master-trauma'. In her article, Van der Vlies scrutinizes cross-references between events, times and places in English history textbooks (1920-1960) in order to uncover familiar frames of references while narrating and interpreting the national past. She uses the notion of ‘multidirectional textbook narratives’: narrations in history textbooks that combine different histories, places and times in a productive way to generate meaning from historical combinations.
Next Monday March 27 (16.30 – 17.30), the winners of the award will be announced.