[Commlist] CfP: "The Educational dispositif" – TMG Journal of Media History

CfP: THE EDUCATIONAL DISPOSITIF – themed issue of the journal TMG 
Journal of Media History (Abstract deadline: October 1, 2021)

CONCEPT:
The growing body of work on the history of audiovisual educational media 
in recent years has also led to intensified methodological efforts to 
grasp the complex interplay between institutional policies, screening 
situations, and the form, style, and content of the respective media 
employed (be they magic lantern slides, educational films or television 
programs). In particular, the (heuristic) concept of the dispositif has 
proved to be extremely instructive in this regard, as it allows to map 
these different elements in a large variety of performative educational 
situations and describe their pragmatic interrelations: expectations, 
requirements, goals.

Therefore, we propose to adopt the term educational dispositif as a 
starting point for a themed issue and define it as a variant of the 
“performance dispositif” of illustrated lectures that Frank Kessler 
expounded in a recent article.[1] Kessler has modeled the abovementioned 
set of elements as a triangular configuration of so-called poles – 
performance context, text, and user-spectator – that stand in an 
interdependent, pragmatic relation to each other.

At the same time, by focusing on the educational aspects of the 
performance dispositif, we want to open up a space for considerations 
that capture the specificity—and productivity to media and cultural 
studies—of the pedagogical issues brought to bear on media use in the 
classroom and lecture hall. On the one hand, this means engaging with 
the heterogeneous arrangements of objects, people, spaces, technologies, 
policies, and implicit and explicit norms that constitute actual 
educational practices, and the contributions of media within them. These 
arrangements have been the subject of nuanced considerations as well as 
apodictic prescriptions by pedagogues past and present (as witnessed in 
many guideline documents) and have recently become the subject of 
increasing sociological and ethnographic interest.[2]

On the other hand, this means investigating the inventory of pedagogical 
and aesthetic concepts used in considering and evaluating media objects 
and their uses for teaching and learning. In the debates about the 
correct use of media in the classroom, two terms in particular stand out 
for their connection to media studies: the term “contemplation” 
(“Anschauung”), derived from philosophical aesthetics,[3] and the term 
“showing” (“Zeigen”), derived from the theory of didactics.[4] 
Contemplation refers to the complementarity and cooperation of 
perception and concept as well as an “aesthetic heteronomy” that allows 
aesthetic objects to be used for the didactic purpose of instruction. 
(This was fleshed out, among others, in Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s 
concept of Anschauungsunterricht, the “object lesson”). The goal of 
showing seems comparatively straightforward: to display something to 
students that is not immediately given. But educational scholar Klaus 
Prange, among others, has developed a more fine-grained taxonomy of 
“showing” in pedagogical contexts that encompasses a wide host of 
activities including not only representation, but also exercise and 
incitement to react.

While concepts such as these should not be limited to exploring visual 
media (see for instance the boom of educational audiotapes from the 
1960s onwards), much of the expanding use of media in education since 
the mid-19th century was organized around the idea of visual education, 
which was understood as an engine for the democratization of knowledge 
and facilitated by an explosion of reproductive mass media.

For the themed issue we would like to demonstrate the productivity to 
media studies of investigating pedagogical concepts and practices by 
outlining the workings of a variety of educational dispositifs of media 
usage. The issue is open for theoretical and methodological reflections 
as well as for the detailed analysis of the techniques, grammars, and 
operations used in the context of media in school, university, 
educational advertising/counseling, popular education or vocational 
training/guidance.

POSSIBLE TOPICS include, but are not limited to, the following, 
concerning both historical and contemporaneous educational uses of media:
– teaching practices and how they incorporate(d) media
– economies of educational media
– institutional histories
– case studies of individual types of media (or specific combinations of 
media) and their educational use
– close readings of media objects and their use within educational 
dispositifs
– media-specific aesthetic forms in education
PRACTICAL GUIDELINES
We ask interested researchers to submit an abstract of max. 350 words 
which clearly outlines a research question, relevance of the topic, a 
theoretical/historical framework, justification of research material and 
approach, and main argument.


Please send your proposals to the editors of this issue: Marie-Noëlle 
Yazdanpanah ((Marie-Noelle.Yazdanpanah /at/ geschichte.lbg.ac.at) 
<mailto:(Marie-Noelle.Yazdanpanah /at/ geschichte.lbg.ac.at)>) and Nico de 
Klerk ((n.h.deklerk /at/ uu.nl) <mailto:(n.h.deklerk /at/ uu.nl)>). Deadline: please 
hand in your abstract no later than 1 October 2021. Authors will be 
notified of acceptance by 1 November 2021.

TENTATIVE TIMELINE
The authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited to contribute a 
full article (max. 8000 words, excluding references and bibliography). 
No payment from the authors will be required.

– Abstract: 1 October, 2021
– Notification of acceptance: 1 November 2021
– First version of accepted article: 1 May, 2022
– Peer review: 1 June, 2022
– Revised version of articles (after peer-review): 1 October, 2022
– Publication special issue: January, 2023.
TMG JOURNAL OF MEDIA HISTORY
is an open access peer reviewed academic journal, published in the 
Netherlands. Its aim is to promote and publish research in media 
history. It offers a platform for original research and for 
contributions that reflect theory formation and methods within media 
history. For more information and author guidelines, see: 
https://www.tmgonline.nl/ <https://www.tmgonline.nl/>

EDITORS:
Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah – on behalf of the research project 
‘Educational film practice in Austria, 1918-1970’, University of Vienna 
and Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH), Vienna

Nico de Klerk – on behalf of the research project ‘Projecting knowledge: 
the magic lantern as a tool for mediated science communication in the 
Netherlands, 1880-1940’, Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON), Utrecht 
University (UU)

––––––
References:

[1] Frank Kessler, ‘The educational magic lantern dispositif’, Dellmann, 
Kessler (reds.), A million pictures: magic lantern slides in the history 
of learning (New Barnet: John Libbey, 2020), 181-191.

[2] Tobias Röhl, ‘Unterrichten. Praxistheoretische Dezentrierungen eines 
alltäglichen Geschehens’, Schäfer (ed.),Praxistheorie. Ein 
soziologisches Forschungsprogramm (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016), 323-343.

[3] Waltraud Naumann-Beyer: ‘Anschauung’, in: Karlheinz Barck a.o. 
(eds.), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, Vol. 1 (Stuttgart, Weimar: J.B. 
Metzler 2010), 208-246.

[4] Klaus Prange, Die Zeigestruktur in der Erziehung. Grundriss der 
Operativen Pädagogik(Paderborn: Brill 2019).

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