History Textbooks in Africa (CfP)

History textbooks, as with all other textbooks, play a vital role in education and their use to support teaching and learning is an almost universally accepted practice. They are widely used in classrooms to fulfil a range of purposes ranging from transmitting knowledge to legitimising dominant historical narratives. This elevates history textbooks to a powerful medium of mass communication which can be employed by dominant groups in society to, amongst other uses, establish cultural and political hegemony and to uplift society. Very few members of society experience school without being exposed to the power of history textbooks. As such history textbooks are the one form of the printed mass media which probably has the widest societal reach. Despite the afore-mentioned history textbooks in South Africa are an under-researched field (only 21 academic articles have appeared since the 1940s which have analysed history textbooks) and concerted academic scholarship into this genre only emerging in the past few years.

This is the first call for papers for a special edition of Yesterday & Todayon History textbooks in Africa. We welcome contributions that focus on the analysis of history textbooks, the ways in which textbooks are used by teachers and learners, the politics of publishing history textbooks, theories and methodologies related to History textbooks, the use of textbooks in classrooms, comparative studies or on any other History textbook related topic.

·         Articles should be ± 8 000 words in length and should follow generally accepted academic conventions.

·         All articles submitted will be subjected to a double-blind peer review process.

·         Articles should adhere to the criteria of Yesterday & Today - see http://www.scielo.org.za/.

·         The final due date for submissions is 31 Augustus 2015.

Please send your contribution to any member of the editorial team:

Professor Johan Wassermann (UKZN) - wassermannj@remove-this.ukzn.ac.za
Dr Carol Bertram (UKZN) - BertramC@remove-this.ukzn.ac.za
Dr Inga Niehaus (GEI) - niehaus@remove-this.gei.de