Author(s): Pedram Ghelichi
Among junior students taking architectural history courses, there is often a misconception that ‘history’ is a series of static, pre-packaged, and specialized information that can and should be perceived only objectively. This problematic view could turn students into passive recipients, with their efforts during the course merely resulting in a description of past events. In this context, when the subject, narrator, and voice are eliminated systematically from historiography courses, how can the status quo be challenged? To explore this question, an educational experiment was conducted on two key theoretical grounds: the plural nature of historiog¬raphy and the unavoidable gap in historical representations. First, history is never a singular narrative but rather a series of interrelated perspectives and narratives; and secondly, those narratives cannot fully represent historical events in their complexity. Once this modality is adopted, conventional history course essay exercises are no longer relevant; instead, the very practice of historiography becomes the topic of study. Thus, students were asked to draft a historical graphic novel while paying particular attention to the role that the media and the narrator play in such historical narratives. In such endeavors, students not only acquire a deeper under¬standing of the complex contexts surrounding each historical case but also recognize the significance of the media and the narrator in architectural narratives—a shift that will guide students from passive recipients of historical information to critical and creative writers.
Volume Editors
ISBN
978-1-944214-49-4