Affective Emotions: The Pedagogical Challenges of Knowing War

Abstract

Experience is emotional but there are no separate things called emotion in it.

—John Dewey (1958/2005, 43)

Notes

Notes

The Illinois State Board of Education, like other State Boards, explicitly defines their Learning Goals. In the instance of Illinois, Goal 16 requires students to “Understand events, trends, individuals and movements shaping the history of Illinois, the United States, and other Nations.” To that end, the students learn about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I and II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War.

Although scholars have long used the terms emotions and affect interchangeably, I acknowledge the distinction between the two terms as I outline briefly in this article. But for brevity, I use an intentional written construction of emotional/affective to indicate the close similarity of the terms realizing, of course, their distinction.

The Smithsonian Institution's NMAH closed the popular war-themed exhibit on September 5, 2006. There remains a scaled-down version of the exhibition in the physical space of the museum as well as portions of the exhibition on an online format available at http://amhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/.

The student population included families whose parent(s) were directly involved with the military either as active military members, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, government personnel, and Veteran grandparents.

The history of the museum and its transformation from private to public institution is expanded upon in work by Jeffrey Abt (2011) and Tony Bennett (1999).