New Curriculum Histories

Abstract

While a curriculum history is usually understood as a thing – a narrative, an interpretation, evidence, and research questions – this chapter considers curriculum history as a doing. This approach to curriculum history is animated by three dissatisfactions: the tendencies of curriculum history to be written and read in ways that affirm representational logics, the passivity of nonhuman matter, and the elision of thinking-feeling dynamics. This chapter is interested in how curriculum history is read, responded to, and taken into our thoughts, judgments, and actions. Drawing on new materialism and affect theories, this chapter wonders if and how curriculum history might become something else in times of crisis. This chapter considers the affective and aesthetic ties that inhibit and support transitions to new ways of thinking and doing curriculum history.