Paper short abstract:

My paper will discuss my experience in teaching a basic course on historical analyses. Particular emphasis will be placed on the “methodological imagination and pedagogical skills” that are particularly relevant for the present panel.

Paper long abstract:

Teaching historical approaches to students of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology/Folkloristics implies various challenges. In teaching a recent course, it was by coincidence that I discovered a fascinating possibility of bringing together the requirements of the course and the joy. Essentially, my approach offered a personal approach by combining different resources. In offering documents, material findings and photographs of Luise, a young educated woman who lived at the end of the 19th century, I invited students to reflect bourgeois culture and female lives of the past as well as sources and methods of historical study. The enthusiastic response I received for this approach made me understand how important it is to offer aspects of "real lives" in addition to historical sources that present-day students might find it difficult to relate to.