Melina Scheuermann (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Arts Education at the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Porto. She holds a Master’s degree in Cinema Studies from Stockholm University, (Sweden) and a Bachelor degree in Cultural Studies (Major) and Arts-Media-Aesthetic Education (Minor) from the University of Bremen (Germany). In her research, Melina Scheuermann integrates studies in visual culture, visual history of education and arts education with artistic practice. She inquires the relations of images and imaginaries of ‘nature’ in the history of education intersecting her work with decolonial, post-colonial and feminist works in visual culture. She nurtures an interest in arts-based methodologies as archival research, always linking those to pedagogy and arts education. Currently, Melina Scheuermann is associated with the Institute for Investigation in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS) and her research is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (REF: 2022.12937.BD).

Theses title
Unlearning ‘nature’ in times of ecological crisis: Deconstruction of imag(inari)es of modern-colonial ‘nature’ in object lesson picture books for children across Empires in the 19th and early 20th centuries

FCT reference
2022.12937.BD

Abstract
My project integrates research in visual culture with the visual history of education and arts education. I set out to study the images and imaginaries of a modern-colonial notion of ‘nature’ that were reproduced in picture books for children employed within the object lesson method across empires in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I study two picture book series in particular: a series by the Swiss educator Johann Staub (1875/6) that was adopted from German to Portuguese in 1904/5 and several volumes of a series by the German educator and scholar Eduard Walther that were published by the J.F. Schreiber editorial house between 1873 and 1891. Through a visual discourse analysis and a performative-archival practice that I elaborated as part of this thesis, I investigate the images of the picture books that (re)produce ideas and visual discursive formations of ‘nature’ (child-nature relations, landscape images, natural history illustrations). Unlearning ‘nature’ means questioning the very concept of ‘nature’ as it underwrites much educational theory and informed visual teaching materials, and inquiring how it has in its modern-colonial binary construction with culture informed hegemonic relations between humans and the more-than-human as well as the dehumanisation of the “Other”. It is also from the place of attempting to unlearn, that I construct the online platform titled the archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive (currently in process; hosted on Research Catalogue). This archive aims to question hegemonic archival logics and methodologies by promoting situated, plural and creative activations of the picture books based on my performative-archival practice. Deriving from that performative-archival practice as well as my visual cultural analysis, I produce a pedagogical toolkit that offers pedagogical and methodological strategies within archives, particularly dealing with visual sources. The toolkit promotes critical visual literacy and is based on anti-discriminatory and transformative education.

Supervision
Cat Martins

More info

• 9716-E132-1E4E
• 0000-0001-5711-6117