Emotions in the History Museum

Watson, Sheila

doi:10.1002/9781118829059.wbihms992

Cited by 17 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…This perspective is in congruence with psychological research that suggests that cognitive and affective aspects of empathy are interdependent, defining it as a process of understanding and emotionally responding to the thoughts and feelings of others (Hoffman 1984). It also resonates with recent insights of museum studies, in which interrelations of reason and emotion and the notion that emotional responses are shaped by people's cultural backgrounds have similarly been emphasised (Watson 2015). Smith's (2011) notion of registers of engagement attempts to give justice to the whole spectrum of ideological and affective visitors' responses as well as to the intensity of their engagement in museums.…”

Section: Historical Empathysupporting

confidence: 68%

Historical empathy in a museum: uniting contextualisation and emotional engagement

Savenije

Bruijn

2017

International Journal of Heritage Studies

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Museums, memorial centres and other heritage institutions use various strategies to evoke an emotional response that serves to elicit empathy with the historical events and actors that are portrayed in exhibitions. To increase historical understanding, however, both emotional engagement with and contextual understanding of these historical figures are needed. Using the concept of historical empathy, this paper examines the continuous interplay between cognitive and affective dimensions of history learning in museums. We conducted a case study at Museon in The Hague, the Netherlands. We studied a learning session on children living through the Second World War, the museum's strategies employed in the exhibition, the entrance narratives of secondary school students participating in the session and their engagement with the exhibition and with the educational activities. While most of the students did not feel related to WWII prior to their museum visit, the museum managed to engage many of them with personal stories and artefacts and by offering multiple and new perspectives. Our findings underscore the interplay between cognitive and affective dimensions of historical empathy and show that museums can serve as powerful contexts for developing this skill among school students.

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Section: Historical Empathysupporting

confidence: 68%

Historical empathy in a museum: uniting contextualisation and emotional engagement

Savenije

Bruijn

2017

International Journal of Heritage Studies

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“…As has been demonstrated by Yaniv Poria (2003), Smith (2006Smith ( , 2011 and Elasaid Munro (2013), museums are clearly places where people go not just to learn but also to feel. Similarly, the works of Sheila Watson (2015), and Kate Gregory and Andrea Witcomb (2007) have demonstrated that emotions are central to processes of learning and visitor engagement. Visitors in this study often used highly emotive language when relating material to their life.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 92%

‘I think I know a little bit about that anyway, so it’s okay’: Museum visitor strategies for disengaging with confronting mental health material

Dudley

2017

Mus. Soc.

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Visitor engagement at museums is an area that has received significant attention from museum practitioners and academics over the last decade. However, very few studies have sought to understand how and why visitors may actively employ strategies to shut down attempts to elicit deep emotional engagement with museum material and messages. This paper looks at an exhibition in a major museum in Australia that discusses mental health and illness. It discusses the high rates of emotional disengagement that were found amongst 172 visitors who were faced with emotionally confronting material and argues that emotions enabled, as well as hindered, constructive, critical reflection amongst visitors.Key words: Mental-health, Museums, Engagement, Disengagement, Empathy

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“…In museum and heritage studies it has now been argued that it is impossible to understand why people visit museums and engage with heritage if emotions are not considered (Smith 2006;Gregory and Witcomb 2007;Watson 2015;Smith and Campbell 2016). Visitors were seen as active consumers and producers of emotions in museums, not vessels to be filled with information (Bangall 2003, 87).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Visitors were seen as active consumers and producers of emotions in museums, not vessels to be filled with information (Bangall 2003, 87). Emotions, thus, became understood as central in heritage-making in terms of how visitors were both engaging and disengaging with emotions (Gregory and Witcomb 2007;Smith 2006Smith , 2010Smith , 2015Smith , 2016Watson 2015Watson , 2016Smith and Campbell 2016;Dudley 2017). The sensory nondiscursive level and how affect is provoked by the museum atmosphere was also understood as interwoven in the museum experience (Gregory and Witcomb 2007;Witcomb 2013;Schorch 2014; Tolia-Kelly, Waterton and Watson 2017; de Jong 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotions in the Museum of Medicine. An investigation of how museum educators employ emotions and what these emotions do

Rodéhn

2018

International Journal of Heritage Studies

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The aim of this paper is to explore how museum educators employ emotions when they are doing guided tours and to investigate what these emotions do. The paper explores five guided tours in the Museum of Medical History (Uppsala, Sweden) located in the former Ulleråker psychiatric hospital and asylum. The guided tours take place in the exhibitions focusing on surgery, nursing and mental care, but this paper focuses on guided tour in the exhibition displaying mental care. The guided tours were filmed and documented using participant observation. The material is analysed with the help of Sara Ahmed's queer-feminist phenomenological approach to emotions. The paper shows that the museum educators used a multitude of emotions to orient the students' emotional experiences and their knowledge about mental care and mental illness. Emotional restraint, fear, antipathy and sympathy were expressed in relation to patients, and this contributed to an othering of patients. The depiction of patients was used to express empathy in relation to caretakers. The study reveals that the appropriation of emotions works along sanist norms that largely contribute to a further marginalisation of patients. The paper, therefore, calls for a further examination of sanist norms in cultural heritage productions.

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Emotions in the History Museum

Cited by 17 publications

References 34 publications

Historical empathy in a museum: uniting contextualisation and emotional engagement

Historical empathy in a museum: uniting contextualisation and emotional engagement

‘I think I know a little bit about that anyway, so it’s okay’: Museum visitor strategies for disengaging with confronting mental health material

Emotions in the Museum of Medicine. An investigation of how museum educators employ emotions and what these emotions do

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