Olivier Nyirubugara's Books

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

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Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

Can a society, a culture, a country, be trapped by its own memories? The question is not easy to answer, but it would not be a bad idea to cautiously say: 'It depends'. This book is about one society - Rwanda - and its culture, traditions, identities, and memories. More specifically, it discusses some of the ways in which ethnic identities and related memories constitute a deadly trap that needs to be torn apart if mass violence is to be eradicated in that country. It looks into everyday cultural practices such as child naming and oral traditions (myths and tales, proverbs, war poetry etc.) and into political practices that govern the ways in which citizens conceptualise the past. Rwanda was engulfed in a bloody war from 1990 until 1994, the last episode of which was a genocide that claimed about a million lives amongst the Tutsi minority. This book - the first in the Memory Traps series - provides a new understanding of how a seemingly quiet society can suddenly turn into a scene of the most horrible inter-ethnic crimes. It offers an analysis of the complexities and dangers resulting from the ways in which memories are managed both at a personal level and at a collective level. The main point is that Rwandans have become hostages of their memories of the long-gone and the recent past. The book shows how these memories follow ethnic lines and lead to a state of cultural hypocrisy on the one hand, and to permanent conflict - either open and brutal, or latent and beneath the surface - on the other hand. Written from a memory studies perspective and informed by critical theory, philosophy, literature, [oral] history, and psychology, amongst others, this book deals with some controversial subjects and deconstructs some of the received ideas about the recent and the long-gone past of Rwanda. About the author: Olivier Nyirubugara is a lecturer of New Media and Online Journalism at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (Erasmus University Rotterdam). In 2011, he completed a PhD in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation entitled Surfing the Past: Digital Learners in the History Class, in which he empirically explored ways in which pupils use the Web to find historical information. Nyirubugara has also been practicing journalism since 2002 and has been training and coaching journalists in mobile reporting in Africa since 2007.

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Page Count

182

Publisher

Sidestone Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9088901104

ISBN 13

9789088901102

Surfing the Past

Digital Learners in the History Class

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

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Surfing the Past

Digital Learners in the History Class

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

This books discusses one of the most frequently discussed subjects in history education during the last two decades, namely how secondary school pupils use the World Wide Web for their learning activities. Based on two case studies in two Dutch schools, the book shows some ways in which the use of the Web has changed history education in at least three respects: first, the findings of the two case studies show that the Web has a huge potential to turn the history class - previously described as boring and too abstract - into a livelier and more attractive environment, where concepts, events, phenomena and processes of the past almost always have textual and/or [audio]visual representations; second, strong indications were observed showing that the Web fosters historical understanding, not only by triggering thinking processes that take pupils beyond the shown contents, but also by prompting them to evaluate sources and sample relevant fragments for their assignments; third, the Web has brought into history education sources that were previously excluded, including those described as unconventional. This book shows, among other things, that convergence is underway on both the user side - since pupils use both conventional and unconventional online sources - and the content-production side, where heritage institutions are increasingly getting involved in unconventional platforms like Wikipedia. The latter emerged from the two case studies as the most popular source of historical information, while the websites of heritage institutions tended to appear at the bottom of the list of references. Unlike personal sites, which also scored better, heritage sites face some obstacles, including the still dominant desire to preserve institutions' identity and uniqueness, conservatism - which often prevents the redefinition of collection management tasks -, and the tax-payers' dilemma. For that reason, collections are not hyperlinked and, therefore, remain invisible and not easy to find online.

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312

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Sidestone Press

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ISBN 10

9088900817

ISBN 13

9789088900815

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

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Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

182

Publisher

Sidestone Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9088901104

ISBN 13

9789088901102

Surfing the Past

Digital Learners in the History Class

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Surfing the Past

Digital Learners in the History Class

By: Olivier Nyirubugara

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

312

Publisher

Sidestone Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9088900817

ISBN 13

9789088900815

Book's by Olivier Nyirubugara

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

Surfing the Past

Surfing the Past

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

Surfing the Past

Surfing the Past

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