Dear SCENARIO-Readers,
Our 24th issue starts off with Joyful, Joyful, We Love Singing: Teaching Foreign Language and Culture with Musical Mnemonics by Erin Noelliste (University of Northern Colorado) and Joseph Noelliste (Baylor University, Texas). The authors focus on the art form of music as a memory tool in performative-oriented language courses at a US-American university.
Samuel Nfor who teaches EFL at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, writes about pantomime and its potential for language learning in his contribution Improving Communicative Competence through Mime: Bringing Students’ ‘Out-of-School’ Literacy Practices into Japanese University EFL Oral Communication Classes.
In their article Performative Archaeology: Exploring the use of Drama in Archaeology Teaching and Practice, Konstantinos Prokopios Trimmis (University of Cardiff) & Konstantina Kalogirou (Cathays High School, Cardiff) demonstrate how performative approaches can be directly applied to the field of archaeology.
This issue features detailed insights into the 6th SCENARIO Symposium that took place at the University of Hanover in Germany, September 21-22, 2018. Under the topic Universities on the way to a performative teaching, learning, and research culture, colleagues from multiple disciplines came together to discuss ways of promoting performative teaching and learning in university contexts.
A short film by Marwen Heni gives an impression of both symposium atmosphere and the variety of contributions. One result of the symposium are the Recommendations for Promoting a Performative Teaching, Learning, and Research Culture in Higher Education by the symposium organizational team Bärbel Jogschies, Anke Stöver-Blahak and Manfred Schewe. A creative symposium report by Eva Göksel and Stefanie Giebert summarizes its highlights through an imaginary dialogue. This is followed by short descriptions of two plenary talks (Manfred Schewe / Michaela Sambanis & Maik Walter), six workshops (Róisín O’Gorman, Fionn Woodhouse, Niklas Hald, Anke Stöver-Blahak, Ulrike Jäger, Bärbel Jogschies), and three short presentations (Edith Karimi, Nils Bernstein, Róisín O’Gorman & Fionn Woodhouse).
We also present three recent publications. Jeanette Boettcher (Universität Paderborn) reviews the anthology Sprachförderung durch kulturelles und ästhetisches Lernen edited by Anastasia Moraitis, Gülsah Mavruk, Andrea Schäfer, and Eva Schmidt (2018). Two book reports have been contributed by Dragan Miladinović (University College Cork). The first one reports on the 3/2017 issue Kulturen des Performativen (‘cultures of the performative’) of the Austrian journal Ide (Informationen zur Deutschdidaktik), edited by Stefan Krammer. The second one examines the anthology Kulturen des Inszenierens in Deutschdidaktik und Deutschunterricht, edited by Ulf Abraham and Ina Brendel-Perpina.
The issue closes with a story told by the famous theatre director Peter Brook (1988) in his book The Shifting Point. Forty years of theatrical exploration 1946 – 1987 (with kind permission of the publishers), and with the announcement of an international conference which focuses on the development of an international glossary in the area of Performative Arts and Pedagogy (University College Cork – 28.2. – 3.3.2019).
The 6th SCENARIO Forum Symposium marks another milestone in the professional discourse about performative teaching, learning, and research. We hope to have inspired SCENARIO readers to spread the word about our ‘Recommendations for Promoting a Performative Teaching, Learning, and Research Culture in Higher Education’ by disseminating them to relevant professional associations, journals, and colleagues at institutes of further education outside of universities.
We wish you all a happy and creative New Year 2019!
The editorial team
Manfred Schewe, Susanne Even
and Dragan Miladinović (book review editor)
Bloomington and Cork, January 2019