7 Just like a functionally illiterate person might be impressed by the written word but will be unable to distinguish between different types of texts, important differences between images and between visual contexts are lost on the visually illiterate. Together, these contributions can help us develop a form of visual literacy attuned specifically to textbooks and other media of historical education. Scholars in the fields of history, education, and memory studies have published insightful articles on the topic across national contexts, studying both individual publications and large cross-period samples 5 and history textbooks for different grades as well as historical atlases for school use 6 authors analyzing textbooks in other disciplines have made many relevant contributions and more generally, the fields of visual studies, visual sociology, and visual history (including the visual history of education) have generated numerous ideas and observations that can help us to better understand the genesis, circulation, uses, and effects of pictures in print publications intended to teach history. That is not to say that our understanding of how visuals have been used in history textbooks has not advanced. 4 When the topic is discussed at all, pictures are still all too often treated as visual “narratives” or forms of visual “representation”-terms that betray the difficulty of viewing them as anything other than merely a different type of text. 3 And yet there are still hardly any monographs or collective works dedicated specifically to the visual dimension of history textbooks.
The use of images in history education is regularly discussed by teachers and scholars alike. Almost three decades later, visuality shapes our lives, our educational experiences, and our relationship with the past even more comprehensively than ever before. 2 In 1994, the journal Internationale Schulbuchforschung/International Textbook Research, the precursor to the Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, first dedicated a special thematic issue to visuals in textbooks across disciplines. The conceptual apparatus of textbook theory in general is largely borrowed from language-centered disciplines such as linguistics and literary studies, abounding in terms such as “discourse” and “genre.” 1 In contrast, the visual analysis of textbooks is far less developed-an oversight that is lamented more often than it is addressed through innovative research. In the study of history textbooks in particular, scholars have focused primarily on themes, discursive frameworks, and historical narratives. Unsurprisingly, textbook analysis has traditionally been an analysis of texts.
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