Syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka hur lärare i årkurserna f-3 i Sverige gör historieundervisningen mer levandegörande genom sina arbetssätt, val av material, samt vad för hinder som lärarna anser finnas för att arbeta mer praktiskt och elevnära. Detta i syfte med att undersöka hur lärarna gynnar elevernas kunskap och historiemedvetenhet. Undersökningen utfördes genom kvalitativa intervjuer utav fem lärare i lågstadiet, en av dessa arbetar idag som lärare i mellanstadiet. Dock har hen varit lärare i lågstadiet i flera år och ansåg således att hens erfarenhet är fördelaktig. Alla lärare arbetar inte på samma skola och inte i samma län, således går det inte att generalisera resultatet till hur det ser ut överallt i Sverige. Dock finns det en generalisering kring lärarnas tankar kring begreppen historiemedvetenhet och levandegörande, genom praktiska moment och elevernas sinnen. Undersökningen visade att lärare antyder att ett levandegörande arbetssätt är fördelaktigt i undervisningen och hur den gynnar historiemedvetenheten hos elever. Dock använder inte alla lärare samma tillvägagångssätt för att levandegöra undervisningen, även om de hade velat göra det. / The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how some primary school teachers, grade F-3 make history teaching more “alive” through their choice of methods, materials, and what obstacles the teachers consider there to be when it comes of using practical and “student-oriented teaching” teaching. Thus, the purpose is also to investigate how the teachers will further the students’ knowledge and historical consciousness. The outcome of the survey was collected and carried out through qualitative interviews with five primary school teachers, one of whom works as a middle school teacher today. However, they have beforehand worked as a primary school teacher for several years and I consider their experience to be beneficial to the survey. The teachers work in different schools and counties, which means that the survey cannot be generalized on how teachers experience the use of practical teaching methods to benefits students’ historical consciousness in Sweden. However, the teachers’ thoughts about the concept of historical consciousness and enlivening education, through practical education and the students’ senses can be generalized. The surveys outcome showed that teachers suggested that an enlivening education is beneficial in teaching method for students’ knowledge. Nevertheless, not all teachers use the same approach to make the education enliven, even if they want to.

According to philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, alterity can exist only in its infinite and fluid nature in which the aspects of it that exceed the human ability to fully understand it remain unthematized in language. Levinas sees the encounter between self and other as the moment that instigates ethical responsibility, a moment so vital to avoiding mastering what is external to oneself that it should replace Western philosophy’s traditional emphasis on being as philosophy’s basis, or “First Philosophy.” Levinas’s conceptualization of language as a fluid, non-mastering saying, which one must continually re-enliven against a congealing and mastering said, is at the heart of his ethical project of relating to the other of alterity with ethical responsibility, or proximity. The imaginative poetic language that some contemporary poetry enacts, resonates with Levinas’s ethical motivations and methods for responding to alterity. The following project investigates facets of this question in relation to Levinas: how do the contemporary poets Peter Blue Cloud, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, and Robert Hass use poetic language uniquely to engage with alterity in an ethical way, thus allowing it to retain its mystery and infinite nature? I argue that by keeping language alive in a way similar to a Levinasian saying, which avoids mastering otherness by attending to its uniqueness and imaginatively engaging with it, they enact an ethical response to alterity. As a way of unpacking these ideas, this inquiry will investigate the compelling, if unsettled, convergence in the work of Levinas and that of Blue Cloud, Graham, Harjo, and Hass by unfolding a number of Levinasian-informed close readings of major poems by these writers as foregrounding various forms of Levinasian saying. / Ph. D.