Swiss Studies Network call for papers for the 2022 GSA Conference in Houston, TX (15-18 September 2022).
It has been a decade since the Swiss Studies Network’s inaugural call for papers in 2012. Much has changed in the world since then. Notably issues of Race, Gender, and Equality/Equity have moved to the fore both in academic research and public discourse. The concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement that spread rapidly after the George Floyd killing in 2020 have meshed with historical revisionism and a polarized political realm and have gained global political relevance and urgency. The legacies of colonialism and efforts to decolonize all manners of history have moved to the top of the agenda across social science and humanities disciplines. And a pandemic has exacerbated existing social and political inequalities both at national and global levels.
All this applies very much to Switzerland, too, although the country has long flirted with a self-understanding as a “Sonderfall,” a special case. But it is implicated in the history of colonialism, even without colonies, a country with a legacy of xenophobia and racism, an early battleground of populism as far back as the 1960s, and a democracy with an embarrassing history of gender inequality--in short, Switzerland has a lot of history to work through. And it has begun to do so: over the three or four past decades Swiss historians, social scientists, and activists have produced fascinating research along the lines of race, gender, migration, populism or post-colonial studies, while in literature and the arts minorities have gained presence and recognition.
In this critical spirit, the Swiss Studies Network invites for a panel, or series of panels, contributions from a broad range of disciplines that engage Swiss history, politics, literature, the arts, popular culture, public discourse, and social media from a diversity of current critical angles in historiography, anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, or film and literary studies with an emphasis on postcolonial, populist, post-democratic, racial and ethnic, linguistic, or migration aspects.
While we especially encourage the submission of entire panel proposals, we are happy to accept proposals for individual papers and will work to combine them into suitable panels. Proposals are due by March 7, 2022 and should be sent to Peter Meilaender, Professor of Political Science, Houghton College, at peter.meilaender@houghton.edu. Inquiries can be sent to the same address or to Hans Rindisbacher, Pomona College, hjr04747@pomona.edu.