13th European Social Science History Conference
Leiden, Netherlands, 18-21 March 2020
Politics, Citizenship and Nations Network
Call for Papers and SessionsCrisis, Divisions, Agency
Current political challenges such as the growing appeal of populism; nostalgia for, and politically-inflected reframing of, national pasts; the reluctance to help refugees; the normalization of public hate speech; and the highly ambiguous role of social media in politics have all shifted public and scholarly attention to long-held concepts of democracy and democratic values. Perceived crises in these values have resulted in deep divisions, both generating and inhibiting various forms of political agency.This climate of crisis has drawn researchers into public debate to provide context and expert interpretations of an often complex reality. As historians, we seek especially to understand the roots of current political phenomena from a longue durée perspective: to conceptualize their origins and search the historical substrata for both lines of continuity and also discontinuities between the past and contemporary political life. For ESSHC 2020, we welcome proposals for papers and sessions that engage with the themes of crisis, divisions and agency, or other topics in political history, in any historical period or geographical context. Possible topics include but are not limited to: • States of emergency • Scandal, controversy, cause célèbre • Institutional hiatus: constitutionalism, governance and administration in times of crisis • Parliamentarism and parliamentary cultures in flux • Citizenship in non-democratic regimes • Belonging, agency, recognition: cultural, familial and sexual citizenship in history • Indigenous, diasporic, imperial and postcolonial citizenship: historical
perspectives on identity, law, and loyalty/ies • Documenting citizenship: records, certificates and statelessness • The art of the deal: historicizing the corridors of power • Onstage and backstage: charisma, negotiation, patronage • Shifting margins: outlaws, outcasts and dissidents • Performing diplomacy: (inter)nationalism, activism, personalism • The politics of human rights and humanitarian aid • Religion and politics/religion in politics/the politics of religion
• Left or Right, conservative, liberal or progressive? Semantic shifts in politics • “Neo-isms”, old and new: historicizing ideology • Spreading the word: agency, media and politics • Technology and politics/the politics of technology • Gender, sex and politics: the politicization of sexuality/ies and gender • Educating the citizen: civic belonging, equality, history • (Re-)framing national pasts: politics, culture, nostalgia • Rethinking chronology: challenging the narratives of the winners
Comparative panels and papers are particularly welcome, and we gladly co-sponsor sessions with other networks. In addition to traditional panels (chair, discussant and 3-4 presentations) we encourage proposals for workshops, roundtables, Meet-the-author sessions, book launches, and alternative session formats. We value diversity both in the focus of panels (themes, geographical and chronological scope, methodology, etc.) and in their social composition (participants’ national and academic affiliation, gender, career stage, etc.). Thus we may reorganize or reject proposals for sessions composed of participants from the same university or from a single country presenting papers on that country. Priority will be given to papers and panels presenting research that has not been previously published. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches to the past, but all papers and sessions must demonstrate a clear historical focus.
The deadline to submit your proposal and pre-register on the conference website is 15 April 2019. To guarantee consideration of full session proposals, please ensure that all participants send in their abstracts and pre-register by the deadline, indicating the name of the session to which their paper belongs. Because we receive many more
submissions than we can accommodate, the Politics network cannot guarantee consideration of proposals for more than two sessions on a single theme.
For general information on the ESSHC, proposal submission and pre-registration online please go to the ESSHC Conference website or contact the Conference secretariat (esshc@iisg.nl). Otherwise, contact us (arepstein@outlook.com,
josereissantos@gmail.com, izabela.dahl007@gmail.com or ikosnica@pravo.hr) to
discuss your session ideas. We look forward to receiving your proposals. Anne Epstein, José Reis Santos, Izabela Dahl, Ivan Kosnica Chairs Politics, Citizenship and Nations Network ESSHC 2020 Follow us on Academia.edu
