The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has impacted the globe for more than a year. This development sparked renewed interest in the historical, sociocultural, political, and economic aspects of epidemics and pandemics, currently evidenced by an outpouring of scholarship on the consequences of the current pandemic on the world’s population as well as social and economic structures. This symposium provides a forum specifically for the study of the sociocultural developments that lead to “Othering” in situations of a perceived crisis. Aiming at bringing together multi- and interdisciplinary, scholarly approaches to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we invite papers that examine the processes of “Othering” in relation to a long human history of epidemics and pandemics and the myriad social, political, philosophical, medical, artistic, literary, filmic, and poetic, representations and reactions that have produced and/or challenged such Othering dynamics. The concept of Othering, originating in feminist and postcolonial theories, characterizes hegemonic processes of marking the supposed differences between a superior “We” and an inferior “Other.” Othering processes often function to (re)produce social hierarchies and power relations by constructing marginalized groups as Other while simultaneously constructing the normative self. Epidemics and pandemics like Covid-19 produce and amplify Othering practices and systemic discrimination. Hence, marginalized communities have not only been disproportionately affected by the current pandemic both medically and economically, but public, private, and media discourses have projected fear of the disease onto the social or cultural-ethnic Other, fostering for example, orientalism, xenophobia and racism, ageism, and ableism.
This symposium aims at analyzing key factors and cultural narratives that contribute to Othering discourses in the course of Covid-19 and in previous pandemics and epidemics (“real” and “imagined”) from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. The symposium will put a geographical emphasis on North America, the Atlantic World, and transatlantic relations, but welcomes contributions that expand this spatial focus to different world regions in order to create a more globally representative and more nuanced knowledge on the historical and current cultural, sociopolitical, economic, and literary narratives and media representations of epidemics and pandemics. For the complete Call for Papers, please see: https://epidemicsandothering.blogs.rub.de/.
Please send 300 to 500 word abstracts (in PDF format) of proposed 15 to 20 minute papers to epidemics-and-othering@ruhr-uni-bochum.de by April 30th, 2021. You will be notified in mid-June. The symposium is organized by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Rebecca Brückmann (Ruhr-University Bochum, History of North America and its transcultural context) and Jun-Prof. Dr. Heike Steinhoff (Ruhr-University Bochum, American Studies) and will take place digitally on Friday, October 1 and Saturday, October 2, 2021.