CfP: Intersectionality in History and History Didactics

Call for Papers for a Writing Workshop for the Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, issue 3/2024 (OeZG; https://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/oezg/about), edited by Heike Krösche and Levke Harders

As a knowledge project,[1] intersectionality has emerged as a cross-cutting category for analyzing cultural and social power relations in the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences[2] and has also received increasing interest in educational research and subject didactics.[3] However, the discussion about the interaction of different dimensions of social inequality such as gender, class, race has a longer tradition. The term intersectionality originated in Black Feminism and Critical Race Theory and was, among others, coined by the US-American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.[4] Similar to the concepts of heterogeneity and diversity, intersectionality focuses on social relations of difference both at the societal, political, and economic macro-level and at the micro-level of practices, subjectivities, and experiences. However, intersectionality differs from other concepts insofar as it is neither oriented towards the mediation between social differences nor does it view multiple relations of difference and inequality in an additive way. Rather, intersectionality examines interdependencies between diverse categories of difference, their simultaneity and entanglement. Intersectionality looks at power and relations of inequality, aiming at contributing to social justice. In addition, there is the claim of a reflexive and critical examination of social inequalities,[5] i.e. also of privileges such as whiteness.

Although various fields of research and teaching refer to intersectionality, its potential as an analytical tool has not yet been exploited neither by history nor by history didactics. While history didactics debate the conceptual differences of diversity and intersectionality, history as an academic subject is undecided between a ‘plea for historical intersectionality analysis’ and doubts about whether the approach is suitable for historical research.[6]

In both fields, history didactics and historical studies, intersectional approaches are mainly used for research on social inequalities and, at least in history, often for the early modern period or for topics of gender studies and postcolonial history.

The special issue “Intersectionality in History and History Didactics” of the Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (Austrian Journal of History) seeks to broaden the current state of discussion and to further establish intersectionality as a dimension of analysis in history and history didactics. To this end, it focuses on the following question:

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using intersectionality as a research perspective, method, and theory for empirical research in history and history didactics?

In order to stimulate a differentiated debate by the special issue, we are mainly looking for empirical studies. According to the multi-perspective approach, articles can deal with all historical time periods or, in addition to history didactics, with extracurricular historical-political education (e.g. by museums and memorials). The issue aims at a critical discussion of the potential of intersectionality for research in history and history didactics. In line with the multi-layered concept of intersectionality, we are looking for contributions that use intersectionality as a theoretical, methodological or content-related perspective in history didactics or for historical research since antiquity. These should, for example:

• use intersectionality in an empirically grounded way for the analysis of historical topics or historical learning processes and teaching models,
• place a focus on the intersectional category of race (e.g., Black Austrian or European history, or migration history),
• connect intersectionality with queer history, or
• examine socioeconomic inequalities (class).

Joint writing workshop

In order to link all articles and to strengthen the writing process, all contributors to the issue meet for a writing workshop. The joint discussion during the online workshop will help to finalize and revise the articles. To this end, the writing process is planned as follows:

Please send your abstract (max. 3,000 characters incl. spaces) by October 14, 2022 to intersektional-oezg@uibk.ac.at. The articles can be submitted in German or English. By sending the abstract, you agree to participate in the meetings on December 12, 2022, February 10, 2023, and February 17, 2023, to submit a draft paper for this purpose by January 27, 2023, and to comment on another text (see above).