The Swiss Association for North-American Studies was founded in 1978 to provide a structure that would facilitate contact among Swiss scholars interested in American Studies and allow them to be represented institutionally in the European Association for American Studies (EAAS). Among the founding members were Max Silverschmidt (history, University of Zurich) and Heinrich Straumann (American literature, University of Zurich), now deceased, who had both been active in the founding of EAAS.
Originally called the Swiss Association for American Studies, the Association’s name was changed in 1986 to the appellation "North-American Studies", to indicate a concern for Canadian issues on the part of some members. Although individuals with an interest in our activities may belong to university departments of History, Geography, Sociology, Politics or Economics, most members are attached to departments of English, signalling a primary concern for culture and literature. Thus our biannual conferences have dealt with themes that extend across history and literature to other disciplines; "Small Town America" (1988), "Artists and Audiences in the Age of Henry James" (1992), "Apocalypse" (1998), "American Foundation Myths" (2002), "Representinbg Realities" (2004), "American Poetry: Whitman too the Present" (2006), and "American Aesthetics" (2008);whereas our annual in-house "Reading Group" seminars have concentrated on combining cultural, historical and literary approaches to individual works of literature.
In keeping with the cultural diversity of Switzerland, which has four official languages, the Association has consistently explored cross-cultural perspectives. Our 1990 conference, for instance, "Making a Difference: North-American Ethnicity, Culture, Writing" combined lectures and workshops on the problems inherent in seeing across cultures&emdash;or how a culture creates figurations of another culture&emdash;as well as on the representations of minority groups in their own literature and culture. In 1994, we pursued similar concerns in a joint conference with CAAR on "Multicultural Perspectives on African American Writing."
As with CAAR, SANAS cultivates good relationships with other American Studies Associations, notably the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS). In recent years, AAAS and SANAS held two very successful binational conferences: "Empire" (Salzburg, 1996) and "American Foundational Myths" (Zürich, 2000).
Our current membership counts about fifty members. SANAS, unlike many European professional associations, makes a point of welcoming the participation of graduate students, teaching assistants and professors of all ranks. This egalitarian emphasis results in stimulating discussions in our annual "Reading Group" meetings and also in our biannual conferences, where members share the program with established scholars from abroad, primarily other European countries and the United States. These occasions are also a forum for trying out inventive modes of presenting an academic paper or organizing a workshop.
Joining SANAS
SANAS welcomes new members with a scholarly, artistic or journalistic interest in the study of the United States of America, their history, culture and society. We especially invite graduate students working in the field of American studies to join SANAS. The membership fee is currently CHF 30per year. Members receive the SANAS newsletter, which appears twice per year, as well as the proceedings of SANAS conferences, which are held biannually. SANAS members are automatically members of the European Association for American Studies (EAAS) and are entitled to participate in any EAAS event, notably by organizing workshops and offering papers at the biennial EAAS conferences. As members of a constituent association of EAAS, SANAS members equally have access to conferences held by the American Studies Association (ASA) in the United States.
Anyone interested in becoming a member of SANAS may contact the President, Deborah Madsen (deborah.madsen at unige.ch) or the Secretary, Philipp Schweighauser (ph.schweighauser at unibas.ch).
