Recent developments
Over the past twenty-five years, the organizational structure of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has undergone significant developments. Numerous changes have been made to the disciplinary landscape, while the individuals themselves have been reconfigured internally. Recently, the transition to the Bologna model has played a pivotal role in these shifts.
Paths of development
Six decades after the division of the Faculty of Philosophy into the separate Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences and of Science, the Faculty of Business and Economics became its own entity in 1997, separating from the social sciences. Psychology followed suit six years later in the summer semester of 2003. The history of psychology illustrates that the evolution of the Faculty of Philosophy occurred not only through divisions but also through internal differentiation. Similar to sociology and pedagogy, psychology gradually emerged from being a subdiscipline of philosophy over the twentieth century to establish itself as an independent subject. In addition to separation and internal differentiation, a third pathway of development has been creation; for the recent processes within the faculty, this path has been crucial. The following examples may illustrate this point.
Disciplines aligned with the times – media studies and gender studies
On 1 February 2001, the Institute for Media Studies was established, thereafter orienting its profile toward the university’s major focus on “culture.” It seeks to combine foundational theoretical knowledge with practical media skills in an interdisciplinary approach. Since its inception, the subject has experienced steady growth. Between 2001 and 2008, the number of students rose from 330 to 654, allowing the discipline to double in size in a very short time. With the enhancement of degree options from a licentiate minor to a bachelor’s major as part of the Bologna process, this trend has continued. In the fall semester of 2008, media studies was the largest bachelor’s subject of the faculty with 523 enrollments.
Similar to media studies, gender studies also began as a minor subject within the faculty. When gender studies was introduced in the winter semester of 2002/2003, fifty-one students enrolled in the minor. Less than three years later, this number had doubled. Additionally, around fifty students from other disciplines, particularly psychology, took gender studies as a cross-faculty interdisciplinary program. With the introduction of the bachelor’s degree in gender studies in the winter semester of 2006/2007, the numbers stabilized at a relatively high level. In the fall semester of 2008, seventy-one students were enrolled in the bachelor’s program, seven in the master’s, and forty-one as a licentiate minor. While the number of licentiate students decreases each semester, enrollments from students outside the discipline continue to increase, indicating the social relevance of the issues the program addresses.
The impact of Bologna
The adoption of the Bologna model in the winter semester of 2005/2006 brought about a more comprehensive restructuring for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Basel than at other locations. For instance, while Zurich maintained the traditional model of one major and two minor subjects as an option for study, Basel moved away from permitting such diverse combinations. This limitation strengthened some smaller subjects by elevating them to major subject status, yet disciplines that primarily recruited students through minor subject enrollments now faced losses. The shift has nevertheless allowed many subjects to open some of their courses to the modules of other disciplines or to offer certificates that can be obtained in the free credit point area. Gender studies secures a significant portion of its enrollments via these two avenues. Between 2004 and 2008, 61 percent of its course offerings were utilized by students from other disciplines in the elective credit area.
Like gender studies and media studies, Jewish studies and religious studies have been available as major subjects since 2005. For Jewish studies, this represents another important step in its very short yet successful history. In 1997, the University of Basel established the Foundation for Jewish Studies, aiming to create the conditions for establishing a minor subject along with an institute and associated professorships. By the spring of 2000, the institute, jointly supported by the Faculty of Theology and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, commenced operations with a professorship and an assistant professorship. Four years later, the assistant professorship in the history of Jewish religion was converted into a full professorship and expanded to include Jewish literature. To this day, the Center for Jewish Studies is still growing and focuses on the lifeworlds of Jews, their history, religion, and culture, while also examining interactions with the non-Jewish world.
Along with Islamic studies, Jewish studies and religious studies formed the Department of Religious Studies beginning in the spring of 2008. This was the newest of the faculty’s five departments in 2010 and the only late addition. The Departments of Ancient Civilizations, Social Sciences and Philosophy, History, and Language and Literatures had already been established in 2006 as part of the ongoing educational reform, replacing the previously unified Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies. The Department of Religious Studies is unique in not being solely supported by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences but in collaboration with the Faculty of Theology.
Such networking of research and teaching across disciplinary and faculty boundaries was a guiding concern of the reform process. This is particularly evident in the faculty’s integrated study programs, which provide for the selection of courses from various disciplines instead of the traditional combination of two subjects. Programs in ancient civilizations and Eastern European studies were already being offered in 2012, with the establishment of a program in religious studies under discussion. In addition, three integrated master’s programs were created – African studies, études françaises et francophones, and language and communication – which can only be pursued after completing a bachelor’s degree. The new system also allowed for one of the two subjects to be taken from a different faculty, enabling combinations of law, computer science, business and economics, and theology with a classical subject from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Interdisciplinarity with “culture”
Since 1996, when the university became autonomous, interdisciplinarity across faculty boundaries has increasingly become a focus for the humanities, disciplines in cultural studies, and the social sciences. At that time, the strategy was chosen to establish “life” – now taken to mean “life sciences” – and “culture” as university-wide “macropriorities.” The university’s overall strategy from 2007 adopts the term “profiling areas,” by contrast, to express greater research policy flexibility and a competitive mindset, though in terms of content the goals remain similar.
For the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the area of culture is of paramount importance. With contributions from the Faculties of Theology, Law, and Business and Economics, three themes of particular contemporary significance will be addressed based on a comprehensive concept of culture that is both historically and sociologically relevant: “cultural foundations and boundaries of Europe,” “social change and justice,” and “image and sign.”
The image-related inquiry connects to eikones, the Leading House of the Swiss National Research Focus “Image Critique: The Power and Meaning of Images,” which is located in Basel. The project has been running in Basel since 1 October 2005, aiming to produce scholarship addressing the fact that our knowledge society has become a society of images. It is based on the belief that our society can only solve its problems if the practices of visual critique contribute to knowledge production by dedicating themselves to foundational research and exemplary applications.
The focus area on “culture” particularly enables the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences to actively impactfully engage with current social processes. Social impact has been further strengthened in recent years with other faculties whose social relevance is unquestioned. The significance of the faculty within the university is accordingly reflected not only quantitatively in the number of students but also qualitatively in the range of projects pursued.