Database of Funded Projects
The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies has generously funded academic research and public history projects that promote an understanding of the historic relationship between the United States and Austria. The following search tools make it possible to explore these projects and to learn more about the scholars and organizations who have received BIAAS grants and fellowships.
Michael E. Ruhling
International interdisciplinary conference “Reassessing Haydn’s Sacred Music” in Eisenstadt, Austria 12-14 June 2023, sponsored by the Haydn Society of North America and Internationale Joseph Haydn Privatstiftung Eisenstadt. Presenters will be leading scholars from the U.S. and Austria, and the sessions will be open to the public.
Benjamin Korstvedt
The music and public images of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), widely regarded as the preeminent Austrian symphonists of the epoch around 1900, have long been interpreted and reinterpreted in ways that reach far beyond the usual confines of musical life. This critical discourse originated in the context of the political and cultural upheavals Austria and Austrian culture underwent in the first half of the twentieth century, and as the music of both composers increasingly entered American musical life in the postwar, it was reformulated in new ways within the distinctive sociocultural milieu of the U.S. This comparative critical study of the changing views and representations of these two composers will shed light not only on their musical works but also on fundamental issues of cultural politics and changing definitions of Austrian identity.
Patricia Allmer
Tilly Losch: Interstitial Modernism between Vienna and Hollywood offers the first book-length analysis of the life and extensive corpus of works by the Austrian-Jewish dancer, choreographer, film star, painter, and celebrity Tilly Losch (1903-75). Redressing critical neglect of her work, the book will resituate Losch in the interstices of conventional definitions of modernist cultural practice. It will employ recent theoretical and historical material alongside extensive archival research to recalibrate and refine our understanding of transatlantic modernism and of Austria-US relations via a critical assessment of Losch’s long and diverse interdisciplinary and transmedial career in Vienna, Paris, England, New York, and Hollywood.
Rachel E. Scott
Rachel E. Scott received a BIAAS grant to conduct research on Austrian music festivals held under American occupation. The project will explore the tensions between American and Austrian identity that were performed on musical stages during this period and provide insight into the relationship between Austria and the United States as both countries made strategic use of music festivals to achieve mutually beneficial goals. The grant will enable archival research at the National Archives in [...]
Michael Haas
Dr. Michael Hass received a $15,000 BIAAS grant for “Discovering Karol Rathaus,” a film about a Jewish composer of classical music posed to become one of the most influential composers of his generation. With the rise of the Nazis he escaped Germany but failed to reestablish himself in the hostile cultural and political atmosphere of McCarthy America. Hiding behind the facade of ‘happiness’, Rathaus became one of the many unacknowledged casualties of the Holocaust. The [...]
David H. Miller
David H. Miller received a $2,250 BIAAS grant to conduct research in the state of Washington for his monograph project “Musical Modernisms, Manuscripts, and Mountains, from the Austrian Alps to the North Cascades.” This project is centered around Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer, musicologists and music manuscript collectors from Spokane, WA who played key roles in shaping the circulation of music by Austrian modernist composers such as Anton Webern and Ernst Krenek during the second half [...]
Leon Botstein and The Bard Music Festival
Leon Botstein and The Bard Music Festival received a BIAAS grant for its exploration of the life, work, and legacy of Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Korngold and His World: Bard Music Festival 2019 took take place at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, in August 2019. […]
Christiane Tewinkel – American Pianists Studying with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna, 1878-1913
Christiane Tewinkel received a 2019 BIAAS grant for her project “American Students Studying with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna, 1878-1913”. […]
Jeremy Eichler
Jeremy Eichler received a BIAAS grant to study the musical memorialization of the Second World War and the Holocaust. […]
Joanna Curtis
Joanna Curtis received a BIAAS grant to examine Austrian musical life and cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. […]