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.
Veronika Zwerger [BIAAS-142318]
The United States was one of the most important receiving countries for Austrians who had to flee National Socialists. A vast amount of archival material in the Austrian Archive of Exile Studies proves these tight historic connections between the two countries. The exhibition will educate a new generation of Austrians about the deep-rooted connections between its citizens and the countries which housed its refugees, such as the United States.
Despina Stratigakos [BIAAS-142314]
The book chronicles the life, work, and impact of Austrian-American Ella Briggs, an innovative artist, designer, and architect. Briggs appeared at the turning points and places of modernist history: she painted with the Secessionists in Vienna, created luminous rooms in Gilded Age New York, erected workers' housing in the First Austrian Republic, and constructed suburban homes for Americans in the prosperous Roaring Twenties. Fifteen Austrian and American experts in modernism collaborate in this project to uncover the little-known history of Briggs, revealing how her international networks helped to spread ideas of modernism between the United States and Austria.
Kathryn Sederberg [BIAAS-142312]
Writing Home: Emigration Diaries of German and Austrian Jews, 1933-1945 considers the practice of diary writing during emigration and exile, and the changes in writing and its functions as the author is geographically displaced. Beyond giving account of the history of emigration, the diary became a part of constructing a new self as a refugee in transit and in exile. Current political and humanitarian discussions surrounding refugee rights, asylum, and migration have fueled an even greater interest in refugee stories from the 1930s and 40s, and in personal accounts of emigration and resettlement. The archival evidence shows us that Jews throughout Europe continued to write diaries during the 1930s and 40s, whether as refugees, or in hiding, imprisoned in ghettos, or even in concentration and death camps. While many of these authors would not survive the Holocaust, some writers were able to find refuge through emigration, taking their diary with them. This project will demonstrate how the diary was often part of daily life for refugees: a site (a physical space and cultural practice) where writers document their search for a new life, and an instrument for interpreting and constructing life as a refugee. With a focus on Jewish emigrants from Germany and Austria, it traces the way these narratives give account of new beginnings in a strange country, where processes of acculturation and new concepts of self, home, and belonging shape the writing subject.
Anne Rothfeld [BIAAS-142311]
Evelyn Tucker, a Museum, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) Representative, worked in U.S. military occupied Austria, investigating and restituting Nazi plundered Austrian-owned cultural property from 1946 to 1949. This grant supports travel to Austrian and German archives, and American museums to explore primary source materials that remain underutilized in the quest to bring Eve Tucker’s work to the forefront. The project aims to broaden the conceptualizations of restitutions and the differing narratives surrounding the investigations. A firebrand, Tucker carved an ethical path to restitute Austrian cultural property to the rightful owners as she encountered corrupt military practices. Her meticulous and colorful reports and correspondence provide a rich and nuanced story; and personify Tucker’s own mixture of an appreciation for the beauty of fine arts, and a healthy dose of realism with a hint of guarded enthusiasm.
James McSpadden [BIAAS-142307]
This project will explore behind-the-scenes political and personal connections among interwar Austrian politicians during Austria’s First Republic. From socialists to conservatives, Austrian politicians mingled with foreign guests and their political rivals at social gatherings in Vienna. In turn, these Austrians built up a network of political and social acquaintances that included a number of American senators, representatives, and high government officials. This archival research will not only further an understanding of private cross-party political connections in interwar Austria but also explore continuities from this surprisingly robust informal Viennese political culture into the lives of conservative and socialist Austrian émigrés to the United States during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Thomas Antonic [BIAAS-142301]
The aim of this project is to study the sojourns of the U.S. poet Allen Ginsberg in Austria in 1957, 1980, and 1993, and to examine the impact of these visits on the poet's work as well as the influence of his time in Austria on the country’s literary and cultural landscape. The focus is thus on the cultural exchange(s) between the USA and Austria. The research results are to be published in book form in English. In addition, two audio CDs with previously unpublished recordings of a performance by Allen Ginsberg in Graz in 1980 will be included with the book.
Filip Šír [BIAAS-142313]
Music was of crucial importance to the immigrants from Austria-Hungary, and cultural and social practice of great importance to their communities in the USA. They could document this facet of their self-identification thanks to new technologies - in the form of wax cylinders. A remarkable set of recordings can be found under the title of "Ed. Jedlička Records'' in two phonograph cylinder collections held at the University of Iowa Libraries and Library of Congress. This more than a century-old set of unique cylinders contains original recordings of Bohemian songs, music, or short humorous performances, and are some of the earliest recordings made for and by a specific ethnic group in the United States.
Elisabeth Piller [BIAAS-142310]
For many Austrians, the years after 1945 were marked by scarcity, hunger, and deprivation. To survive, they relied heavily on international and especially American humanitarian aid. This project examines U.S. food aid to Austria after World War II, focusing on U.S. motives, Austrian reception, and the impact on transatlantic relations. Its findings will provide an important corrective to the extensive research on U.S. aid to post-war Germany and will shed light on the less studied period of Austrian-American aid relations prior to the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan). The project situates the Austrian experience within a broader European and transatlantic framework, highlighting both the representative and unique aspects of the Austrian-American case.
Hans Petschar [BIAAS-142309]
The research project will study the life and work of Yoichi Okamoto, personal photographer of General Mark Clark 1945–1948 in Austria, head of the United States Information Service Pictorial Section in Austria 1948–1954 and Presidential Photographer of Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House 1963–1969. Surprisingly enough, despite Okamoto’s extraordinary career in Europe and later in the U.S. as White House photographer during the Johnston era, a comprehensive biography of Yoichi R. Okamoto is still missing. Archival research will take place at the Daniel Library, The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, the National Archives in Washington DC and the Lyndon B Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. Research results will be integrated in exhibitions and scholarly publications in Austria and the U.S.A. Hans Petschar is a historian and Director of the Picture Archives and Graphics Department at the Austrian National Library. In 2015/16 he served as the Marshall Plan Chair at the University of New Orleans.
Elizabeth O’Neil [BIAAS-142308]
This dissertation tracks the careers of several Viennese scientists as they pursued questions about how organisms, minds, machines, ecosystems, disciplines, and even whole societies might be understood as "wholes," "systems," or "unities." By offering a new history of systems thinking in the 20th century, this project reframes current understandings of systems theory, cybernetics, behavioral science, and scientific internationalism in the US and Europe. Libby O'Neil is a PhD candidate at Yale University in the Program in the History of Science and Medicine.