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.
Elisabeth Piller
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
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
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.
Laura MacDonald
This project examines Austrian engagement with American musical theatre from postwar innovations at the Vienna Volksoper through to transnational programming and new musical development by contemporary Austrian institutions such as Vereinigten Bühnen Wien (VBW) and the Landestheater Linz. Having learned and developed from the Broadway musical, Austria is now influencing the growth and development of “das Musical” in East Asia, where Austrian musicals have become valuable models for new musical development and have introduced European practitioners to producers in Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai. This research will culminate in The Broadway Musical's Transnational Journeys: Circulating American Dreams in Europe and East Asia, a book-length study documenting European and East Asian musical theatre industries’ long histories and achievements and establishing that a comprehensive understanding of musical theatre must consider complex and dynamic global activity.
Christopher Long
This book, Volume 3 of Viennese architect Josef Frank's complete writings, features a single work, a series of linked essays Frank wrote in the mid-1940s but never published. In addition to an introduction by Christopher Long, the work includes important essays about Frank's life and work written by Tano Bojankin, Hermann Czech, and Otto Kapfinger. This translation of the original German-language volume marks the first time this seminal work of Frank's—a powerful critique of modernism—will [...]
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.
Anjeana Hans
This project focuses on Jewish filmmakers, actors, and film technicians forced to leave Germany after the Nazi’s rise to power, many of whom went first to Austria and worked in the independent film industry that existed there between 1933 and 1937. The project will examine how these independent films engage with the experience of persecution and whether the trauma of expulsion and expatriation finds expression on the levels of both narrative and form. Further, in examining these productions closely, contextualizing them in their historical moment and against the broader backdrop of early Austrian film, and considering their afterlives, the aim is to trace not only the impact of exile on these films, but also their influence on film broadly, both internationally and in Hollywood specifically. Anjeana Hans is a Professor of German Studies and affiliated faculty in Cinema and Media Studies at Wellesley College.
Alison Clarke
Design Diplomacy: Austrian-American Dialogues explores the crucial Cold War role of design as a form of diplomacy through the prism of relations between Austrian and US industrial designers. While architectural historians have argued the significance of postwar Austrian architects and US-sponsored exhibitions in consolidating the new postwar social order, the significance of Austrian designers and their role in policy-making remains unexamined. Using original archival research, the project asserts the vital relevance of design dialogues between the US and Austria in framing aspects of design and development policy of the Cold War period.
Julia Secklehner
This online, six-week seminar series will bring together scholars focusing on pedagogy and design in a transatlantic network of exchange. Participants are selected from an open call for papers. There will also be two invited keynote speakers, including Prof. Rebecca House (Northern Illinois University). The seminar offers a platform of exchange and for new research. A website provides additional information with blog posts and an online exhibition.
Rudolf Svoboda
In the 1830s and 1840s, departures on missions from historic Austria to the United States were one of the most important ways of having contact between the Old and New Worlds. In Austria, they were supported by higher social circles and had a broadly positive response in the society of that time. This project will show the concrete ties and cultural exchanges between the American and Austrian environments in the 1830s and 1840s connected with the person of the missionary John Nepomucene Neumann. Neumann maintained a vast network of relations, which were retrospectively reflected in the Austrian environment, preparing for his missionary vocation and its actual implementation in the USA.