Austrian Studies Association

Mission and History

The Austrian Studies Association (formerly the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association, MALCA) continues traditions started in 1961, as the only North American association devoted to scholarship on all aspects of Austrian, Austro-Hungarian, and Habsburg territory cultural life and history from the eighteenth century until today.

The Association publishes a quarterly scholarly journal, the Journal of Austrian Studies; the Association holds an annual spring conference, organized around a year’s theme. Its other activities include organizing scholarly panels for the annual conventions of the Modern Language Association and at other national and international conferences. Current news and resources of interest are included on this website and distributed through its list-serv and on its Facebook page.

Anyone interested in modern Austrian studies, broadly defined, is encouraged to become a member and support the Association’s work.

The ASA originated in a referendum held in early 2011, when the Association’s membership voted to change the Association’s name and to retitle its journal as the Journal of Austrian Studies. These changes acknowledge what has long been the Association’s identity: an interdisciplinary organization that welcomes all eras and disciplines of Austrian studies at its conferences and in its journal, including scholarship on the cultures of Austria’s earlier political forms (the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Empire, and Austria-Hungary) and scholarship that acknowledges this region’s historical multiethnic, multilingual, and transcultural identities and their legacies in the present.

The Austrian Studies Association, which joined the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) in 2017, has about 450 members, who work in fields such as literature, history, political studies, and philosophy.

Programs And Activities

The Austrian Studies Association publishes the quarterly Journal of Austrian Studies (University of Nebraska Press). As an affiliated organization of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Austrian Studies Association organizes panels at the annual MLA convention. In addition, ASA also organizes an annual conference that usually takes place in North America. The 2016 conference was held at the University of Vienna and the 2020 conference will take place at the University of Poznan in Poland.

Every conference focuses on a certain theme. Last year’s conference, which was organized by the University of Illinois at Chicago, addressed “Inter-Texts: Correspondences, Connections, and Fissures in Austrian Culture,” while this year’s conference at the University of Vermont looked at “Austria and the East.” Next year’s conference at Bowling Green State University in Ohio will discuss “Austria in Europe: Migration, Immigration, Integration: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives.”