CfP For Austrian Studies Association Panel At The MLA Conference Jan. 2025

CfP for Austrian Studies Association Panel at the MLA conference 

New Orleans, January 9-12, 2025 

Transforming Space: Migration and Migrants in Austrian Literature, Film, and Ego-Documents 

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In the introduction to Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space, the literary historian Tabea Linhard and the social historian Timothy H. Parsons maintain, “Migrants transform and change space, and space transforms and changes migrants” (7). We invite papers (20-minutes) investigating the relationship between the migrant experience and space and place as explored in Austrian literature, film, or ego-documents.  

Questions to consider include, but are not limited to:  

To what extent and how do the spaces migrants find themselves in shape them and how do they shape those spaces?   

To what extent does this manifest itself in the form of the text?  

To what extent does the interaction of migrant in space reflect on the historical situation? 

To what extent do factors of country of origin, gender, race, age, educational level play a part in the migrants’ ability or lack thereof impact their agency? 

What senses do the migrants draw from to negotiate the new environment?  

Yi-Fu Tuan notes, “When space feels thoroughly familiar to us, it has become place” (Space and Place, 73). How does or doesn’t this apply to the migrants portrayed?  

Can Henriette Moore’s discussion of “spatial texts” in Space, Text, and Gender be applied to a discussion of the spatial relationships of migrants depicted in Austrian literature, film, or ego-documents?

Please send an abstract (300-350 words) and a short biographical statement to Jacqueline Vansant (jvansant@umich.edu) by March 20, 2024. Presenters must be members of both the Austrian Studies Association and the Modern Language Association.