History

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 Austrian Studies Association is a member organization of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

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.

In 2021, our Association turns 60. Our current president, Michael Burri, dedicated an article to the rich history and present of the ASA.

As of 1 January 2010, the ASA also assumed the role heretofore played by the American Grillparzer Society: liaison to the Austrian Grillparzer Gesellschaft, housed in Vienna and sponsor of conferences and a yearbook. We thank both entities for their trust and happily continue the work of helping pre-twentieth-century Austrian literature appear at conferences, especially the Modern Language Association.

For the long and distinguished history of the American Grillparzer Society, read the narrative detailing its long life, provided to us by its final president, Clifford Albrecht Bernd.

To become a member of the Grillparzer Gesellschaft from the US side (and thus receive the yearbook, a must-have companion to the Journal of Austrian Studies), follow the directions on the association’s information page; it is possible to pay via PayPal (by transfer or by credit card) by sending your payment to the address gesellschaft@grillparzer.at.