Center Austria had the pleasure of welcoming two visitors to the city of New Orleans: Mr. Martin Kraemer, Consul-General at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Mr. Franz Roessler, Austrian Trade Representative in Chicago, Il.

UNO student and New Orleans native, Ryan Jones, throws a Louisiana crawfish boil for Austrian students. Congratulations to Ryan for being awarded a Joint Study Stipend from the University of Innsbruck for his Academic Year Abroad in Innsbruck!

Ryan Jones prepares a fresh batch of crawfish

 

 

 2006/07 Ministry of Science Fellow Sigrid Harrer meets a Louisiana mudbug

 

 

Ryan with gourmet catch 

 

 

Ms. Petra Rabitsch, an international relations officer from the University of Graz, visited Center Austria. The University of Graz has been exceptionally generous in their support of UNO students post-Katrina and we would like to extend our warmest Danke.

Pictured: Dr. Carl Drichta, Dean of Metropolitan College and Petra Rabitsch

Three Engineering students from South Tyrol finished their Master's degree in Engineering.
Shown from left: Werner Gander, their major professor, Dr. Marty Tittlebaum, Simon Ringler and Claudio L'Altrella

 Twenty students from the University of Innsbruck studied at UNO for the fall and/or spring semester 2007. They were the first group of students to come to UNO post-Katrina and faced some unique challenges. They excelled in their studies and we wish them all a safe return and good luck for their future!

Günter Bischof, University of New Orleans

Paper for presentation at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo, on May 15, 2007 

“Occupation is not a science but a deep art that can only be learned through
experience.”

This essay briefly assesses the historiography on the post-World War II quadripartite occupation of Austria. I first speculate why in recent analyses of historical case studies of the United States as an occupation power, as well as in U.S. “nation building” efforts, the case study of the highly successful American occupation regime in postwar Austria is blithely ignored. Secondly, I run through the cycles of preoccupation  in contemporary history research with the Austrian occupation and note that the highpoint of occupation studies came with a cohort of Austrian “baby boomers” mining the newly opened Western archival holdings in the 1980s. Occupation studies—as has much of the scholarly engagement with political and diplomatic history--have largely fallen by the wayside as a priority in recent gender- and cultural studies driven Austrian contemporary history research. Finally, some tentative suggestions are made about what we can learn from the occupation of postwar Austria for the current occupation challenges in Iraq after the transition from war to peace in the building of a stable political and economic nation.

 Read full paper as Adobe .pdf

CenterAustria
Metropolitan College

Is pleased to invite you to a special lecture by

OTMAR LAHODYNSKY

European Editor, Profil (Vienna Weekly)
2007 Visiting Fulbright-Scholar,
University of Texas at Austin

The Life of a Foreign Correspondent:
From Warsaw in the Cold War to European Union-Brussels

CenterAustria Seminar Room, Metro College, ED 128, April 30, 12:30 pm

Otmar Lahodynsky was born in Linz, Austria. After studying German and English literature at the University of Vienna, he entered the journalistic profession, first as a reporter with Profil, Austria’s leading weekly magazine, covering events in Eastern Europe. Later as a correspondent in Brussels, he covered Austria’s accession to the European Union from 1988 to 1995 for the leading Austrian daily Die Presse; he was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief. In 1997/98 he served as chief of the foreign desk for the Vienna daily Kurier, before returning to Profil in 1999 as European editor. He has done extensive interviews for Profil with world leaders such as Kofi Annan, King Hussein of Jordan, Vaclav Havel, Michail Gorbachov, Romano Prodi and Javier Solana. Since 2001, he is the president of the Austrian section of the “Association of European Journalists". He is an author of books on the European Union.

 

Seit August 2006 ist der Geograph Martin Heintel an der University of New Orleans. Im Interview berichtet er von seinem Arbeitsalltag, erläutert die Unterschiede zwischen europäischer und amerikanischer Wissenschaftstradition und schildert das Leben in einer Stadt, die nach wie vor mit den Folgen des Hurrikans Katrina zu kämpfen hat.

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International Night at UNO: Austrian students showcase their country and culture. Center Austria would like to thank Red Bull for their generous sponsorship and contribution to the Center Austria exhibitor’s table.

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Signs of Spring in the city of Innsbruck, Austria, during mid-March, 2007.

Photo: Marion Wieser

The incredible success of the New Orleans Saints football team brought hope, pride, joy and fun to New Orleans and the entire gulf coast region. Black and Gold fever also can be felt in a country that is traditionally more interested in soccer and skiing than American football: Austria.

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Visible to everybody interested in the arts, Katrina had an impact on the thinking and creating of New Orleans artists. Fleur de lis in every kind of variation pop up everywhere and galleries feature exhibitions that deal with the catastrophe itself and the aftermath.

But Katrina not only affected the lives of New Orleanians, it also touched heart and soul of Austrian artist Romana Redinger, who came to the Crescent city almost exactly one year after the levees failed, on August 11, 2006 to spend one year in New Orleans with fiancée Hermann, an exchange UNO business student and son Michael, 2.

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Martin Heintel

“European Spatial Development Perspective: Transnational Cooperation and Cohesion”

Tuesday, March 20th: 3p.m., 2007
Education Building, Room 205
Reception to follow

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Center Austria and the History Department of the University of New Orleans

would like to invite you to a talk by

Charles Ingrao
Purdue University

on

Fixing the Balkans: The Use & Abuse of History

When: Thursday, March 15, 12:30
Where: ED 103 (Dr. Bischof’s Cold War Class)


Charles Ingrao holds a PhD in European History from Brown University; he is professor of history at Purdue University and was a visiting professor at the Universities of Chicago, Washington, Indiana, Otago (NZ) and Cambridge (GB). He is the project director of the “Scholar’s Initiative” – an international research team that is writing a consensual history of the Yugoslav wars. He is a Habsburg historian and author and editor of numerous books such as The Habsburg Monarchy 1618-1815 (2000) translated into Serbo-Croat and (with Bruce Pauley) Understanding Ethnic Conflict in Central and Eastern Europe (forthcoming), as well as co-editor of The Germans and the East (forthcoming). He was the editor of the Austrian History Yearbook (1995-2006) and since 1991 the founder and editor of the internet’s first history discussion list, HABSBURG, for central European historians.

 

"Contemporary Austrian Studies" Celebrates 15 published volumes at the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C.

From left to right:
Irving Louis Horowitz, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Transaction Publishers;
Eva Nowotny, Austrian Ambassador to the United States;
Guenter Bischof, Director, Center Austria, University of New Orleans;
Dagmar Herzog, Professor of History, City University of New York, Graduate Center

Download Presentations: 

• Guenter Bischof
• Eva Nowotny
• Dagmar Herzog
• Irving Louis Horowitz
  

 

The exhibition „Before the Storm“ features photographs by Michael P. Smith that date from the time before Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic destruction of the city and its culture. The subjects of the pictures, taken between 1969 and 1991, are the city’s inhabitants and the city itself, which, intrinsically linked with jazz and rhythm ´n´ blues music, embody the special spirit of New Orleans.

Stadtmuseum Innsbruck
Badgasse 2 / A-6020 Innsbruck
Tel.: +43 (0)512 - 58 73 80
www.innsbruck.at/stadtmuseum
Eintrittspreise: Euro 3,- / 2,-
Öffnungszeiten: Mo - Fr 9.00 - 17.00 Uhr

February 1-22^nd :

Visit: Ellen Palli, Executive Director Austrian Student Program

February 5^th 3 p.m. ED 128, Metro Conference Room

Lecture: “ God in the White House-A European Perspective on Religion and the U.S. Presidency”, Roman Deininger, Phd Candidate, University of Vienna, Austria

February 8-14^th

Visit: Dr. Margaret Davidson, Resident Direct, Academic Year Abroad

February 12^th 5 p.m. ED 128, Metro Conference Room

Meeting: LFU Innsbruck-UNO Friendship Coordinator Dr. Franz Mathis and

Innsbruck students

February 13^th 10 a.m. ED 128, Metro Conference Room

Meeting: UNO-LFU Innsbruck Business Meeting

February 13^th 3 p.m. ED 128, Metro Conference Room

Book Presentation: Contemporary Austrian Studies, Volume XV,

“Sexuality in Austria”

March 27^th 3 p.m. tba

Lecture: “European Spatial Development Perspective: Transnational Cooperation and Cohesion”

Dr. Martin Heintel, UNO’s Marshall Plan Chair in Austrian Studies 2006/07, Department of Geography, University of Vienna

April 17th, 3 p.m. 

Lecture: "The Future of the European Welfare State"

Dr. Max Preglau, Professor of Sociaology, LFU Innsbruck, and Schumpeter Fellow, Harvard University 

Metropolitan College, Conference Room, ED 128 

Guenter Bischof giving a lunch talk on "Prisoners of War in World War II" at the "National World War II Museum" on Jan. 3, 2007.
Photo: Michael Edwards

CAS XV, Sexuality in Austria

Scholars have increasingly been investigating human sexuality as an important field of social history in particular national cultures. This volume examines both continuities and changing patterns of sexual behavior in Austria.

Sexuality in Austria reflects the broad variety of such recent research. David Luft introduces the volume with an essay on sexuality and gender in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Scott Spector traces the emergence of homosexuality in tabloids at the same time. Maria Mesner surveys the growing number of sex counseling organizations in interwar Vienna, some driven by eugenics, others by social concerns. Ties with Margaret Sanger’s birth control movement in the U.S. are also documented. Ingrid Bauer and Renate Huber are the first scholars to treat the “foreign encounters” between Austrian women and occupation soldiers during the postwar quadripartite Austrian occupation regime in a comparative framework. Franz Eder traces the growing presence of sexual issues in post-World War II popular media and suggests parallels with the German case.

Matti Bunzl analyses the legal penalties for homosexuality in postwar Austria and the liberation of the gay movement as a result of EU pressures after Austria joined the European Union in 1995. Peter Judson analyzes the major influence of the Catholic Church on Austrian sexuality through the lens of a recent gay and sex abuse scandals in the church hierarchy. In “romancing the foreigner” Julia Woesthoff analyzes the growing presence of foreign workers (gastarbeiter) in postwar Austria and their sexual contacts with natives.

In a “non-topical essay” Katharina Wegan views the Austrian historical memory of the Austrian State Treaty through the fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 2005 and Günter Bischof analyzes the avalanche of historical exhibits and exhibit catalogues that flooded Austria in the “Gedankenjahr” 2005.