Austrian Studies 25 (2017): Celebrations. Festkultur in Austria

H-Announce Austrian Studies 25 (2017): Celebrations. Festkultur in Austria

Announcement published by Deborah Holmes on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 Type: Call for Papers Date: February 29, 2016 Subject Fields: Eastern Europe History / Studies, German History / Studies, Humanities, Literature, Music and Music History

Call for Proposals

9-10 June 2016 - Workshop at the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature, Institute of Modern Languages Research / Austrian Cultural Forum, London

To mark its twenty-fifth issue,Austrian Studies will examine practices and representations of celebration from 1750 to the present in the Habsburg Empire, the Austrian Republics and former areas of the Habsburg Empire. Festivities, festivals, anniversary celebrations and the ways in which they are organised and experienced, shed unique light on the culture that supports – or is supported by – such events. Celebrations constitute conscious, if temporary, departures from everyday life, moments of collective performance. Their potential is paradoxical in that they can either unsettle or confirm existing narratives and identities, depending not only on why and how they are staged, but also on their context and aftermath. As Elias Canetti claimed of the ‘Festmasse’ (celebratory or holiday crowd), celebrations can produce a temporary state of liberation, of abandon; they can also be markers of continuity or sources of reactionary energy, as Joseph Roth noted, looking back to the ‘Kaiserjubiläumsfestzug’ after the demise of the Habsburg empire. Contemporary practices of memory and discourses of heritage rely heavily on a globally marketable Festkultur which assimilates aspects of earlier celebratory practices.

Austrian Festkultur – from Habsburg court ritual to the media spectacles of the present day, from Volksfeste to festivals of high culture and classical music – offers a broad field of enquiry. On 9-10 June 2016, the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, London, will host a workshop for the presentation and discussion of papers in progress for the anniversary issue of Austrian Studies. The Austrian Cultural Forum warmly invites all participants to an evening reception on Thursday 9 June. Confirmed speakers include:

Citation: Deborah Holmes. Austrian Studies 25 (2017): Celebrations. Festkultur in Austria. H-Announce. 01-26-2016. https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/107566/austrian-studies-25-2017-celebrations-festkultur-austria Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Announce

Ritchie Robertson (Oxford): ‘The Reformation of Catholic Festival Culture in Eighteenth-

Century Austria’

Gar Yates (Exeter): ‘Celebration, evasion, reassessments: the uneven paths of Grillparzer

and Nestroy’

Sigurd Paul Scheichl (Innsbruck): ‘“Die Wildgans schreibt uns den Prolog” (Karl Kraus) The Young Republic and Grillparzer as its Celebrated Classical Author’

Alys George (NYU): ‘Performing Politics in the Prater: Festspiele in 1930s Vienna’

Nicole Streitler-Kastberger (Graz): ‘”Solche Nächte gehören gesprengt” - Feste und deren Subversion bei Horváth’

Robert Knight (Loughborough): ‘Politicised Celebration: The 10th October in post-war Carinthia’

Andrew Barker (Edinburgh): ‘Marching through “Niemalsland”: Festivals and Remembrance in Republican Austria’

Heide Kunzelmann (Kent / London): ‘Carnevalesque Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung in the provinces. Notes on Gerhard Fritsch, Fasching (1967)’

Fatima Naqvi (Rutgers): ‘”Thanks, but no thanks”: The Gift According to Thomas Bernhard’

Caitríona Ní Dhúill (Durham): ‘Queering Festkultur, or, After Conchita: – Eurovision as Vision of Europe’

Further papers are invited, not only on celebrations and festivals themselves but also on their politics and their reflection in the media, as well as their artistic treatment and representation in film, the visual arts and literature. Topics could include:

Staatskünstler – the involvement of artists, musicians and writers in official Festkultur Celebrations as part of protest culture ‘verpatzte Feste’ (W. Schmidt-Dengler) – when and why have festivities – real or imagined – gone awry? Sacred celebrations and rituals Celebrations of individual cultural figures such asDichterfeiern and the anniversaries of composers and artists Commemorations or celebrations of historical events Memory contests as played out in the context of public celebrations

The forms, development and representation of Volksfeste Festkultur or Eventkultur? The commercialisation of celebration Festivals and festivities as a point of contact between ‘high’ and popular culture The cultural politics of celebration Regular, institutionalised festive or commemorative days, including religious festivals Regional festivities and their variations from the eastern provinces to the Alps

Proposals for the workshop, the Austrian Studies issue, or preferably both, including an abstract of 300 words and a short biography, should be sent to Florian [email protected] and Deborah Holmes [email protected] by 29 February 2016. The languages of the workshop are English and German; papers should be no longer than 25 minutes. Finished articles should be in English and will typically be no longer than 6,500 words; the submission deadline is 20 November 2016 for publication in autumn 2017. Austrian Studies is a peer-reviewed yearbook published under the auspices of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). For further details see http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Journals/Austrian.html.

The workshop will incorporate the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre’s annual Postgraduate Conference in Austrian Literature and Cultural Studies, for which a separate call will be circulated.

Contact Info:

Ass.-Prof. Deborah Holmes 0152 Fachbereich Germanistik Universität Salzburg Erzabt Klotz Straße 1 A-5020 Salzburg Austria

Contact Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Journals/Austrian.html