Workshop “Memories of Empire: Continuities and Discontinuities of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Transnational and Multilingual Legacy” 17-18 September 2018, University of Oslo Abstracts Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan): On the Shores of Habsburg Memory: A Tale of Two Cities. This talk examines both memories (particularly literary memories) and legacies of the Habsburg Empire in two coastal areas: the Austrian Littoral and Venice (formerly part of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia). Given the image of the Habsburg Empire as a continental or terrestrial power indelibly associated with a notion of Mitteleuropa, how do memories of the Austrian era resonate in Adriatic/Mediterranean sites? What continuities and differences in practices of remembrance do we see across the upper Adriatic, a sea defined by Predrag Matvejević as one of intimacy? In addressing these questions, I explore to what degree and in what ways self-conscious invocations of the Habsburg past map onto its enduring literary, linguistic, architectonic, and maritime legacies. The talk focuses on the relationship between Venice and Trieste, historic rivals and typically described in the late 19th and 20th century as opposites (decaying versus modern). In the 21st century, by contrast, both cities are often depicted through elegiac modes associated with imperial nostalgia. The Habsburg past is not only visible but dominates the memoryscape in Trieste, in contrast to Venice (where the Habsburgs are remembered for having helped extinguish Venice’s own empire). Yet while Trieste is often twinned in memory to Vienna or Rijeka, its literary and architectonic scapes also refract the enduring influence of Venice, typifying the “ambivalent” memories of the Habsburg era in its principal cities in general and the complex intersections of Italian nationalism/cultural identity and Mitteleuropean horizons that characterize the Adriatic in particular. In this presentation, I also consider questions of memory alongside those of legacy, drawing upon concepts such as the tidemark to consider visible and enduring traces of empire which may nonetheless provoke indifference within discourses of public and literary memory. Pieter M. JuDson (European University Institute, Florence): Escaping the Nation Both depictions and memories of social life in Habsburg Central Europe are commonly refracted through the still hegemonic category of nationhood. In order for historians to gain access to that pre-1918 world (and to imagine social and cultural life in less-national ways), historians and anthropologists have developed situational strategies to analyze how people perceived their place in that world, strategies such as “national indifference.” These strategies sought to relativize the importance of national categories and ideas in daily life experience. Nevertheless, as some of us have acknowledged, strategies like national indifference define themselves in relation to nationalist assumptions, even as they seek to combat them. 1 Workshop “Memories of Empire: Continuities and Discontinuities of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Transnational and Multilingual Legacy” 17-18 September 2018, University of Oslo Our ability to recapture that earlier world demands constant reference to the experience of individuals and local communities as a way to undermine the tyranny of national groupism, even as we often use the categories offered us by groupism to do so. One way to do this is to approach linguistic diversity more as a socially produced phenomenon (the product of specific kinds of social demands) rather than as an indicator of individual or group identification. Another way is to recognize the ongoing power of regional identifications to complement, counter, or complicate the authority of the national narrative. Yet a third is to examine the many ways in which local people engaged on their own terms with state institutions. It may then become clearer that entities like the Habsburg Monarchy (or perhaps the EU) never in fact functioned as top-down institutions as their nationalist detractors claim. Marija ManDić (HumbolDt University) & Stijn Vervaet (UiO): The Language Ideology of the Bunyevs in the Dual Monarchy: A Case StuDy of the Journals Bunjevačke i šokačke novine, Bunjevac, anD Neven Since the democratic changes in Yugoslavia and Hungary, Bunyev activists have fought for the recognition of the Bunyev national community and its language, an Ikavian variety of the Štokavian dialect that served as the basis for standard Serbo-Croatian. On the one hand, the present Bunyev language ideology is motivated by the proliferation of four national standards – Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian – out of Serbo-Croatian. On the other hand, however, Bunyev seems to present a somewhat different case in the former Serbo-Croatian speaking area, because there is no state in which the Bunyevs constitute the majority. Furthermore, the Bunyev language ideology establishes a continuity with the Habsburg Monarchy, when the Bunyev language was recognized (e.g. in the census of 1910) and used in public domains. Drawing on contemporary theories of language ideology and critical discourse analysis, we will examine the development and internal tensions of linguistic ideology in the Bunyev journals Bunjevačke i šokačke novine (1870), Bunjevac (1882), and Neven (1884-1941) published in Kalocsa, Sombor and Baja/Subotica respectively. What views of language and language use are presented? What traces of multilingualism can we discover by re-reading the Bunyev press of that time (e.g. contact with Hungarian, German; multilingualism of editors/readership; views and debates about multilingualism)? How is the Bunyev language presented (as separate from Croatian or Serbian?)? And, most importantly, what is the nature of the language demands that 19th c. Bunyev activists put towards the Hungarian Kingdom? With this analysis we hope to understand better the nature of language ideology debates in the Habsburg Monarchy and to illustrate how practices of multilingualism of that time continue to inform and shape the sociolinguistic situation and debates about minority rights in Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary today. 2 Workshop “Memories of Empire: Continuities and Discontinuities of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Transnational and Multilingual Legacy” 17-18 September 2018, University of Oslo Krisztina Rácz (UiO): Learning the Language, Learning the Nation In my presentation, I will describe the initial premises of my prospective research on second language teaching and learning in Vojvodina and Transylvania. My project will include a synchronic exploration of ethno-linguistic belonging and interethnic communication in the former Habsburg Monarchy and a diachronic perspective from 1918 until today. My main research aim is to unpack the “hidden curriculum” of the instruction of the state language and the minority language in Vojvodina and Transylvania: to examine the construction and representation of national communities and the nature of the boundaries between them, and to get a better understanding of continuities and ruptures in language policy, interethnic relations and language education in the two regions. I will explore second language acquisition both top-down and bottom-up. In terms of the former, I will tackle methods of teaching and analyze textbooks and documents of language and education policy related to second language learning, such as supranational and national charters and guidelines, laws and regulations, curricula and textbooks, talk with policy- makers, curriculum-makers, publishers and authors of textbooks, professors of future teachers of Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian as second language and teachers, etc. The bottom-up end of second language teaching will be dealing with past and present practices of the second language acquisition and look into how individuals receive and perceive the instruction of the second language. I will draw on literature on ethnic identification, interactions and minority-majority relations in multicultural contexts; on studies about the role of language and education in nation- building processes and on European multilingualism; as well as on works specifically dealing with Serbian-Hungarian and Romanian-Hungarian bilingualism in Vojvodina and Transylvania respectively. Tamara Scheer (University of Vienna): The UnintenDed Babel-IDentity: Language Diversity anD the Habsburg Imperial Army When reading newspapers, parliamentary debates, diaries, letters, political pamphlets and administrative sources between 1867 and 1918 one might come to the conclusion that it was the language diversity (and multilingualism) in the context of the nationality conflict which majorly destabilized the Habsburg monarchy. Post war reflections too upheld critics on the Habsburg language policy. All sources indicate that languages had a huge impact - usually negatively - on the most important multiethnic institution in the late Habsburg monarchy: the joint army. Before 1914, almost no day passed without a public discussion somewhere in the monarchy on language issues. It was criticized that the soldiers' constitutional right to use their language during service was not properly carried out. Most critic was based on the nationalistic conviction that this mismanagement violated the most important cultural property of a nation/nationality: its language. Therefore, it seems likely that the bulk of army members (mostly ordinary soldiers) could have never positively identified with the army. In fact, after six years of