The Austrian Studies Association or ASA continues traditions started in 1961, as the only North American association devoted to scholarship on all aspects of Austrian and Austrian-associated cultural life and history from the eighteenth century to the present. The Association publishes a quarterly scholarly journal, the Journal of Austrian Studies and holds an international annual spring conference, organized around a theme with open sessions. Its other activities include organizing scholarly panels for the annual conventions of the Modern Language Association, the German Studies Association, and at other national and international conferences. Current news and resources of interest are included on its website and distributed through its list-serv and on its Facebook page. The Austrian Studies Association is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Recent history
From 1971 through 1999, prior to its incarnation as the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association in 2000, the journal Modern Austrian Literature hosted annual conferences at the University of California, Riverside under the auspices of editor and UCR German Studies professor/chair Donald G. Daviau and secretary-treasurer Jorun Johns, publisher of Ariadne Press, the California-based scholarly publication house for Austrian critical studies and works in translation. The ASA originated in a referendum held in early 2011, when MALCA'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 and scholarship that acknowledges this region's historical multi-ethnic, multilingual, and transcultural identities and their legacies in the present. , the ASA/MALCA also assumed the role heretofore played by the AmericanGrillparzer Society as liaison to the Austrian Grillparzer Gesellschaft, located in Vienna and the sponsor of conferences and a yearbook. The revision of the association and its publication was initiated by former Presidents David Luft and Robert Dassanowsky . The current President of the ASA is Gregor Thuswaldner, Business and Information Manager is Katherine Arens.
The Journal of Austrian Studies, produced and distributed by the University of Nebraska Press is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary quarterly that publishes scholarly articles and book reviews on all aspects of the history and culture of Austria and the former Habsburg territories. It is the flagship publication of the Austrian Studies Association and contains contributions in German and English from leading international scholars in the field of Austrian studies. The journal highlights scholarly work that draws on innovative methodologies and new ways of viewing Austrian history and culture. Although the journal was renamed in 2012 to reflect the increasing scope and diversity of its scholarship, it has a long lineage dating back over a half century as Modern Austrian Literature and, prior to that, The Journal of the InternationalArthur Schnitzler Research Association., its editors are Todd Herzog and Hillary Hope Herzog ; book review editor is Joseph W. Moser, and the editorial board includes prominent Austrianists and Germanists from the U.S., UK, Canada, Austria, and Germany representing a variety of area studies. The Max Kade Foundation funds an annual Max Kade Prize for Best Article published in the journal, awarded at the conference of the ASA. The winner of the $1500 award is identified from among the articles published in the journal that year, based on a poll of the editorial board.
