Introduction

1In the late 1980s, I began to attend the annual meeting of the German Studies Association (GSA). The GSA has been bringing together scholars from the U. S. and around the world to present their new research on the German-speaking world (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) from the fields of history, literature, cultural studies, and political science. As an Austrian working on postwar Austria, the GSA was the only venue to attend in the U. S. as a PhD student (and later as a professor) to meet the community of scholars dealing with the German-speaking world in the broadest interdisciplinary fashion. Apart from the annual meetings of the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association (MALCA), there was no regular venue for “Austrian Studies” in North America where Austrianists met. While Habsburg scholars would also attend the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) and the American Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES),