Guest Editors' Editorial

Joshua Parker,Hanna Wallinger

doi:10.47060/jaaas.v1i1.87

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph is included here In 2017, the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS) met for its annual conference at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, forty-four years after it had been founded there in 1974 and seventy years after the first Salzburg Seminar had been held at the same place. The "Schloss," as the present site of the Salzburg Global Seminar is lovingly called, was the setting of many of the past conferences of the association and is intricately connected with the founding and development of the field of American Studies in Austria and Europe. The conference topic, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? The Changing Nature of American Studies," was meant to open up a dialogue about the temporal dimensions of American studies as a discipline, from the past to the present and the possible futures. Sixty-five speakers from nine countries, among them four invited keynote lecturers, and sixteen graduate students met in the spirit of collegiality that the Seminar has become famous for. This inaugural volume of a new journal issued by the AAAS will demonstrate that the conference yielded productive and interesting insights into the nature of American studies.

Highlights

I n 2017, the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS) met for its annual conference at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, forty-four years after it had been founded there in 1974 and seventy years after the first Salzburg Seminar had been held at the same place
In 1947, ninety-seven students from eighteen different countries met at the lakeside Schloss to “provide an opportunity in post-war Europe for a meeting of scholars and students from various countries in a common project of free investigation and discussion,” to quote from the 1947 mission statement.[1]
Participants in the first seminar for American studies stayed at Schloss Leopoldskron, once owned by Max Reinhardt, the Austrian-born American theater and film director

Summary

Introduction

I n 2017, the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS) met for its annual conference at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, forty-four years after it had been founded there in 1974 and seventy years after the first Salzburg Seminar had been held at the same place. In the third keynote lecture, Philip McGowan, the current President of the European Association of American Studies, an organization that was founded at Schloss Leopoldskron in 1954, discussed two poems written immediately after the Second World War that examine the “themes of suffering, innocence, and experience” and address the ideas of apocalypse and dislocation which resulted from the ruptures of the war.

Results

Conclusion