ASA Elections—Candidate Statements
Vice-President
Craig Decker
My work in Austrian Studies examines questions of sociocultural democracy, focusing on two distinct but overlapping areas: the history and theory of the Volksstück and representations of the fascist past. In addition to several articles on these topics, I have edited Balancing Acts: Textual Strategies of Peter Henisch and Austrian Identities: Twentieth-Century Short Fiction, and served as the editor for German-language drama for the Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. My English translation of Henisch’s Eine sehr kleine Frau will appear shortly.
My association with MALCA has been longstanding and varied, including a term as editor of Modern Austrian Literature from 2008–11. As an ex officio member of the organization’s Executive Council during my editorial tenure, I participated from the beginning in discussions concerning the transitions to the Journal of Austrian Studies and the Austrian Studies Association. Now, as we move forward, I would be honored to serve as vice president of the Austrian Studies Association to help ensure that the organization continues to grow, both in North America and abroad, in terms of its members and their fields of expertise.
Imke Meyer is Helen Herrmann Professor and Chair of the Department of German at Bryn Mawr College. She also is the editor of Continuum’s “New Directions in German Studies” book series. Imke Meyer has been a member of the ASA (MALCA and IASRA) since 1995. In 2001, she was elected to a four-year term on MALCA’s Executive Council. Between 2001 and 2005, she also served as MALCA’s liaison to the MLA. At present, she also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Austrian Studies. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender and genre in Austrian and German literature and film. She teaches courses on German and Austrian literature, Gender Studies, Film Studies, and German intellectual history. She has published widely on authors and filmmakers such as Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Leopold von Andrian, Franz Kafka, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Haneke, and Barbara Albert. Her most recent book, Männlichkeit und Melodram: Arthur Schnitzlers erzählende Schriften, appeared with Königshausen & Neumann in 2010.
At-large-members
Kata Gellen
Starting this July, I will be an Assistant Professor of German at Duke University. I am completing a manuscript on the literary figuration of noise in German modernism. I have published articles on Franz Kafka, Elias Canetti, and Thomas Bernhard (with Jakob Norberg). An article on Joseph Roth is forthcoming in the Journal of Austrian Studies. This is part of a project on the Eastern European German-Jewish novel as a modernist form, which will also include chapters on Soma Morgenstern (on whom I presented at the 2010 MALCA in Vienna) and H. W. Katz. I am currently reviewing a submission on Bernhard for the JAS and preparing a graduate course on 20th-century Austrian literature. Since 2009 I have been the Assistant Editor of the German Quarterly.
Nele Hempel-Lamer recently hosted the 2012 Austrian Studies Association Conference at California State University, Long Beach. She has been involved with the organization since 1999, when she attended her first MALCA Conference. Since then, she has published a monograph about Marlene Streeruwitz’s dramatic works as well as articles on the poetics of contemporary Austrian women writers like Marlene Streeruwitz, Elfriede Jelinek, and Margret Kreidl. She has contributed book reviews to the MAL journal and taught undergraduate and graduate courses on Austrian literature and culture. She would feel honored to serve on the Austrian Studies Association Executive Committee as an at-large member.
Laura McLary
I am an associate professor of German at the University of Portland in Oregon. My German Studies majors at UP, currently more than 60 majors each year, spend a year abroad in Salzburg, Austria. Since 2004, forty-one of my graduates have been awarded competitive grants, including the Austrian-American Educational Commission ETA program. I regularly teach courses in Austrian literature and culture at UP and in Salzburg. My publications include an article on Georg Trakl, which appeared in Modern Austrian Literature. I am currently co-editing a collection of essays on the novels of Lilian Faschinger with Vincent Kling (La Salle University), to be published by Ariadne Press. I have researched and presented on Trakl, Faschinger, Thomas Glavinic, and graphic novels by Austrian artists/authors (Modern Austrian Literature panel at PAMLA and at the ASA), as well as serving as chair for the Modern Austrian Literature panel at the PAMLA.
Joseph W. Moser has served as the Book Review Editor for Modern Austrian Literature and now the Journal of Austrian Studies since 2006. He coordinated the 2002 “Austrian Writers Confront the Past” conference at the University of Pennsylvania and he organized the 2011 MALCA conference “Jews and/or Jewish-Austrians in Modern Austrian Literature and Culture.” He has published on Thomas Bernhard, Lilian Faschinger, Czernowitz writers, and Franz Antel’s Bockerer films. He is currently writing a book, with the working title: “Popular Culture of the Third Reich through Film Comedies: The Films of Hans Moser, Paul Hörbiger, and Theo Lingen.”