From May 2nd to May 5th, 2013, the Austrian Studies Association held their annual conference at the University of Waterloo/St. Paul’s Campus with the generous support of the Faculty of Arts at UW, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, Retail Services UW, the Austrian Studies Association, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Austrian Embassy (Ottawa), and the Austrian Cultural Forum (New York).
To start the meeting off, Ludwig Laher, the Austrian writer, read passages from his 2001 novel Herzfleischentartung (Heart Flesh Degeneration), which has been translated into numerous languages and which deals with the years 1940-1955 in the Austrian provincial village of St. Pantaleon near Salzburg. Laher describes in this novel how a work education camp set up 1940 by the Nazi storm troopers turned after its closure into a Sinti and Roma detention centre, and how the cruelties committed at this place lived on in post-war Austria.
The well-attended reading opened two days of discussion about ideologies, belief systems, and their influence on past and present events, which ran as a thread through all the conference presentations. The overarching theme for this conference was “Belief Systems”, which drew 41 fascinating papers in the areas of philosophy, science, history, film studies, architecture, literature, linguistics, gender studies, religion, comparative studies, politics, medical discourses, national belief systems and even popular belief systems such as sports, alcohol, and pop music.
The conference was well attended by speakers and participants from a broad national and international context - including Austria, Germany, the United States, England, and Romania - and drew not only Austrian Studies scholars, but also graduate students and people from the community who joined in the stimulating discussions on the meaning of belief systems in various contexts and how they shape our understanding of cultural artifacts, ourselves, and the society we live in.
The conference was enhanced by an exhibition on the life and art of Gustav Klimt as the forerunner to modernism (generously supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum Ottawa). The keynote, which was given by Lukas Meyer from the Institut für Philosophie und Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaften of the Universität Graz, set the broad context which made the topic of belief systems not only relevant when looking back at history, but also when pondering future developments, by offering a talk about the conceptions of legitimacy and illegitimacy in highly industrialized states, such as Canada or Austria.
The screening of the film Die Wand based on the novel by Marlen Haushofer and directed by Julian Roman Pölsler, offered the participants the opportunity to not only think about belief systems in an anthropocentric context, but to broaden their discussion to include one’s relationship to other animals as well as the environment.
Belinda Kleinhans, Conference Co-Organizer