Melting Pot Vienna: Then and Now

FAIN: EH-50050-05

Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)
Maria-Regina Josefine Kecht (Project Director: March 2005 to February 2008)

A four-week institute for twenty-five college teachers, conducted in German, drawing on works of literature and studies of migration and ethnicity, in order to examine both the benefits and the tensions arising from the mix of cultures and nationalities in Vienna in the twentieth century.

Vienna as a ‘case study’ illustrating the tremendous contribution immigrants have made to modern Europ. societies; the complexity of a city—derived from the multi-ethnic, socio-economic, and political-ideological diversity of its population.Understanding the people of Vienna and the urban culture they have created through the last century will allow participants to reorient their intellectual perceptions.Through readings and filmviewings, scholarly presentations by Austrian experts on questions of migration and multi-ethnicity, as well as site visits to historically important, topically relevant Viennese facilities, we will offer participants the opportunity to develop fresh insights into an academically as well as socially exciting topic.