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Austrian Cultural Forum Prizes

ACF suspends book & dissertation prize competition; CAS to award book & dissertation prizes for 2012

On March 9, 2012, the Austrian Cultural Forum-New York made a formal decision to suspend the 2012 ACF Prize competition due to severe budget cuts. They have expressed a desire to award prizes again in 2014, should their funding situation improve.

The Center for Austrian Studies considers these biennial scholarly prizes to be of vital importance. Therefore, for 2012 at least, we will hold competitions for both a Center for Austrian Studies Book Prize and Dissertation Prize following the model that already exists.

To be eligible for the 2012 CAS prize competitions, a book must have been published (or a dissertation defended) between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2011. Authors must be citizens or legal residents (holders of “green cards”) of the United States or Canada. Eligible works may be from any discipline in the humanities, social sciences, or fine arts. The subject matter may deal with contemporary Austria, contemporary Austria’s relationship with Central Europe and the European Union, or the history, society, and culture of Austria and the lands of Central and Eastern Europe with a common Habsburg heritage. The language must be English.

The purpose of these biennial competitions is to encourage North American doctoral candidates and scholars in the full range of academic disciplines to do research in the field of Austrian and Habsburg studies. Multi-authored studies or multi-author collections of essays are not eligible for this competition.

Each prize carries a cash award of $1,500.

Send 5 copies of each book (or 3 copies of each dissertation) to:

Center for Austrian Studies
University of Minnesota
Attention: CAS Book (or Dissertation) Prize Committee
314 Social Sciences Building
267 19th Avenue S.
Minneapolis MN 55455

The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2012. The winners will be announced at the GSA convention in October, 2012.

Previous ACF Prize Winners

Dissertation Prizes

  • 2010: Nicole Phelps, "Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the New Liberal Order: US—Habsburg Relations and the Transformation of International Politics, 1880-2000" (History, University of MInnesota, 2008)
  • 2008: David W. Gerlach, “For Nation and Gain: Economy, Ethnicity, and Politics in the Czech Borderlands, 1945-1948” (History, University of Pittsburgh, 2007).
  • 2006: Tara Zahra, “Your Child Belongs to the Nation: Nationalism, Germanization, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands” (History, University of Michigan, 2005).
  • 2004: Philip J. Howe, "Well-Tempered Discontent: Nationalism, Ethnic Group Politics, Electoral Institutions and Parliamentary Behavior in the Western Half of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 1867-1914" (Political Science, U.C. San Diego).
  • 2002: Alison Fleig Frank, "Austrian El Dorado: A History of the Oil Industry in Galicia, 1853-1923," (History, Harvard University, 2001).
  • 2001: Christa Gaug, "Situating the City: The Textual and Spatial Construction of Late 19th-century Berlin and Vienna in City Texts by Theodor Fontane and Daniel Spitzer," University of Texas at Austin.
  • 2000: Jeremy King, “Loyalty and Polity, Nation and State: A Town in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 - 1948, Columbia University.
  • 1999: Julie Johnson, "The Art of Women: Women's Art Exhibitions in Fin-De-Siècle Vienna.
  • 1998: Cathleen Giustino, "Architecture and the Nation: Modern Urban Design and Possibilities for Political Participation in Czech Prague 1900," Northwestern University.
  • 1996-97: Julie Dorn Morrison, "Gustav Mahler at the Wiener Hofoper: A Study of Critical Reception in the Viennese Press (1897-1907)," Northwestern University.
  • 1995-96: Dissertation Prize: William D. Godsey, "Aristocratic Redoubt: The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office on the Eve of the First World War," University of Virginia.
  • 1994-95: Doris M. Klostermaier, "Marie von Ebner Eschenbach.The Victory of a Tenacious Will," University of Manitoba.
  • 1993-94: Geoffrey D. W. Wawro, "The Austro-Prussian War: Politics, Strategy, and War in the Habsburg Monarchy 1859-1866," Yale University.
  • 1992-93: Christopher Gibbs, "The Presence of Erlönig: Reception and Reworkings of Schubert Lied," Columbia University.
  • 1991-92: Joseph Francis Patrouch III, "Methods of Cultural Manipulation: The Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Province of Upper Austria, 1570-1650," University of California, Berkeley.
  • 1990-91: William Bowman, "Priest, Parish, and Religious Practice: A Social History of Catholicism in the Archdiocese of Vienna, 1800-1879," Johns Hopkins University.

Book Prizes

  • 2010: Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands (Cornell University Press, 2008)
  • 2008: Deborah R. Coen, Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
  • 2006: Alison Flieg Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Harvard University Press, 2005)
  • 2004: Gitta Honegger, Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)
  • 2002: Paula Sutter Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
  • 2001: Dr. Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler's Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938-45, University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
  • 2000: Dr. Eve Blau, The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919-1934, MIT Press, 1999.
  • 1999: Louis Rose, The Freudian Calling: Early Viennese Psychoanalysis and the Pursuit of Cultural Science, Wayne State University Press, 1998.
  • 1998: Pieter Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848-1918, University of Michigan Press, 1996.
  • 1996-97: Robert Rotenberg, Landscape and Power in Vienna, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
  • 1995-96: Franz A. J. Szabo, Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism, 1758-1780, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
  • 1994-95: Sander Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender, Princeton University Press, 1993.
  • 1993-94: Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism, University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
  • 1992-93: Carl Dolmetsch, "Our Famous Guest": Mark Twain in Vienna, University of Georgia Press, 1992.
  • 1991-92: Helmut Gruber, Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture, 1919-1934, Oxford University Press, 1991.
  • 1990-91: John Komlos, Nutrition and Economic Development in the Eighteenth Century Habsburg Monarchy: An Anthropometric History, Princeton University Press, 1989.

ACF Article Prize

  • 1989: Harry Ritter, "Progressive Historians and the Historical Imagination in Austria: Heinrich Friedjung and Richard Charmatz," Austrian History Yearbook 19-20, no. 1 (1983-1984): 45-90.

* (Note: this AHY volume was actually published in 1988.)