Center for Austrian Studies

The book offers a feminist analysis of the literary works of Yael Dayan. I illustrate how a female literary voice can effectively complicate and nuance official, historical narratives regarding Jewish identity, Israeli identity, and Zionism. I examined the gendered constructions of identity represented through Dayan’s prose and further traced literary shifts in her novels as she aged from “a girl in khakis to a woman in black”. This textual journey enabled me to complicate discourses on war, the Shoah, sex and sexuality, ageism, and religion. My book thus constituted a much-needed intervention to comprehending intersections of gender, nationalism, and identity constructions within the field of literature.

It is believed that Der wilde Garten (1927) was the first Austrian novel to deal openly with lesbian love, lesbian desire, and lesbian sex. In the course of a queer reading, this article denies limiting identity constructions and presents an analysis that
outlines elements of deviance and resistance toward a heterosexual structure and
locates these ambiguities as already inscribed in these very systems. The necessary
discomfort associated with providing a stage for the National Socialist author Grete
von Urbanitzky by discussing one of her books remains a product of the many references to her inhumane, racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and sexist ideas. The article
contextualizes her ideas and the novel’s lesbian motifs and gives a broad overview of
lesbian life during fin-de-siècle Vienna.

This essay reviews representations of Palestine and its Arab inhabitants through studying a set of Jewish-Austrian texts. It aims to investigate how the question of Palestine and the issue of the Palestinian “presence” were imagined by Jewish-Austrian authors beyond the reductive binary of Zionism and anti-Zionism. I will discuss Theodor Herzl’s texts, Der Judenstaat (1896), Altneuland (1902), and Herzl Relo@ded: Kein Märchen (Herzl Relo@ded: It’s no fairy tale, 2016) by Doron Rabinovici and Natan Sznaider. I will compare Zionist imaginaries among these texts and contrast them to the writings of Moshe Yàakov Ben-Gavriêl (1891–1965) who advocated for a pan-Asianist union between orientals: a category that included both Jews and Arabs for him.

My essay seeks to answer three main questions: first, can the tradition of thinking described by Edward Said as “Orientalism” be found in my corpus of analysis? Second, what forms of resistance and deconstruction of orientalist tropes can be found? Last, how would an analysis of Jewish-Austrian literatures and their gendered representations on Palestine and Palestinians complicate the current historiography of Zionism? I will answer these questions by offering both a literary analysis of the texts above alongside an appraisal of recent historiography on Zionism.

Der Page vom Dalmasse-Hotel is a novel by Austrian author Maria von Peteani which was first published in 1933. This article offers a queer reading of the novel and introduces one of Austria's once widely-read female authors, von Peteani. The analysis builds on original, little-used sources from the city archives of Linz. In the article, I reflect upon distinct cultural and social developments during Austria's interwar period, focusing in particular on female experiences. Upon situating von Peteani within Austria's literary scene, I use the methodology of a queer reading to analyze Der Page vom Dalmasse-Hotel. I investigate the gendered politics of clothing, performance, and language to make an argument about the subversive possibilities of a crossdressing motif. (VP)

This essay reviews representations of Palestine and its Arab inhabitants through studying a set of Jewish-Austrian texts. It aims to investigate how the question of Palestine and the issue of the Palestinian "presence" were imagined by Jewish-Austrian authors beyond the reductive binary of Zionism and anti-Zionism. I will discuss Theodor Herzl's texts, Der Judenstaat (1896), Altneuland (1902), and Herzl Relo@ded: Kein Märchen (Herzl Relo@ded: It's no fairy tale, 2016) by Doron Rabinovici and Natan Sznaider. I will compare Zionist imaginaries among these texts and contrast them to the writings of Moshe Yàakov Ben-Gavriêl (1891-1965) who advocated for a pan-Asianist union between orientals: a category that included both Jews and Arabs for him. My essay seeks to answer three main questions: first, can the tradition of thinking described by Edward Said as "Orientalism" be found in my corpus of analysis? Second, what forms of resistance and deconstruction of orientalist tropes can be found? Last, how would an analysis of Jewish-Austrian literatures and their gendered representations on Palestine and Palestinians complicate the current historiography of Zionism? I will answer these questions by offering both a literary analysis of the texts above alongside an appraisal of recent historiography on Zionism.

This essay reviews representations of Palestine and its Arab inhabitants through studying a set of Jewish-Austrian texts. It aims to investigate how the question of Palestine and the issue of the Palestinian "presence" were imagined by Jewish-Austrian authors beyond the reductive binary of Zionism and anti-Zionism. I will discuss Theodor Herzl's texts, Der Judenstaat (1896), Altneuland (1902), and Herzl Relo@ded: Kein Märchen (Herzl Relo@ded: It's no fairy tale, 2016) by Doron Rabinovici and Natan Sznaider. I will compare Zionist imaginaries among these texts and contrast them to the writings of Moshe Yàakov Ben-Gavriêl (1891-1965) who advocated for a pan-Asianist union between orientals: a category that included both Jews and Arabs for him. My essay seeks to answer three main questions: first, can the tradition of thinking described by Edward Said as "Orientalism" be found in my corpus of analysis? Second, what forms of resistance and deconstruction of orientalist tropes can be found? Last, how would an analysis of Jewish-Austrian literatures and their gendered representations on Palestine and Palestinians complicate the current historiography of Zionism? I will answer these questions by offering both a literary analysis of the texts above alongside an appraisal of recent historiography on Zionism.

Texte stellen "ein[en] Moment des Widerstands gegen gesellschaft liche Diskriminierung, also gegen Verdrängen, Verschweigen und Stigmatisierung von lesbischen Frauen" (Marti 7) dar. Die feministische Literaturwissenschaft betont die speziellen Schreib-und Produktionsbedingungen von Autorinnen*. Viele Texte von Frauen* sind nicht überliefert und auch publizierte Autorinnen* bleiben lange ausgeschlossen vom literarischen Leben. Schmid und Schnedl bezeichnen diese Ausklammerung als "alte abendländische Tradition", die "durch Verschweigen dem Vergessen, dem Tod überantwortet" (7) wird. Dieses Vergessen trifft auch auf die vermutlich 30 'lesbischen' Romane der Zwischenkriegszeit 1 zu (Claus 23-24). Einen davon, Der wilde Garten von Grete von Urbanitzky, gilt es hier näher zu betrachten. Grund für die geringe Aufmerksamkeit, die den Autorinnen* der Zwischenkriegszeit seitens der Wissenschaft geschenkt wurde, ist sicherlich, dass den meisten mangelnde literarische Qualität von zeitgenössischen (männlichen) Kritiken att estiert wurde. Der Vorwurf der Trivialität haft et auch Grete von Urbanitzky an, doch hat ihr dieser, was den kommerziellen Erfolg zu Lebzeiten betraf, nicht geschadet. 2 Da Sprache in der Trivialliteratur von der Literaturwissenschaft als "fl oskelhaft e, geschraubte und emotional überschwengl. Sprache voller stereotyper Bilder und Wendungen" (Wilpert 851) beschrieben wird, wertet jene Unterhaltungsliteratur a priori ab. Es bedürft e einer anderen Defi nition von Trivialität, auch im Hinblick auf die erschwerten Produktions-und Lebensbedingungen von Frauen*. Der wilde Garten (1927) ist der erste bislang bekannte und überlieferte