This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, has been named general editor of the Austria Culture Series produced by Peter Lang Publishing, New York.
“I am very honored to engage in this important work of editorship,” says Lamb-Faffelberger, president of the Central Pennsylvania chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German. “The Austrian Culture Series exhibits interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international dimensions of great importance.”
Peter Lang Publishing is headquartered in Bern, Switzerland and New York, N.Y., with offices in London, Frankfurt, and other cities worldwide.
Lamb-Faffelberger also will host 35 scholars from 11 countries at Lafayette for the sixth Annual Conference of Austrian Literature and Culture, “Visions and Visionaries in Literature and Film of Modern Austria,” Oct. 18-20. She is serving as one of two co-organizers of the conference.
“The scope of the conference underscores the strong interest in modern Austrian literature and culture studies, a field that has been an integral part of American Germanistics for several decades,” says Lamb-Faffelberger. “We owe its high standing to the extensive personal and professional engagement of our predecessors, of those scholars and teachers who worked tirelessly to give voice to Austrian literature in the United States. Their ‘labor of love’ built bridges between the two countries and secured a dynamic intellectual and intercultural exchange. “
The recent departure from academia of some senior figures in the U.S. study of Austrian culture made it necessary for the field to regroup and restructure, says Lamb-Faffelberger. She was part of a three-person group that in the last academic year formed an international organization exclusively dedicated to the research and teaching of Austrian literature and culture studies. The trio established the constitution and by-laws for the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association, which elected its first board members this spring.
“The recent initiatives to secure the continuation of the advancement of Austrian literature and culture studies in the United States are exciting,” says Lamb-Faffelberger. “In this regard, the theme of ‘visions and visionaries’ for the upcoming conference on Austrian literature and culture strikes us as particularly appropriate. Thus, we — the co-organizers of the conference, Gisela Roethke (Dickinson College) and I — invited presentations on trends and trend-setters in contemporary modern Austrian literature and film, on themes of utopia and dystopia, on visions of a postmodern Austrian society in today’s united Europe, but also voices of a ‘lost’ Austria, and on notions of identity and myth.”
Klaus Zeyringer’s keynote address at the conference will focus on Austria’s literary scene of the 1990s and beyond. Authors Gerhard Kofler, Martin Krusche, Barbara Neuwirth, Elisabeth Reichart, and Evelyn Schlag, as well as filmmaker Harald Friedl, will give readings and present their work. The issue of literary creation and production in the digital age will play a prominent role at the conference.
For more information on the conference, visit http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~lambfafm/austriaconf01.htm.
Lamb-Faffelberger joined the Lafayette faculty in 1992. She holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and an M.A. from the University of Illinois.
Her research interests include 19th and 20th century German literature and culture; modern Austrian literature and film; Austrian theater; feminist and minority discourse; and multi-media for foreign-language teaching.
She co-edited and wrote an introduction for Modern Austrian Theater: Text and Performance, scheduled for publication by Ariadne Press next year, as well as Out from the Shadows. A Collection of Articles on Austrian Literature and Film by Women since 1945, published by Ariadne in 1997. She also edited Literature, Film, and the Culture Industry in Modern Austria, set for publication by Peter Lang in 2002.
Lamb-Faffelberger authored the book Valie Export und Elfriede Jelinek im Spiegel der Presse. Zur Rezeption der feministischen Avantgarde Österreichs in the Austrian Culture Series, published by Peter Lang in 1992.
Lamb-Faffelberger has also written numerous articles in scholarly journals and other publications, including “Christoph Ransmayr’s The Terrors of Ice and Darkness: Interweaving Fact and Fiction into a Postmodern Narrative,” in Modern Austrian Literature: Interpretations and Insights, published this year by Ariadne Press, and “Aus eigener Sicht: Überlegungen zur Zukunft von Austrian Studies in der amerikanischen Germanistik,” published in German Quarterly this year.
She was keynote speaker at the “Cultural Identities” lecture series at the University of New Brunswick in March and at the annual Conference of the Association for German Studies in Southern Africa at the University of Witwatersrand in April. She also spoke on “Issues of Cultural and National Identity: Case Study – Modern Austria” at Syracuse University in February.
Lamb-Faffelberger is a past winner of the Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award, established at Lafayette in 1966 to recognize superior teaching and scholarship.