Letters in Troubled Times: Evaluating Epistolary Sources
Friday February 16, 2018
8:30 - 9:00 am
Continental Breakfast and Coffee
9:00 - 9:15 am
Welcome and Introductory Comments: Suzanne M. Sinke, Department of History, Florida State University
9:15 - 11:30 AM
Session One: Letters of Twentieth-Century War
Chair: Jonathan Grant, Department of History, Florida State University
German-American Attitudes Toward World War I as Reflected in Letters to Germany
Walter D. Kamphoefner, Department of History, Texas A&M University
The Epistolary Practices of Habsburg-American Bureaucrats: Examining Writings on Migration, Transatlantic Consular Work, and War-time Disruptions, 1900-1919
Kristina Poznan, Editor, Journal of Austrian-American History
Unsent Letters from Budapest to Shreveport, 1941-1945: The Diaries of Dr. Kiss Madi Maria as Imagined Correspondence with her Daughter
James W. Oberly, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Testimonials of Troubled Times. Rereading Exonerating Letters in Postwar Austria and Germany
Anton F. Guhl, Institute of History, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Commentator: G. Kurt Piehler, Institute on World War II and the Human Experience, Florida State University
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Coffee Break
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Session Two: Collecting, Preserving, and Disseminating Letters of Migrants
Chair: Paul F. Marty, School of Information, Florida State University
Against Suffocation: Letters as Strategies of Survival
Stephan Steiner, Sigmund Freud University (Vienna)
Message from Abroad: Austrian Collections of Emigrant Letters and Diaries 1900-1980
Verena Lorber and Andreas Praher, Department of History, University of Salzburg
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Lunch
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Session THREE: Approaches to Epistolary Evaluation
Chair: Christian Weber, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida State University
Re-reading and re-using the Palandech letters (1919-1959)
Wladimir Fischer, Austrian Academy of Sciences, INZ-Institute of Contemporary Historical Research
'Because the times are getting worse and blessed are the families who have members around the world!’ — the contextualization of correspondence and the epistolary (re)construction of normality
Mirjam Milharčič Hladnik, Slovenian Migration Institute, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Letters as Cultural Mirrors
Sandra Sattlecker, University of Salzburg
Commentator: Suzanne M. Sinke, Department of History, Florida State University
4:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Coffee Break
4:30-6:00 PM
Session FOUR: Mobile People and their Connections
Chair: Elizabeth Cross, Department of History, Florida State University
On Many Roads from Hungary. Internal, European, and Transatlantic Migration, 1850 – 1914
Annemarie Steidl, Department of Economic and Social History, University of Vienna
Migration Experiences in Letters of "Guest Workers" from Turkey Living in Austria
Faime Alpagu, DOC Fellow of Austrian Academy of Science, Department of Sociology, University of Vienna
Commentator: Antje Muntendam, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida State University
6:00 PM
Concluding Remarks
6:15 PM - 8:00 PM
Reception
Updated as of January 29, 2018.
