Pictured from left: Dr. Nick Mueller, Dr. Marcus Maier, a former Innsbruck - New Orleans student, Dr. Charles Hadley, Senior Fellow, Dr. Eva Pfanzelter, Visiting Professor from Innsbruck, Dr. Marc Landry, Dr. Guenter Bischof.
A new venture has been brought forth by historians Dr. Eva Pfanzelter and Dr. Marc Landry, Director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans: the two scientists have realized a project titled “An Austrian-American Perspective on Contemporary History”, comprised of a Collaborative-Online-International-Learning-(COIL)-Seminar as well as a podcast series.
Conceived during Dr. Pfanzelter’s stay as a guest lecturer at UNO in the spring of 2023, the lectures, that are open to students from UIBK as well as UNO have commenced at the beginning October and the accompanying podcast series “History Exchange” will be published regularly as a joint venture between the partner universities.
In the spirit of the UNO-UIBK partnership the seminar presents an opportunity for students from both sides of the Atlantic to further their knowledge, exchange ideas and encounter new perspectives. It allows students on both continents to gain intercultural competences without having to travel abroad.
The podcast series makes use of modern technologies as well as one of the core methods of contemporary historical research, oral histories, to take the listeners back in time, say to the early years of New Orleans or early twentieth-century Europe. Students from both universities had the opportunity to become involved in the process of organizing and conducting the interviews.
The first “season” of the History Exchange series has been dedicated to Prof. Günther Bischof, the recently retired former Director of Center Austria and dedicated historian himself. Pfanzelter and Landry conceived of the interviews as part “digital Festschrift” for Bischof and part oral history of the interviewees. The project also seeks to commemorate his invaluable contributions to both universities and their mutual ties. Many of his acquaintances and colleagues are among the interviewees, which means that the listeners will automatically find themselves immersed in the history of the university partnership.
The second episode of the podcast features Prof. Gordon “Nick” , who founded the UNO-UIBK International Summer School almost 50 years ago and was subsequently appointed first Director of Center Austria. Further interviewees will include researchers from various fields including contemporary, economic, social, and environmental history, library and archival studies, as well as museology, we at Center New Orleans have avidly followed the series and are looking forward to the next episode!
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