Impressions of the virtual 2022 Fulbright Seminar in American Studies

13 July 2022
Back

This year’s annual Fulbright Seminar in American Studies connected our US and Austrian program participants.

The Fulbright Seminar in American Studies is a core event in our program—and each year a highlight for our program participants. This seminar brings US students and scholars together with Austrian students, scholars, and teaching assistants for stimulating lectures, research presentations, and informational sessions that highlight the achievements of our current US cohorts while preparing our outgoing Austrian cohorts for their own productive Fulbright experiences in the US. In pre-pandemic times, the seminar took place in the beautiful Salzkammergut in the state of Salzburg; in recent years, we have transferred it to the virtual plane on gather.town.

Screenshot of participants' avatars gathering on the virtual lawn in gather.townParticipants gathered for a group photo on the lawn in our virtual venue.

This year’s annual Fulbright Seminar in American Studies took place 28–29 April 2022. We had the honor and pleasure of attending lectures entitled “Analytics in Ambiguity” by 2021–22 Fulbright-Salzburg University of Applied Sciences Visiting Professor Earl McKinney, “Refugees and International Relations” by 2021–22 Fulbright-Diplomatic Academy Visiting Professor of International Studies Jana Lipman, and “Perspectives of American Protest Literature and Culture from Abroad” by 2021–22 Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor of Austrian-American Studies Jessica Conrad. Donna Dodson and Jimmy Noriega, the two 2021–22 Fulbright-Q21/MuseumsQuartier Artists-in-Residence, showed their artwork in virtual exhibitions entitled “Amazons, Goddesses and Wonder Women” and “A Mexican-American in Vienna,” respectively. We were also impressed by the high-quality of our young researchers, the 2021–22 US students, who took the opportunity to discuss their research in a dedicated poster session.

The opportunities for networking and mentoring between our Austrian and US program participants constitute a key element of the seminar. A particular highlight of the seminar was the speed mentoring session, where US scholars offered their insights to all program participants present. The official part of the seminar ended with the official closing ceremony and the presentation of this year’s networking prize, which went to 2021–22 Fulbright-University of Vienna Visiting Professor of Social Sciences Daniela Dimitrova.

Photo of Daniela Dimitrova holding her networking prizeDaniela Dimitrova presents her certificate as the winner of the 2022 networking prize.

The event closed with in-person regional networking dinners, where 2021–22 US program participants engaged with our outgoing 2022–23 Austrian grantees in Graz, Innsbruck, and Vienna. We are grateful to everyone who joined the seminar online and hope that they also enjoyed having an opportunity to connect in person at the end of the two-day event.

Photo of seminar attendees at the networking dinner in ViennaParticipants enjoyed the opportunity to network at our regional networking parties following the virtual Fulbright Seminar in American Studies.