Salzburg Global American Studies Program

In its early years, the Salzburg Seminar created a remarkable intersection of cultural diplomacy, literary criticism, and the social sciences around the discipline of American Studies. 

From the Seminar's launch in July 1947, Fellows found common ground in the study of American culture, politics, and economy. 

At Session One, Seminar faculty included the anthropologist Margaret Mead, economist Wassily Leontief, and literary historian F. O. Matthiessen. 

Matthiessen guided Fellows through Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" and Herman Melville's "Moby Dick"; Leontief lectured on the fundamentals of economics; and Margaret Mead, America's renowned observer of human behavior, introduced her students to the methods of cultural anthropology, instructing them to analyze the eating habits, sleeping habits, and social interaction of the Schloss Leopoldskron community. 

F.O. Matthiessen's remarks at the Seminar's inauguration highlighted the importance of the free intermingling of cultures, the creation of a generous community of ideas, and the enactment of the chief function of culture and humanism—to bring people into meaningful and transformative communication with one another. 

In so doing, he put forward the key ideas that would hold true for the decades to come. These ideas have brought scholars and practitioners together from across Europe, America, and the rest of the world to create a "permanent center of intellectual discussion in Europe,"uphold promise over anxiety, and explore American Studies in all its facets.

The first years of the Salzburg Seminar featured a series of interdisciplinary "General Sessions on American Studies," the last of which was held in the summer of 1955. 

These six-week General Sessions provided an important means to connect young people who could speak freely together in English. The sessions gave "the post-war Europeans problems to consider other than their own, and a chance to talk about subjects which were not restricted by their national borders." 

In 1950, the Salzburg Seminar began organizing a half-dozen sessions each year on particular aspects of American Studies. These ranged from American History to American Literature, American Economic Theory and Practice, American Poetry and Prose, American Politics, the Political and Intellectual History of the United States, and Economic Problems in American Life. 

To implement these programs, the Seminar recruited faculty from universities and colleges across the United States. Many of America's most eminent figures in political, economic, and cultural life came to Schloss Leopoldskron, including the legal authority Kingman Brewster, the sociologist Daniel Bell, the historian Henry Steele Commager, the American novelists Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison, and the composer Virgil Thomson. 

In 1953, the Seminar held its first session on American Law and Legal Institutions. This became a popular tradition, led by distinguished Harvard law faculty members such as Kingman Brewster and Paul Freund. Annual sessions continued into the 1980s, with many led by US Supreme Court justices, including Harry Blackmun, Warren Burger, and, in 1970, Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female Supreme Court justice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, and Stephen Breyer have also led programs on American legal issues. 

From the mid-1960s, the Salzburg Seminar significantly expanded its program themes and the range of places from which Fellows were recruited. Topics became far more global in scope. During the Cold War, the Seminar was one of the few fora anywhere in the world where men and women from both sides of the Iron Curtain could gather in a neutral atmosphere to discuss matters of common concern. 

While nearly all sessions during this period reflected the organization's growing internationalization, the Salzburg Seminar never wavered in its commitment to American Studies. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, almost 90 American Studies sessions were held—an average of over three per year for more than three decades. 

As the Cold War concluded and global themes became more prominent, the Salzburg Seminar created a new "American Studies Center" (ASC) in 1994, made possible by a $9 million grant from the United States Information Agency (USIA). 

The ASC's founder and first director was Dr. Ronald Clifton. Between 1994 and 2003, thirty-two American Studies sessions were convened in Salzburg. These focused on cultural studies, history, politics, literature, and language, with many addressing contemporary global concerns in an American context. Participants were selected in collaboration with the USIA offices in western, eastern, and central Europe, as well as various Asian countries. 

In its first decade, the ASC offered workshops and symposia for university professors, administrators, and teacher trainers on a variety of topics. Led by American Studies faculty and professionals, these ASC programs combined traditional multi-disciplinary academic content with extensive advanced technological components. 

The aim was to expose participants to the vast resources available to American Studies scholars in a way that could enhance their ability to use technology in the classroom, foster their professional development, and connect the next generation of American Studies scholars and practitioners worldwide. 

The ASC also formed an International American Studies Faculty (IASF), which sent teams of US-based American Studies professors to many countries to help universities establish their own American Studies programs. The ASC also established a European network (ASN) of American Studies Centers and Institutes, whose members still work together to this day.

In 2003, Salzburg Global took its commitment to American Studies to the next level by founding the Salzburg Seminar American Studies Association (SSASA). 

SSASA designed and implemented fifteen symposia on American Studies themes, including politics, literature, cultural studies, and history. 

These sessions were attended by distinguished professionals from around the world and structured around presentations, panels, and discussions by leading experts on the topic. 

Small discussion groups also provided multiple opportunities for participants to share their expertise and build new alliances and research projects.

Since its very beginnings in 1947 as the Salzburg Seminar in American Civilization, Salzburg Global has reserved a dedicated place for American studies in its programming. 

Once our sole focus, American studies continued to feature prominently in the 1960s and 1970s as the organization expanded its reach and impact. 

In these uncertain times, we believe there is no more trusted and important setting than Salzburg Global to address critical issues confronting the United States and the future of the liberal international order. 

It is imperative to deepen global understanding of American culture, society, and politics, and to stimulate vibrant debate about the political, economic, and social changes taking place in the United States and how these influence —and are influenced by —the rest of the world.

In 2019, the Chair Emerita of Salzburg Global's Board of Directors, Heather Sturt Haaga, and her husband, Paul Haaga Jr., made a 10-year endowed contribution to support the future of American studies at Salzburg Global.

This incredibly generous gift provides a long-term foundation for bold programming that fully integrates American studies into Salzburg Global's core impact goals, starting with a new three-year series launched during the pandemic that examined the future of democracy, both in the US and beyond.

This major, significant three-year collaboration appeared to help shape a future vision for the United States and American studies in a radically changing world, culminating in a special program to mark the 75th anniversary of Salzburg Global in 2022.

American studies at Salzburg Global has long attracted academics from diverse fields, such as history, literature, cultural studies, the dramatic arts, and political science, as well as practitioners in journalism, diplomacy, and advocacy.  

Salzburg Global's American Studies Program seeks to further broaden this diverse international community.