The Chuvash, the Kazan Tatars and the Bashkirs are Turkic-speaking peoples which have long inhabited the Volga region in Russia. For centuries, Islam and Orthodox Christianity have coexisted and blended here with folk religiosity and “pagan” beliefs. Delving into this rich cultural landscape, Sun-Eater, Moon-Swallower offers an encyclopaedic collection of narratives about mythical beings recorded among these Volga Turkic peoples. The first section of the book contains almost two hundred...

This volume addresses exchanges, challenges, and concerns in the North Atlantic Triangle that have been prevalent in the diverse disciplines of the humanities, such as musicology, philosophy, and art history, and considers the institutionalization of Canadian Studies in Austria as well as Québécois TV series and films. The collection discusses the attitude of eminent European scholars and writers toward the United States, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Sigmund Freud, and investigates...

This Reader is the first of its kind. Tracing the evolution of literary modernity across national borders, it brings together texts from three different spheres of Persian Studies. “Literary Modernity in the Persophone Realm” explores theoretical literary discussions as they unfolded in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia from the early 20th century to the Second World War. The compilation presents contextualized primary sources by writers, poets and critics of the time, including both famous...

What languages are used in the Austrian scientific community? Is English the new lingua franca? Or is multilingualism still necessary for research and teaching? This volume explores these questions and demonstrates the importance of language skills in science, which thrives on the publication of studies, theories and theses and on peer criticism. However, all these forms of exchange are only possible if the languages relevant to one's own field are adequately mastered. These questions are...

Based on the increasingly popular concept of the “region”, this publication examines forms and functions of “Heimatschutz” (homeland protection), reform and vernacular architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that have received little attention to date. Based on various phenomena, the contributions pursue two main theses: firstly, that the references to land and “Heimat” (homeland) are constructed ideas; secondly, that the endeavours in the various arts are not only closely linked...

Beethoven, the loner – that is the historiographical image that has long dominated biographies and research on Beethoven. But while this image resonates with the enduring impression of the artistic genius, its credibility founders when one examines more closely his life and environment during his first decades in Vienna. Here, as a pianist and composer, as a teacher and witty conversationalist, Beethoven belonged to an expansive and close-knit tapestry of social, artistic, professional, family...

The classical philologist Albin Lesky and the physician and historian of medicine, Erna Lesky, née Klingenstein, embodied the successful "dual-career couple" internationally. Their academic careers were influenced by various political systems, structures and functioning. To what extent were they, representatives of their generation, willing to use individual room for manoeuvring to achieve success in the scientific community? Albin Lesky, appointed prorector of the University in Innsbruck in...

“A Soviet Sultanate” is the first English-language social history of Islam in Soviet Central Asia after WWII, and it focuses on a key question: what did it mean to be a Muslim in Socialist Uzbekistan? The notion that in the eyes of many Soviet citizens Socialist Uzbekistan was an abode of Islam forms the book’s framing device for understanding how the atheist project of the Soviet empire ultimately failed, but also how it simultaneously helped shape the range of meanings of Muslimness. The...

Through eight case studies from premodern, modern, and contemporary China and Japan, this volume presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the manifold relations between religion and politics in the formation of authority. It combines theoretical with empirical interests and follows different approaches to a multitude of historical and cultural settings in order to investigate the institutional, legal, and academic entanglements that shape and constitute authority. The contents of the...

This book presents a textual edition and English translation of an important historical source about the Khanate of Khiva. The text was written in 1912 by N.S. Lykoshin (1860–1922), a Russian colonial officer and renowned Orientalist. In his capacity as Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department (ADO), an administrative-territorial unit within the Turkestan Governor-Generalship, Lykoshin was tasked with overseeing affairs in the Khanate of Khiva, which since the Russian takeover of 1873 had been a...

The contributions in this volume address the complex history of the Indian deity Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa, whose conception evolved across various traditions in India, particularly in South India, during the first millennium CE. This development is reconstructed through philological exegesis, the history of ideas, and iconographic evidence. Contributors examine a range of textual materials in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Maṇipravāḷa, including early Caṅkam literature (3rd–6th century CE), the Vaiṣṇava text...