Historian will spend summer researching Habsburg Empire

For historian Mo Healy, paradise is a quiet place to write and research without interruption and access to top libraries.

Healy's about to enter her own Eden, when she joins 36 top liberal arts scholars in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park for a National Humanities Center fellowship.

Healy, an associate professor of history at Oregon State University, is the first OSU faculty member to achieve this honor, and one of only three National Humanities Center fellows ever from Oregon.

Healy will spend several weeks in Vienna this summer doing archival research, then will relocate to North Carolina from August through June 2008 with husband Will Pritchard, an assistant professor of English at Lewis and Clark College, and children Ava, 41/2, and George, 2.

Healy is one of 37 interdisciplinary scholars selected from among 400 applicants for the fellowship program. While in Research Triangle Park, she'll be able to get feedback on projects from colleagues and have access to the Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill libraries.

"I'm really excited. You can order books and they arrive on your desk the next day," said Healy, 39.

During the fellowship, Healy will receive a $45,000 stipend. Because she'll be on leave from OSU and won't be teaching, she'll have "hours of uninterrupted time to read through archival documents" for her book in progress, "At the Gates of Western Civilization: Islam and the Turks in Central European Historical Memory."

The book will examine the long cultural afterlife of the 1683 siege of Vienna in which Habsburg and allied troops defeated Ottoman forces. The siege is used as a starting point for understanding Austrian and German relations with Ottomans and Turks in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Healy will explore ways in which central Europeans have rewritten the siege story in modern history to support Habsburg patriotism, Austrian republicanism, Polish nationalism of the 19th century, German nationalism of the 20th century, Turkish membership in the European Union and post-1960 scares about Muslim immigration to central Europe.

Healy's first book, "Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I" (Cambridge Press, 2004), received the 2005 Herbert Baxter Adams Price from the American Historical Association and elicited praise from fellow historians.

"Her book is a bold attempt to use social history to rethink the history of the Habsburg Empire, and it has engendered a spirited conversation among historians of Central Europe. She is part of a small group of historians who are redefining the field," said Paul Farber, distinguished professor and chairman of the history department at OSU.

Healy earned her undergraduate degree in German literature from Tufts University, and did her master's and doctoral studies in European history at the University of Chicago.

While many of her peers went on to specialize in German history, Healy turned her focus toward the less-explored Austria.

Everything from the multinational aspects of the Habsburg Empire to Vienna's "coffee culture" has sparked her interest, and because the field is relatively uncrowded, there are many untapped areas ripe for research, she said.

While at the National Humanities Center, Healy will have the chance to work with top scholars in areas such as literature, philosophy and sociology coming from 27 colleges and universities in 16 states, as well as Canada and Germany.

"It's a good way to step outside one's own narrow realm, and it's fertile ground for interdisciplinary projects," Healy said.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.