15 Jahre C.IAS

The Center for Inter-American Studies (C.IAS for short) is celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2021/2022. Although Styria and the city of Graz are connected to the double continent of America through a long and intensive history and the culture, history and society of the Americas have been researched and taught at the Karl Franzens University of Graz for over a century, the university's rectorate called Graz only launched a center specifically responsible for this area in 2006. The center was officially founded in 2007 as the Center for the Study of the Americas. It developed under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Roberta Maierhofer as an internationally and transregionally innovative platform for interdisciplinary research on the Americas. In 2012, the importance of Inter-American Studies was underlined again when the University of Graz established North, Central and South America as a second university-wide focus region alongside Southeastern Europe.

Various events on research and teaching by current and former members as well as on the history of C.IAS and its achievements are planned for the course of 2021. In particular, the focus is on the C.IAS's efforts to "reconceptualize traditional approximations both in terms of transnational and transregional methods with the aim of analyzing" (Roberta Maierhofer) the Western Hemisphere, as well as its global relationships. In addition to the traditional division into the "Americas" - i.e. the world regions of North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean - the term "Western Hemisphere" also includes the zones of influence of the Americas in the Atlantic, Pacific and on the continent of Antarctica.