The thirty articles featured in Contested Passions: Sexuality, Eroticism, and Gender in Modern Austrian Literature and Culture are based on papers given at the MALCA conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in the Spring of 2007. They cover literary works by several Austrian authors of the nineteenth and twentieth century such as Schnitzler, Musil, Hofmannsthal, Broch, Kraus, Drach, Jelinek and also developments in the graphic arts, including works by Klimt and VALIE EXPORT; architecture – for example, Loos; film; and the popular media.

Clemens Ruthner received his PhD from the University of Vienna. He has taught German language, literature, and cultural studies, along with comparative literature, translation, and European studies, at universities in Budapest, Antwerp, Brussels, Edmonton, Vienna, Sarajevo, and Dublin. Currently he is Director of Research of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies at Trinity College in Ireland. His own research focuses on Austrian literature, «otherness», cultural theory, and Central European studies. Raleigh Whitinger received his PhD from the University of British Columbia in Canada. He has taught German literature, language, and translation at the University of Alberta since the early 1970s. He has published monographs, translations, and anthologies on Johannes Schlaf, Lou Andreas-Salome, Franz Grillparzer, and Eduard Mörike, among others, and a variety of articles on German literature from romanticism to the early twentieth century. Since 2002 he has been the editor of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies.