Cultural Studies papers

Biro, Ruth G.

Duquesne University

Hungarian Émigré Women Reveal Resiliency in Their Life Stories on the Holocaust: Overcoming Results of Persecution and Reestablishing Identity in the USA

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Presentation emphasizes literature in English by Hungarian Jewish women who experienced the Holocaust, immigrated to the United States in the aftermath of WW II, and exhibited resiliency in their transcultural life journey. Women in this study were either hidden, protected by international passes or convert papers, relocated to ghettos and camps, or became displaced persons in the American Zone following the Holocaust. Their individual strengths, support garnered from earlier memories, and assistance from others helped these women achieve resiliency when rebuilding their lives in a new land.
From torn down elements on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of self-actualization that the Holocaust destroyed, these women sought to reconstruct the decimated basic needs (physiological, safety and security, love and belonging, and esteem and self-esteem) and move on through growth levels of knowledge, aesthetics, and self-actualization --toward transcendence (assisting and mentoring others). Poignant and inspirational messages recall lost families, communities, and culture, reveal accomplishments in reestablishing themselves in transplanted locales, and attest to myriad contributions to families, schools, communities, professions, and Holocaust education centers.
In this study, research questions were posed, over twenty-five books were examined by women over age five, teenagers, or in their early twenties in the Holocaust, and a resiliency framework was developed to assess their success in the USA. These courageous women overcame the consequences of Holocaust persecutions through remembrance, memorialization, and celebration and demonstrated a resiliency that ultimately denied the perpetrators of the Holocaust a victory.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ruth G. Biro holds a B.A. in political science and secondary education from Chatham College, an MLS in K-12 librarianship and international comparative librarianship, and Ph.D. in higher education curriculum from the University of Pittsburgh. Now retired from Duquesne University, she taught courses in children’s and adolescent literature, multicultural and international literature, cultural diversity, intercultural education, and Holocaust perspectives, among others. She was curriculum coordinator for the AHEA Ethnic Heritage Studies Project in 1980-1981. She co-authored the Hungarian –English Picture Dictionary for Young Americans with Miklós Kontra and Zsófia Radnai (Tankönyvkiadó, 1989.) In 1990 and 1991 she directed two Fulbright –Hays Group Projects to Hungary for the US Department of Education. Dr. Biro researches, presents, and publishes on children’s and young adult literature, Righteous Gentiles, Raoul Wallenberg, youth resistance against the Nazis, Hungarian Holocaust literature by women in the USA, and other Hungarian and Hungarian-American topics.




Borgos, Anna

Hungarian Academy of Sciences Research Institute for Psychology

Displaced Gardens: The Friendship of Anna Lesznai and Edit Gyömrői in Emigration

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Anna Lesznai met Edit Gyömrői in 1918, at the gatherings of the Sunday Circle, and their friendship lasted till the end of Lesznai’s life, despite the great geographical distance between them. In my lecture I explore the traces of their friendship and try to present some parallels and differences in their life course, circumstances and character. Lesznai and Gyömrői belonged to roughly the same generation, and they came from a more or less similar family background – assimilated Jewish middle-class/landowner families. They both came into contact and were active participants of nearly all intellectual and artistic circles of the age. Gyömrői’s career related to psychoanalysis (among many other activities), Lesznai worked in the field of literature and art. (They also wrote about each other’s works.)
The political circumstances forced both of them (especially Gyömrői) to change their places of living several times. Their 1919 emigration to Vienna and their most significant 1939 overseas emigration to the United States/Ceylon was the consequence of political and racial persecution concerned both of them. Her language, poetic and visual world, and social relationships kept especially Lesznai strongly attached to Hungary. Although Gyömrői seemed to adapt herself to the different environments and life conditions more easily, the loss of roots and language was a constant problem and pain for her, too. Their friendship represents the “brave old world” for them above all: the social and intellectual environment that both of them abandoned.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Anna Borgos (1973) psychologist, women’s historian. She is a fellow at the Research Institute for Psychology, Budapest. She holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Pécs. Her research field is situated at the borderland of psychoanalysis, gender studies and literary history; she has been exploring and publishing studies on Hungarian women intellectuals of the early 20th century. She is also engaged in feminist and LGBT history and activism. Her book, Portrék a Másikról (Portraits of the Other) came out in 2007. She published a monograph with Judit Szilágyi in 2011: Nőírók és írónők. Irodalmi és női szerepek a Nyugatban (Women writers and poetesses. Literary and women’s roles in Nyugat).




Fenyő, Mario

Bowie Sate University, Maryland

Hungarians in Africa

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper is a selective study of outstanding Hungarian travelers who have crossed borders, geographically and figuratively speaking, into the African continent. There is considerable distance between Hungary, their homeland, and Africa, if we take culture and civilization into consideration. Africans are not neighbors, except maybe in a spiritual sense.

My selection would include the careers of Moritz Benyovszky, Laszlo Magyar and Emil Torday from the 18th and 19th centuries. These names are vaguely familiar to many Hungarians, but almost unknown to the world at large. They deserve better. Unlike their West European counterparts (Burton, Baker, Stanley, Brazza, Evans-Pritchard, but even the relatively liberal Livingstone and Leo Frobenius), they have distinguished themselves by their receptive and respectful attitude toward Africans in the Congo, in Angola, in Madagascar in particular. Two of the three travelers became African rulers or chiefs, not by dint of force, but by earning the friendship of the native population. The third, Torday, had to abandon Africa because of a hunting accident.

The three Hungarian travelers distinguished themselves in different fields. In addition to familiarization with cultures and languages, one became a self-taught anthropologist, an art collector, and a historian. Torday wrote grammars and compiled vocabularies in half a dozen African languages. It was only in 2011 that his contributions became amply recognized in Hungary proper, thanks to a scholarly expedition focusing on his legacy to the continent and the touring exhibition resulting from it.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Fenyo has been a fixture at Bowie State University since 1988. He represents the ethnic diversity of the institution in microcosm, having lived, worked, taught and studied in Europe (Eastern and Western), Africa (Nigeria, Sudan, Namibia), Asia (Korea), the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Trinidad) and, of course, various regions of the United States. He has served as President of the Association of Third World Studies. Dr. Fenyo teaches world civilizations, history of the United States, history of Europe and, occasionally, African-American and Latin American history as well. He writes books, essays and articles on a variety of topics, but his favorite ones include the "Third World” (compared), and 20th /21st century East-Central Europe, particularly Hungarian history. He has the habit (some say the “bad habit”) of challenging and revising commonly accepted notions, seeking controversy, and getting it. He prefers asking questions to giving answers (mainly because he has too few of the latter). He would rather work in groups, as opposed to compete individually. He models himself on Thoreau, Neruda, Neto, Nkrumah, and many other peace-loving people. His favorite writers are those of the Nyugat generation.





Fuchs, Márta

Drew School, San Francisco, CA

Hungarian Holocaust Legacy: A Daughter's Tribute to Her Father's Christian Rescuer

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Marta Fuchs was born in Hungary after the war to parents who survived the Holocaust. While her mother Ilona with two sisters lived through Auschwitz, Marta’s father Morton (Miksa) endured five years of forced labor battalions attached to the Hungarian Army in Russia. He survived as the only member of his family due to the courageous intervention of his last Commanding Officer, Zoltán Kubinyi, a devout Seventh Day Adventist who saved him and 100 other Hungarian Jewish men under his command. Unfortunately, Zoltán Kubinyi was taken as a POW by the liberating Russians, died a year later in a labor camp from typhus, was buried in an unmarked grave, and left behind a young wife and infant son.
This presentation will focus on the aftermath, the research and multigenerational impact of this extraordinary story of rescue and the recently published book, Legacy of Rescue: A Daughter's Tribute. Through Morton and Marta’s efforts, Zoltán Kubinyi was posthumously given the designation Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1990. In a televised ceremony in Budapest in 1994, his son received the Certificate of Honor and medallion on behalf of his father.
The story of rescue came full circle in Summer 2011 when Marta and her brother took their children (all in their '20s) back to Hungary to meet the rescuer's family. The rescuer’s son, now in his late '60s, of course never knew his father. With his wife and granddaughters – two teenage girls who are the great granddaughters of the rescuer Zoltán Kubinyi -- Marta's family discussed the heroic actions of this man of compassion and courage none of them knew but who has made an indelible impact on all their lives.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Marta Fuchs was born in Budapest and lived with her family in Tokaj until they escaped to the U.S. in the wake of the ’56 Hungarian Revolution. She holds a BA in Linguistics and an MA in Library Science, both from UC Berkeley, and an MA in Clinical Psychology from JFK University in Orinda, CA. Marta is a professional librarian and Director of Library Services at Drew School in San Francisco, CA. She is also a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice in Albany, CA. With her brother Henry Fuchs she wrote the multigenerational extended family memoir, "Fragments of a Family: Remembering Hungary, the Holocaust, and Emigration to a New World" c1997). Her new book is "Legacy of Rescue: A Daughter’s Tribute" (c2011).




Fülemile, Ágnes

Hungarian Cultural Center, New York

Roads toward Extinction – Hungarian Diasporas around Cluj/Kolozsvár

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The ethnic and cultural map of Transylvania has often been likened to a mosaic with good reason. Nowadays more than half of the ethnic Hungarian population in Romania lives in a diaspora situation. The actual local variations of diaspora situations and the stations of the diasporization process together with the answers and strategies to meet the challenges posed by a diaspora situation on the community and the individual level are influenced by a great number of historical, demographic, social, cultural, and mental factors. The paper is based on the results of fieldwork and archival research which has been carried out by Ágnes Fülemile and Balázs Balogh in several rural settlements around the Kalotaszeg region and Cluj/Kolozsvár since 1991.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ágnes Fülemile is currently the director of the Balassi Institute Hungarian Cultural Center, New York and is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology of Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She holds degrees in History of Art, History and Ethnography and Ph. D. in Ethnography from ELTE, Budapest. She has been György Ránki Chair of Hungarian Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington 2006-2009 and Fulbright scholar in 1992-1993 and 1999.




Igricz, Dorottya

Corvinus University, Budapest

The Relationship of Cultural Traits and Cultural Consumption in Hungary and France

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
During my presentation I would like to present the results of my undergraduate thesis which examines the relationship between the cultural traits and the cultural consumption of Hungary and France.
The first part of my research paper is focusing on the two nations’ cultural traits based on Geert Hofstede’s five well-known cultural dimensions, such as Uncertainty Avoidance, Power Distance, Masculinity vs. Femininity, Individualism vs. Collectivism, and Long vs. Short Term Orientation. These cultural traits – more precisely the dimensions’ indexes – illustrate different values in different national cultures, and these cultural values can usually determine how the individuals of different nations think and behave. By using sociology researches and studies I examined how these indexes measured by Hofstede are reflected in the real values and behavior of the Hungarians and French.
In the second part based on my qualitative analysis – using my own experience and observation acquired in Hungary and France during my exchange semester – I have demonstrated in a case study how these cultural traits appear in and affect the citizens’ cultural consumption in terms of festival goods. I analyzed the annual festivals of two cities, Szeged and Angers, according to the following aspects: the festivals’ aims and values, program structure, target groups and their behavior, and communication tools. By comparing these results to the cultural dimensions’ indexes I was able to conclude whether these indexes are verified in terms of the festival consumption.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dorottya Igricz studies at the Széchenyi István College for Advanced Studies and the Corvinus University. She also spent a semester at teh École Superieure des Sciences Commerciales in France and has been accepted to Kingás College, London for the upcoming academic year. Her interest is in cultural outreach and cultural programs at various levels. Currently she is an intern with the Hungarian American Coalition.




Ivan, Emese

St. John's University

Personal Values and Sports Consumption of Hungarians – At Home and in the USA

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Between 1985 and 2005 several surveys had been conducted – by the Hungarian State Offices and EU institutions – to monitor changes in consumer values of Hungarians following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Sport is an organic part of culture as well as its strong ties to social, educational, political, ideological and economic developments of a country. Similar studies had also been carried out in the US with a specific focus on minorities’ and ethnic groups’ sports participation and consumption.

While sport symbolizes some values of individualistic character such as success, health, achievement, and performance, it also represents values of social belongingness and collective achievements. If personal values serve as ‘path to meaning’ (Powell & Royce, 1978), a promising approach for studying sport behavior is to investigate the linkage between personally held values and their contribution to participating in sport and physical activity under the specific timeframe.

The aim of this presentation is twofold. First, it aims to give an overview of change in personal values in Hungary during the transition period, specifically those related to sport consumption. Second, it compares and contrasts these findings with the results of the research conducted on Hungarian-Americans’ sport consumption and behavior.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
2006, Ph.D. in International Sport Management from The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada. 2009, Assistant Prof. of Sport management, St. John's U., NY




Kürti, László

University of Miskolc

“To Die in a Foreign Land”?: Notions of Death and Burial in the American-Hungarian Diaspora

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The purpose of this presentation is to describe narratives surrounding death and burial by Hungarian immigrants living in the United States. Material was collected during the 1970s and 1980s through participant observation in the East Coast; in addition 150 extensive life-history interviews of Béla Máday collected during 1979-1981 and never been published before has also been utilized to gain a better understanding of the beliefs surrounding death and interment by American-Hungarians. Many commonalties were found across age, gender and class. One of the pervasive themes was a nostalgic belief about being buried in Hungary, or more specifically in the cemetery where the families’ resting place was. However, this also caused problems for many who already had family members buried in the US, in which case they were willing to consider either Hungary or the US as their final resting place. At times, interviewees had difficulty separating notions of nostalgia and reality (wish-fulfillment): they wished to be buried in their birthplace but knew well that it will not happen. Many were also completely unconcerned about the way in which they would be buried or the location of their interment. Finally, data proves that in some cases – even though it was specifically requested so – the last will/testament of the dying was not carried out.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
László Kürti is a professor of social anthropology currently teaching at the University of Miskolc, Hungary.




Magyar, Kálmán

American Hungarian Folklore Centrum, NJ

American Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy; Lessons and Proposals.

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Cultural Diplomacy is a concerted effort of a nation to supplement its traditional diplomatic mission and establish a positive image and favourably influence the opinion of a host country about its cultural values. Cultural Diplomacy should be a facet of every nation’s diplomatic strategy, because a person’s understanding of a nation’s heritage and cultural treasures are formed primarily through the arts and cultural communication channels. This, in turn, becomes the groundwork for the opinions and general images about a specific Nation and its people in the minds of the host country’s general population.

There is a long history underlying Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy in North America, warranting a closer study than this Paper provides. However, this history – and the lessons of the past – should be kept in-mind when planning future Cultural Diplomacy strategies. As a general overview, therefore, we will summarize Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy in North America relative to the recent historical time period, that is, the communist occupation of Hungary from 1945 to 1989 and the following 20 years.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Kalman Magyar, is the Director of American Hungarian Folklore Centrum, NJ. He has been involved in Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy for 50 years as member of the Hungarian community and also as a professional Art Manager. He has participated in the facilitation of the Hungarian Cultural Center, New York at its formation and the following 2 years.






Oláh, Krisztina

John Carroll University

The Image of Hungary. What Kind of Picture is Promoted About Our Country?

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The Magyar Turizmus Rt. (Hungarian Touristic Board) is officially responsible for the touristic image marketing of Hungary. In the last few years, the picture we show for foreigners about our country and touristic sights have been more and more detailed and targeted. What kind of messages, promotional channels are used, and who are our main target groups? What are the results of image communication process? What do we think in Hungary about our own sights and image? What do the foreigners think? The presentation will answer these questions.
Nearby the touristic image of Hungary, the overall national, political, social, and economic image of the country would be analyzed. What do the other countries do, and how they promote their image and touristic sights? What does the national brand mean?
Several pictures, videos, and music will be shown during the presentation to illustrate the colorful image of Hungary.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Krisztina Olah is currently a graduate student in the Communication Management master’s program at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio. She graduated from the University of Miskolc in Hungary with a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics and Marketing. In the past eight years, Krisztina worked in Germany and Hungary as a marketing professional for companies in the healthcare sector. Her interests are leadership, women in management, marketing and public relations, internal communication of organizations, tourism and hospitality.




Pereszlényi-Pintér, Mártha

John Carroll University (Cleveland, OH)

A Hungarian ‘Madwoman in the Attic’: Rehabilitating Elizabeth Báthory, a Seventeenth Century ‘Serial Killer,’ a.k.a. ‘The Blood Countess Dracula’

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Countess Elizabeth Báthory lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s in the former Kingdom of Hungary. According to legend, while combing the aging and widowed Countess’s hair, a servant girl snagged and pulled it, whereupon Elizabeth slapped the girl, drawing blood, which fell upon the Countess’s skin. Upon rubbing the bloody spot, the skin underneath appeared fresh and rejuvenated. Thereafter, the Countess supposedly bathed in the blood of virgins, to stay forever young. She and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing over 600 girls and young women. Because of aristocratic privilege, Elizabeth was never formally tried in court, but in 1610, as punishment and upon orders of the King, she was imprisoned in Čachtice [Csejte] Castle (located in today’s Slovakia), where she remained bricked in a room until her death four years later.
Today, Elizabeth’s legend has left Hungary and “immigrated” world-wide. She appears in novels and over 200 films, many of which emphasize the sexual side of the trials to the degree that they become sexual sadism and sometimes outright “torture porn” – a fascinating tweak on her terrible tale - but not a topic for the squeamish! Most novelists and filmmakers try to ingratiate themselves to a male audience, with lots of naked-flesh and eye-candy, Dracula-style biting, and bloody gore. This paper alleges that: 1) Elizabeth because of her female gender was a “victim” rather than the perpetrator; 2) the stories of witchcraft, insanity, and cruelty were either grossly exaggerated or outright lies.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mártha Pereszlényi-Pintér is Chairperson of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Cultures and Associate Professor of French at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. She earned her Ph.D. in Romance Languages from The Ohio State University, and studied at the Institut de Touraine (Tours) and the Bryn Mawr Program (Avignon) in France. Her research and publication accomplishments include French and also Hungarian Literature and Culture of the pre-modern period (Medieval, Renaissance, 17th century), Film, and Language for Business & the Professions. She has read papers at national and international conferences. While at OSU, she wrote or co-wrote 16 manuals for individualized instruction in both French and Hungarian with group grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Annenberg Foundation. She was born in Austria and emigrated to the USA with her Hungarian parents. She is also a past President of AHEA, and chaired or co-chaired four past AHEA annual Conferences.




Szapor, Judith

McGill University, Montreal

Disputed Past: The Friendship and Competing Memories of Anna Lesznai and Emma Ritoók

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Anna Lesznai (Amália Moscovitz), (1885-1966) was a celebrated poet and artist of the first Nyugat generation, a member of the Sunday Society, the first wife of Oszkár Jászi, and the niece of Lajos Hatvany. While Lesznai’s early life has been explored by Erzsébet Vezér and, recently, Judit Szilágyi, much less is known of Lesznai’s life after 1919 when she joined the ranks of the emigration. She lived in Vienna, then at Körtvélyes, Czechoslovakia on her family’s estate, moving back to Budapest in the 1930s and New York City in 1939 where she died in 1966.

Emma Ritoók (1868-1945) also forged a unique path: she attended university in Budapest, Paris and Berlin, to become a writer and a member of the Sunday Society. She found her intellectual home and peers there, developing especially close ties with Balázs and Lukács. By the end of 1918, however, while Lukács and most of the others began their road to Communism, Ritoók took a sharp turn to the Right. With Cecile Tormay, she became one of the founders of the National Association of Hungarian Women, publicly denounced her old friends and played an important role in shaping the post-war period’s viciously anti-Semitic discourse.

In this paper I explore the relationship of Lesznai and Ritoók in the crucial revolutionary and counter-revolutionary months. While their personal relationship can be traced in their respective diaries, their autobiographical novels, Lesznai’s In the Beginning Was the Garden (Kezdetben volt a kert) and Ritoók’s A szellem kalandorai (The Adventurers of the Spirit), both romans à clef, provide highly conflicting views of their shared past. They managed to mutually erase one another out of the history of the Sunday Society, demonstrating, in the process, the fatal fissures dividing the post-1919 Hungarian intellectual scene and the power of memories in creating lasting legacies.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Judith Szapor teaches modern European history at Montreal’s McGill University. She is the author of The Hungarian Pocahontas: The Life and Times of Laura Polanyi Stricker, 1882-1959 (Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 2005) and numerous articles on Hungarian women’s, gender, and intellectual history. She is a co-editor of the volume, Jewish Intellectual Women in Central Europe, 1860-2000, forthcoming at Edwin Mellen Press. After many years of working on progressive political and intellectual movements, her recent research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explores the emergence and gendered nature of right-wing, nationalistic rhetoric in post-1918 Hungary.




Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven

Purdue University

About the Problematics of (E)migration in the Work of Kertész and Márai

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In his paper "About the Problematics of (E)migration in the Work of Kertész and Márai" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek discusses the underlying ideological perspectives of emigration and its corollary aspects in the work of Imre Kertész and Sándor Márai. Since the demise of communism in Central and East Europe in 1989, Márai's works experience remarkable interest not only in Hungary proper but in Europe and the Anglophone world owing to the translation of his works. Márai wrote with nostalgia about the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and its multi-ethnic history and in several of his novels described post-World War II Hungary under Soviet and communist rule. Although he can be considered a proponent of bourgois society, he did not subscribe to the anti-Semitic worldview of his contemporaries whether in Hungary or among other exile Hungarian authors. Kertész, the first and only Hungarian Nobel laureate in literature expresses in his work the horrors of both fascist and communist rule. In his later works he deals extensively with the recurrence of anti-Semitism and anti-Other in conemporary Hungarian society and culture. Both authors' works are also relevant to questions of identity, home, and emigration and it is this aspect Tötösy de Zepetnek explores in his paper.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Author's profile: Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/totosycv taught comparative literature at the University of Alberta and comparative media and communication studies at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, as well as at various universities in the U.S. and Asia. In addition to numerous articles he has published three dozen single-authored books and collected volumes in various fields of the humanities and social sciences, most recently the collected volumes Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies (with Louise O. Vasvári, 2011), Mapping the World, Culture, and Border-crossing (with I-Chun Wang, 2010); Perspectives on Identity, Migration, and Displacement (with I-Chun Wang and Hsiao-Yu Sun, 2009), and Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies (with Louise O. Vasvári, 2009). Tötösy de Zepetnek's work has also been published in Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Mahrati, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish translation. He resides in Boston.




Vasvári, Louise O.; Borgos, Anna; Kürti, László; Portuges, Catherine; Sanders, Ivan; Sherwood, Peter; Sólyom, Erika; Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven

Stony Brook University & New York University;

About Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Based on the collected volume Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies. Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2011. contributors to the volume from Hungary and the U.S. discuss aspects of the study of Hungarian culture (i.e., in fields of the humanities and social sciences) since the 1989 end of Soviet and communist rule in Hungary and the region of Central and East Europe. A main postulate of the notion of "comparative Central European cultural studies" is that scholarship achieves new insights when Hungarian culture is studied in a contextual manner.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Louise O. Vasvári (photo)(Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Linguistics at Stony Brook University and presently teaches in the Linguistics Department at New York University. She works in medieval studies, historical and socio-linguistics, translation theory, Holocaust Studies, and Hungarian Studies, all informed by gender theory within a broader framework of comparative cultural studies. Related to Hungarian Studies she has published with Steven Tötösy, Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (2005), Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies (2009), a special issue of CLCWeb (2009), as well as Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies (2011), all in Purdue UP. In the 2010 issue of this journal she published “A töredékes (kulturális) test irása Polcz Alaine ‘Asszony a fronton’ című művébem.” She is the Editor of AHEA E-Journal.

For bios of Borgos, Kürti, Portuges, Sanders, Sherwood, Sólyom, and Tötösy de Zepetnek see their papers.