Arts paper by Fabos, Bettina
Interactive Photo-History Project On Rural Hungarian Life, 20AD-1956
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Proud and Torn: A History of Life in Hungary is a unique interactive timeline that visualizes Hungarian history (20 CE-1956) through archival photographs, maps, illustrations, animation, and short film clips. Combining the stylistic genres of photomontage, graphic memoir, and parallax scrolling, the timeline ultimately tells the story of immigration—the many circumstances that led a young Hungarian farmer to leave Hungary for a new life in America, and his sister (and best friend) to remain in Hungary. Told with the narrative perspective of the Hungarian immigrant’s American daughter, the project helps readers make sense of the dramatic and often horrific events that led to his immigration: two World Wars, the Holocaust, and more than a century of instability with competing regimes of capitalism, fascism, and communism. The family narrative perspective explores history from the ground up (rather than the top down), utilizes family photos and documents alongside archival findings, and challenges the dominant and narrow portrayals of Hungarian and European history by placing a greater emphasis on rural and agricultural history and using fresh visual sources from amateur and underutilized collections, both digital and archival.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Bettina Fabos, Ph.D., is the project director of Proud and Torn. She is Associate Professor of Visual Communication and Interactive Digital Studies at the University of Northern Iowa, where she is also engaged with the University’s public history program. Both a scholar and award-winning producer of digital content, her current work revolves around digital culture, digital visualization, digital photo archiving, and public memory. Her particular knowledge of media pedagogy and interactive digital studies is valuable to the Proud and Torn project insofar as communicating historical narrative and collective photographic identity. As a Presidential Scholar at the University of Iowa (where she received her Ph.D.), she won the University’s top dissertation award; she was also a recipient of a Spencer Fellowship. In 2013, she conducted research as a Fulbright Research Fellow in Hungary for Proud and Torn. She is the co-author of three significant textbooks: Media and Culture (the leading textbook for mass communication survey classes across the U.S.), Media Essentials, and Media IN Society, all with Bedford/St. Martin’s Press. She is also co-founder of FORTEPAN IOWA (fortepan.us), a digital archive of amateur photographs on 20th-century Iowa life based on the Hungarian FORTEPAN (fortepan.hu).