History/Political Science paper by Bodó, Béla (withdrawn)
Teaching Political Violence: the Memory of the Hungarian Civil War (1918-1921) in High-School and University Textbooks, 1945-Present
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
This presentation examines the memory of the post-WWI period through the prism of high-school and university textbooks from 1945 to the Present. It touches on such import issues as: changing personnel and editorial policies; history education under Communism; political reforms and the memory of the civil war after 1956; and the transformation of the education system after 1990. However, the focus of the presentation will be on language: on emotionally and ideologically-laden words, sentence fragments and semantics used to convey the basic tenets of competing ideologies and political interests. Special attention will be paid to what is not in the texts: to omissions, deleted sentences, absent images and taboos which are meant to hide, sweep under the carpet or push into the collective subconscious the memory of events, which the elites and the population are unable or unwilling to face. What events have become taboos after 1945 and how the list of taboos has changed in the last seventy years are the subjects of the presentation.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Béla Bodó was born in Hungary, and completed his undergraduate education at the University Debrecen and the University of Toronto in 1990. He received his Ph. D. from York University in Toronto, Canada in 1998. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Bonn, Germany. His latest book, Paramilitary and Mob Violence in Hungary after the First World War is scheduled to appear in 2018.