E-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association

ISSN: 1936-8879

Journals / Vol 6 (2013) / 16

Towards a Methodology of the Intercultural Teaching of Hungarian Literature to Speakers of Hungarian as a Second/Foreign Language

Györgyi Horváth University of Pécs

Abstract

Although there are many Hungarian Studies scholars teaching literature to Hungarian language learners around the world, there are practically no resources available about what is happening in these classes, and what linguistic, literary and cultural challenges they pose for students and teachers. In her study, Györgyi Horváth discusses her ten-year teaching experience as a teacher of Hungarian literature to Hungarian language learners within the Hungarian Studies Program, a one-year off-site university program offered to international students, accredited by the University of Pécs, and hosted by the Balassi Institute, Budapest. She discusses the institutional and program framework she worked in, gives a detailed account of the linguistic, literary and especially the cultural competencies that were in play in these courses, and also formulates some general methodological insights about teaching Hungarian literature to language learners. Horváth concludes that teaching literature cross-culturally widens the cultural horizons of students as well as of their teachers, offering them a space for increased cultural awareness and self-reflection.

Recommended Citation

Horváth, Györgyi. "Towards a Methodology of the Intercultural Teaching of Hungarian Literature to Speakers of Hungarian as a Second/Foreign Language.” AHEA: E-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association, Volume 6 (2013): http://ahea.net/e-journal/volume-6-2013/15

Biography

Györgyi Horváth is literary historian, critic, and translator of literary theory. After graduating in Linguistics & Literature (M.A.) and Italian Studies (M.A.) from the University of Szeged, Aesthetics (M.A.) from the University of Pécs, and after the Doctoral Support Program in Gender at the Central European University, Budapest she completed a doctorate on “The Identity-Forming Function of the Historical Narrative in American Feminist Literary Criticism” at the University of Pécs in 2006. She has worked as a journalist, translator, World Literature Series editor, freelance literary critic, post-doctoral researcher, and university lecturer. Most recently she taught Gender Studies in the Department of Comparative Literature and Culture at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and Hungarian literature to international students at the Balassi Institute, Budapest. She is the author of A hiányzó B, a series of essays (Budapest: Anonymus, 2005) and Nőidő, a monograph on feminist historiography (Budapest: Kijárat, 2007). She is also co-editor of Hide and Seek. Contemporary Hungarian Writing, an English-language anthology of Hungarian literature today (Budapest: JAK, 2004), and Kortárs Irodalmi Olvasókönyv, an anthology of contemporary Hungarian literature (BBI: Budapest, 2005). Her fields of research include twentieth- and twenty-first century Hungarian literature, literary modernism, identity and literature, gender studies, and post-structuralism.