Past Abstracts
773 abstracts found
Acquired History: How Hungarians in America Connect with their Past through Folk Music and Dance
Music/FolkloreThis study explores two contradictory forces affecting Hungarians in the New World and their interaction with Hungarian folklore and tradition—the first is the natural impulse to maintain ideas brought with them from Hungary. The second, the blending of ideas and practices which occurs within an ex-patriot group with heterogeneous backgrounds as they build a community based on maintaining ties with an Hungarian heritage.
Immigration of Hungarians to the US and Canada throughout the last century has occurred in waves, each wave coinciding with different reasons for leaving Hungary and affecting certain economic and social groups. In addition, American Hungarians vary in their distance from true folklore. For some, folklore is an extension of their experience; for others it is a new background, which they embrace as a tie to a homeland, sometimes many generations behind them.
A major event where Hungarians of diverse backgrounds come together, bound by a shared motherland but varying experiences, is Hungarian Day, which takes place the first Saturday in June every year in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This paper will combine interviews and videos from events at Hungarian Day to show how differing ideas as to what people like, the appropriate use of folklore, and even what is Hungarian, are revealed in stage presentations.
I suggest that for many, the ideas represented in their individual presentations form a snapshot of ideas on folklore in Hungary when the group came here. We will also explore the degree to which the event reflects a sort of pan-Hungarian cultural space in which people from varied backgrounds are able to interact.
Immigration of Hungarians to the US and Canada throughout the last century has occurred in waves, each wave coinciding with different reasons for leaving Hungary and affecting certain economic and social groups. In addition, American Hungarians vary in their distance from true folklore. For some, folklore is an extension of their experience; for others it is a new background, which they embrace as a tie to a homeland, sometimes many generations behind them.
A major event where Hungarians of diverse backgrounds come together, bound by a shared motherland but varying experiences, is Hungarian Day, which takes place the first Saturday in June every year in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This paper will combine interviews and videos from events at Hungarian Day to show how differing ideas as to what people like, the appropriate use of folklore, and even what is Hungarian, are revealed in stage presentations.
I suggest that for many, the ideas represented in their individual presentations form a snapshot of ideas on folklore in Hungary when the group came here. We will also explore the degree to which the event reflects a sort of pan-Hungarian cultural space in which people from varied backgrounds are able to interact.
Acquired History: How Hungarians in America Connect with their Past through Folk Music and Dance
Music/FolkloreThis study explores two contradictory forces affecting Hungarians in the New World and their interaction with Hungarian folklore and tradition—the first is the natural impulse to maintain ideas brought with them from Hungary; the second, the blending of ideas and practices which occurs within an expatriate group with heterogeneous backgrounds as they build a community-based on maintaining ties with an Hungarian heritage.
Immigration of Hungarians to the US and Canada throughout the last century has occurred in waves, each wave coinciding with different reasons for leaving Hungary and affecting certain economic and social groups. In addition, American Hungarians vary in their distance from true folklore. For some, folklore is an extension of their experience; for others it is a new background, which they embrace as a tie to a homeland, sometimes many generations behind them.
A major event where Hungarians of diverse backgrounds come together, bound by a shared motherland but varying experiences, is Hungarian Day, which takes place the first Saturday in June every year in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This paper will combine interviews and videos from events at Hungarian Day to show how differing ideas as to what people like, the appropriate use of folklore, and even what is Hungarian, are revealed in stage presentations.
I suggest that for many, the ideas represented in their individual presentations form a snapshot of ideas on folklore in Hungary when the group came here. We will also explore the degree to which the event reflects a sort of pan-Hungarian cultural space in which people from varied backgrounds are able to interact.
Immigration of Hungarians to the US and Canada throughout the last century has occurred in waves, each wave coinciding with different reasons for leaving Hungary and affecting certain economic and social groups. In addition, American Hungarians vary in their distance from true folklore. For some, folklore is an extension of their experience; for others it is a new background, which they embrace as a tie to a homeland, sometimes many generations behind them.
A major event where Hungarians of diverse backgrounds come together, bound by a shared motherland but varying experiences, is Hungarian Day, which takes place the first Saturday in June every year in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This paper will combine interviews and videos from events at Hungarian Day to show how differing ideas as to what people like, the appropriate use of folklore, and even what is Hungarian, are revealed in stage presentations.
I suggest that for many, the ideas represented in their individual presentations form a snapshot of ideas on folklore in Hungary when the group came here. We will also explore the degree to which the event reflects a sort of pan-Hungarian cultural space in which people from varied backgrounds are able to interact.
Additional Data About the Crimes of Communism – Adalékok a kommunizmus b?neihez (Alcim: A Miskolc környéki civilek szovjet fogságba hurcolása)
History/Political ScienceOne of the consequences of the Soviet domination after World War II. was the reappearance of the institution of slavery. It came in the form of the Soviet forced labor camps, to which hundreds of thousands of Hungarians were deported. A unique form of this modern-day slavery was the malenky robot [“little work”], under the guise of which tens of thousands of Hungarian civilians were collected and then dispersed in various Soviet slave labor camps. The Soviet conquerors and their unscrupulous Hungarian collaborators were not very selective. They took everyone who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. They deported young and old, irrespective of gender. They even collected and sent to the Gulag fifteen- to sixteen-year old girls, as well as expectant mothers. It is nearly impossible to describe the misery and exploitation that awaited these unfortunate Hungarians in the slave labor camps of the Soviet Gulag. If they were lucky enough to survive and return home, their misery and exploitation did not cease. Communist Hungarian authorities, who were anxious to please their Soviet masters, continued to view these repatriates as war criminals and treated them accordingly. Most of them died in poverty, misery, and much before their time. The Soviet Gulag consumed the lives of millions for many decades, and reached Hungary in the winter of 1944-1945.
Admiral Miklόs Horthy and the White Terror: Paramilitary and State Violence in Hungary, 1919-1921
History/Political ScienceThis presentation examines the special relationship between Admiral Miklos Horthy, the Minister of War and later the Regent of Hungary, and the paramilitary groups responsible for the White Terror: a series of pogroms and atrocities committed against poor peasants and workers after the collapse of the Communist regime in Hungary in the summer of 1919. The lecture addresses such important historical questions as the failure of democracy in Central Europe and the emergence of fascism after the First World War. Beside such important historical questions, the presentation deals with, and is meant to provoke a debate on, highly relevant political questions, such as the nature of political decision-making in modern states, war crimes and the political and military leaders' responsibility for the atrocities committed by their subordinates.
Albert Szent-Györgyi and the Soviet Union
History/Political ScienceThis paper examines the relationship between Nobel laureate scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi and the Soviet Union, and therefore with micro-historical approaches the Hungarian-Soviet relations after 1945.
Szent-Györgyi was a popular public figure and he was expected to become the President of Hungary after the WWII. In 1945 he spent two months in the Soviet Union and in the same year he became the honorary President of the Hungarian-Soviet Cultural Association in Hungary. For the revival of Hungarian cultural life, he cooperated with the Soviets and Communists. As he became dissatisfied with the political changes, he emigrated to the United States in 1947. In the United States for sympathizing with the Soviets he was considered as a suspicious scientist until 1954.
Since the mid-1960s he turned to the politics again, he spoke out against the Vietnam War. He criticized the US government and urged to cooperate with the Soviet Union for peace. By the 1970s his view about communism and the Soviet Union changed once again, mostly for the better. His research was cut and therefore he considered moving back to Hungary where his image was rehabilitated.
Through the scientist, the paper investigates the Hungarian-Soviet cultural relations, the mechanism of propaganda and public diplomacy during the Cold War. By using a micro-historical approach, the study illuminates the sometimes forgotten methodological utility of biographical approaches and examining turning points to reflect on ideology, political belief, and personal reinvention that individuals living through these events grappled with.
Szent-Györgyi was a popular public figure and he was expected to become the President of Hungary after the WWII. In 1945 he spent two months in the Soviet Union and in the same year he became the honorary President of the Hungarian-Soviet Cultural Association in Hungary. For the revival of Hungarian cultural life, he cooperated with the Soviets and Communists. As he became dissatisfied with the political changes, he emigrated to the United States in 1947. In the United States for sympathizing with the Soviets he was considered as a suspicious scientist until 1954.
Since the mid-1960s he turned to the politics again, he spoke out against the Vietnam War. He criticized the US government and urged to cooperate with the Soviet Union for peace. By the 1970s his view about communism and the Soviet Union changed once again, mostly for the better. His research was cut and therefore he considered moving back to Hungary where his image was rehabilitated.
Through the scientist, the paper investigates the Hungarian-Soviet cultural relations, the mechanism of propaganda and public diplomacy during the Cold War. By using a micro-historical approach, the study illuminates the sometimes forgotten methodological utility of biographical approaches and examining turning points to reflect on ideology, political belief, and personal reinvention that individuals living through these events grappled with.
American and Hungarian Perspectives on the Fate of Hungarian Minorities
History/Political ScienceOften there is a complete disconnect between American (U.S.) and Hungarian perspectives on the fate of Hungarian minority communities throughout East-Central Europe. What is the reason, or what are the reasons, for this disconnect? At least three will be discussed in this brief analysis. The first is the different historical perspective on how minorities become minorities. The second is the philosophical difference between the concept of group rights and individual rights, while the third relates to the difference between state-nation and multi-ethnic state perspectives of citizenship and nationality rights. Why, in other words, can U.S. social scientists relate to Roma rights but not to Hungarian nationality rights? The answer to this question is not purely academic, but central to such practical concerns as lobbying success in Washington, DC for Human and Minority Rights.
American Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy; Lessons and Proposals.
Cultural Studies/ArtsCultural 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.
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.
American Hungarian family histories as chronicles of collective memory: Authors’ motivations and attitudes
Language/LiteratureThe presentation provides, first, a brief overview of the "Hungarian Roots & American Dreams" project—a book series that grew out of a Facebook group—showing how family histories of immigration from Hungary to the United States (and in some cases, remigration to Hungary) become living family chronicles and tools for preserving collective memory. The over 100 stories featured in the two volumes of the series so far (edited by Anna Fenyvesi and Réka Bakos; the first volume was published in 2024, the second in 2025) provide an almost comprehensive picture of the cataclysmic historical events of 19th- and 20th-century Hungarian and United States history.
The second half of the presentation discusses the results of a survey administered among the authors (n=61) of the two volumes, mapping out authors’ motivations for embarking on writing their stories, attitudes to the writing process, and changes in their perception of their family and their own place “in the world” and “in history” as a result of the writing process. The results of the survey demonstrate the ways in which the writing of family histories gains meaning for authors, underscoring the importance of these histories not only at the level of preserving accounts of personal and family history as building blocks of community history, but also their role as “stories of ourselves”, i.e. building blocks of our narrative identity that help us interpret and understand the world around us.
The second half of the presentation discusses the results of a survey administered among the authors (n=61) of the two volumes, mapping out authors’ motivations for embarking on writing their stories, attitudes to the writing process, and changes in their perception of their family and their own place “in the world” and “in history” as a result of the writing process. The results of the survey demonstrate the ways in which the writing of family histories gains meaning for authors, underscoring the importance of these histories not only at the level of preserving accounts of personal and family history as building blocks of community history, but also their role as “stories of ourselves”, i.e. building blocks of our narrative identity that help us interpret and understand the world around us.
American Reception of Displaced Persons, 1949-1955
History/Political ScienceThe paper will look at the immediate postwar emigration to America. It will follow the process of displacement with replacement, that is, Americanizing the DP. The paper will discuss the American interest in the DP in the early 50s. This will include authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Flannery O’Connor, and television programs like “This is Your Life.” It will place Hungarian DPs in a broader DP population.
Americans in Paris, 1919
History/Political ScienceThis paper evaluates the actual contribution of the United States and the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. This is especially important in a Hungarian context as Hungarian history writing has largely ignored this subject. Wilson predetermined the language and key goals the Conference with his rhetoric of the League of Nations, the “war to end all wars”, an American-made “scientific peace”, and national self-determination. He and Hoover redefined the concept of humanitarian aid by placing postwar reconstruction in the hands of a US federal agency, the American Relief Administration, and convinced their allies at home and abroad to allow the Americans to run the whole project, from London to Yekaterinburg. American delegates played a moderating role on excessive territorial claims against Hungary and oversaw the drafting of the League covenant, the International Labor Organization charter, and the reparations chapters of the five treaties signed at Paris. Americans in the field (mostly in post-Habsburg Central Europe) acted as arbitrators of conflicts, prevented excessive looting by Rumanians in Hungary, and provided food and medical aid to hundreds of thousands of former enemy nationals as well. The paper argues that the Paris Peace Conference would have been very different without US participation on the highest level.
Amerika mint irodalmi téma a XX. századi magyar irodalomban
Language/Literature2002-ben megjelent Budapesten egy antológia "Amerika! Amerika! Magyar írók novellái Amerikáról, az amerikai emberről, és az amerikai magyarokról" címmel. Az angyagát gyűjtötte, válogatta és összeállította Kőrössi P. József, Noran Könyvkiadónál. Az előadásom célja ezek a novellák a bemutatása és elemzése, amely hasznos megközelítés lehet annak a képnek a megértéséhez, amelyet Amerikáról alkottak Magyarországon, a XX. sz. első felében.
Amerikai Magyar Iskolák Találkozója a Diaszpóra Magyarságszolgálatában
Education/Social SciencesAmerika különböző államaiban működő huszonhárom magyar iskola tanári továbbképzésének szakmai előkészitése a kérdőivekre, óvódai, iskolai megfigyelésekre és szóbeli interjukra adott igények szerint. Az Amerikai Magyar Iskolák Találkozója (AMIT) a kezdeti négy államról ma már tizenöt államra terjed ki. Interaktive módszertani foglalkozások a differenciált okttástól, a speciális igényeket szolgáló ezközökön át a modern technika lehetőségeit messzemenően felhasználó új innovative tanulási lehetőségek felmérésével és szervezésével segiti a hét végi magyar iskolák áldozatkész munkáját. Látogassa meg előadásunk, ahonnan hasznos segédanyagokkal, preciz felméréseket összegző és analizáló aanyagokkal térhet haza.
Amrita Sher-Gil’s Self-portrait in Poetry
Language/LiteratureAmrita Sher-Gil was one of the chief figures and shapers of modernism in India. Her paintings, her articles, her letters, her style – as one can see in the photographs mostly taken by her father, Umra Singh Sher-Gil all contributed to her becoming an iconic figure during her life-time. Her „ferocity of mind and sharpness of tongue” that prompted Salman Rushdie to depict one of his most successful protagonists, Aurora Zogoiby were well-known. Vivan Sundaram’s two volume Amrita Sher-Gil, a Self-Portrait in letters&writing contains all her existing diaries, letters and writings. She was multilingual, her letters were written in Hungarian, French and English. The paper takes up her Hungarian pieces, specially her thirty one line poem, a piece of confessional poetry. This genre has been considered as a marginal genre of life-writing. Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Budapest, in 1913, her mother was Hungarian and she wrote her diary and tales in Hungarian. It is clear from her childhood diaries and notes that she was influences a great deal by Hungarian poetry, specially ballads. Endre Ady’s poetry (1977-1919) was quoted and discussed by her in many letters, she called his collection of poetry „my bible”. The poem to be discussed in the paper is a collage, an intertextual piece where her own lines are fitted in and integrated with Ady’s lines. The poem presents Sher-Gil’s multiple identities against the background of Paris and urban Hungary similarly to the multiple presence of identities and locations in her paintings.
An Exceptional Case of Women’s Self-Advocacy in Interwar Hungary: Cécile Tormay
Cultural Studies/ArtsThe career path of the novelist, pamphlet writer and political leader Cécile Tormay (1875-1937) is an exceptional case of women’s self-advocacy in Hungary after World War I. Despite being unmarried, she was able to ascend to the highest social circles in the conservative Horthy Era (1920-1944) that pursued a restrictive policy on women's participation in public life. On the one hand, her ascendancy might be attributable to her alertness: she almost instantly joined to the counter-revolutionary conspiracy of the former ruling elite that tried to regain power following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the outbreak of the democratic revolution in 1918. On the other hand, her successful move to the top was probably due to her shrewdness in editing of her both famous and infamous memoir, the strongly anti-Semitic Bujdosó könyv (1920-21) [‘The Hiding Book’, in English translation: An Outlaw’s Diary, 1923]. The cleverly propagandizing memoir that was published when modern propaganda was just emerging supported the old political elite in getting their power back effectively, and in return for Tormay’s services, they helped the writer become a person of eminence who was called Grand Dame of Hungarian Irredentism (‘a Magyar Irredenta Nagyasszonya’) in contemporaneous government-controlled media. Based on the analysis of her memoir, this essay will explain what behaviors and (editing) practices helped her succeed.
An Immigrant Gives Back: Andrew Romay’s Support of New Immigrants in New York City
Education/Social SciencesThe contributions of Hungarian immigrants in enriching cultural, scientific, economic, artistic, and academic life of the U.S. is significant. This paper will examine the impact of one Hungarian-American immigrant, Andrew Romay. Born in Miskolc, a survivor of labor brigades and Mauthausen Camp during World War II, and a 1956 Refugee, as an immigrant Dr. Romay became a successful businessman in New York City.
Thanks to his philanthropy, the Andrew Romay New Immigrant Center (ARNIC) was founded in New York City in 2013 to improve the lives of recent immigrants, and since inception has served more than 500 immigrants from 70 countries. Free of charge for its participants, ARNIC is a successful model of immigrant integration, providing English language and career skills, as well as cultural integration through contact with American volunteers. Participants receive English language classes; advice and assistance on practical issues such as personal finances, health insurance, and the U.S. legal system; career counseling such as CV writing, interview practice, and business mentorships; and cultural activities including theater, museum, and sports events, films, and book clubs.
This paper will trace the genesis and evolution of the Romay’s support for immigrants, explore how his life experiences in Hungary contributed to this position, and elaborate on the successes of the ARNIC program in integrating new immigrants. The author will use sources including oral history interviews – including with Andrew Romay - and transcripts, and ARNIC program data.
Thanks to his philanthropy, the Andrew Romay New Immigrant Center (ARNIC) was founded in New York City in 2013 to improve the lives of recent immigrants, and since inception has served more than 500 immigrants from 70 countries. Free of charge for its participants, ARNIC is a successful model of immigrant integration, providing English language and career skills, as well as cultural integration through contact with American volunteers. Participants receive English language classes; advice and assistance on practical issues such as personal finances, health insurance, and the U.S. legal system; career counseling such as CV writing, interview practice, and business mentorships; and cultural activities including theater, museum, and sports events, films, and book clubs.
This paper will trace the genesis and evolution of the Romay’s support for immigrants, explore how his life experiences in Hungary contributed to this position, and elaborate on the successes of the ARNIC program in integrating new immigrants. The author will use sources including oral history interviews – including with Andrew Romay - and transcripts, and ARNIC program data.
An Intimate “Rhetoric of Empire”: Sándor Márai’s <i>Embers</i>
Language/LiteratureIn a brief vignette in Sándor Márai’s Embers [A gyertyák csonkig égnek], the narrator recalls his childhood walks in the Schönbrunn. On one of these occasions, a woman with a white parasol hurries by. "The Empress," says the boy's chaplain. The boy responds that she looks like his mom. Such is the intimate familiarity the story projects between the narrator's life and the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself. This dreamlike equivalence between the personal and cultural reimagines the bygone empire less as a spatial colony, and more as a symbolic origin of cultural pluralism and sanity. It is against this imaginary symbolic origin that the story unfolds its morose reflections on personal and historical destiny. Such mythified premises (the story centers on an aging aristocrat still living in a Transylvanian castle as the second world war erupts) allow, however, for a narrative voice that eloquently intertwines existential and epochal reflection. These contradictory tensions mark the author’s own life—a Hungarian-Saxon Germanophile, born in 1900 in a bourgeois family of aristocratic origins, he died in California, a censored dissident against both Naziism and Soviet Communism, in the epochal year 1989. Márai’s work thus turns on its head any easy association between literary and political form. This paper asks what happens to these tensions between personal and historical time when they become problems immanent to the novel’s generic and rhetorical form.
An Invisible Border: The Reduced Identity of Poor People
Language/LiteratureThe problem of poverty is one of the most sensitive questions of Hungarian society. The discussion of poverty has been a taboo subject throughout the twentieth century. Yet, there are many novels and studies in Hungarian literature depicturing the life of the poor in the twentieth century.
This is the case with the novels of Sándor Tar also, one of the most important writers in Hungary in the last century. His novels are about people living on the periphery of society: in little poor villages, in suburbs, in mental hospitals, etc. His characters have no chance of living a better life and vegetate on the periphery of civilized human life. Sometimes they try to break out, but all the attempts are fated to fail from the very beginning. These dark stories reveal the real living standards of large segments of Hungarian society during the nineteenth century. Poor people live on the other side of an invisible border. They do not have access to the common goods, such as culture, education, sport, wealth, etc. They construct their identity not on the basis of these goods but on their lack of these assets. People living in need have no possibility to identify themselves as autonomous human beings. The codes and narratives of self-identification are reduced to the experience of poverty and deprivation. Tar’s writings will be analyzed from this perspective of identity.
This is the case with the novels of Sándor Tar also, one of the most important writers in Hungary in the last century. His novels are about people living on the periphery of society: in little poor villages, in suburbs, in mental hospitals, etc. His characters have no chance of living a better life and vegetate on the periphery of civilized human life. Sometimes they try to break out, but all the attempts are fated to fail from the very beginning. These dark stories reveal the real living standards of large segments of Hungarian society during the nineteenth century. Poor people live on the other side of an invisible border. They do not have access to the common goods, such as culture, education, sport, wealth, etc. They construct their identity not on the basis of these goods but on their lack of these assets. People living in need have no possibility to identify themselves as autonomous human beings. The codes and narratives of self-identification are reduced to the experience of poverty and deprivation. Tar’s writings will be analyzed from this perspective of identity.
An Updated Torockό: Village Tourism and Protection of Local Interests – A megújult Torockó. Faluturizmus és érdekvédelem.
Science/EconomicsA torockόi völgyben néhány négyzetkilométer területen s?r?södik Erdély minden szápsége, érdekessége. Sziklafalak, XIII.századbόl valό vár, régi vasbányák, érdekes építkezés, különleges népviselet. Ebben a völgyben ket magyarajkú település találhatό, Torockό és Torockόszentgyörgy. Lakόi ragaszkodnak hagyományaikhoz, nemzetiségükhöz, unitárius vallásukhoz. A 70-es és 80-as évek Romániájában halálraítélték ezeket a falvakat. Tilos volt túristacsoportok látogatása, hagyományos ünnepeik megtartása.
Az 1989-es fordulat után els?rend? feladat lett Torockό újraélesztése, egyrészt a vendégfogadás megszervezésével, másrészt a népi kultúra értékeinek felkutatásával és meg?rzésével. Ezeket a célokat szolgálta Dr.Tobiás Károly, magyar származású, amerikai egyetemi tanár, adománya. A Brassais Véndiák Alapítvány (Kolozsvár) kezdeményezésére létrejött a Tobiás Ház Ifjúsági Szabadid?központ; régi fényképek és dokumentumok gy?jtésével és kiállításával a Múzeum felújítása, valamint utikalauz kiadása. El?adásom a megvalόsítás nehézségeir?l, a munka szépségér?l és az összefogás erejér?l szόl.
Az 1989-es fordulat után els?rend? feladat lett Torockό újraélesztése, egyrészt a vendégfogadás megszervezésével, másrészt a népi kultúra értékeinek felkutatásával és meg?rzésével. Ezeket a célokat szolgálta Dr.Tobiás Károly, magyar származású, amerikai egyetemi tanár, adománya. A Brassais Véndiák Alapítvány (Kolozsvár) kezdeményezésére létrejött a Tobiás Ház Ifjúsági Szabadid?központ; régi fényképek és dokumentumok gy?jtésével és kiállításával a Múzeum felújítása, valamint utikalauz kiadása. El?adásom a megvalόsítás nehézségeir?l, a munka szépségér?l és az összefogás erejér?l szόl.
Analysis of Dezső Kosztolányi’s “Zsivajgó Természet” (Raucous Nature)
Language/LiteratureDezső Kosztolányi's "Zsivajgó Természet" (Raucous Nature) was a modern bestiary published in 1930. The short work reflected Kosztolányi's increasing interest in natural history toward the end of his life. The dynamics of translating this work for a modern audience will be analyzed, as well as the evolution of the literary form of the bestiary throughout history, and especially in the Twentieth Century. It was especially popular in Latin American Literature in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Various examples of these include works by the following authors: the Argentine Borges, the Mexican Arreola, the Chilean Neruda, and many others. Other examples of bestiaries and herbals from across World Literature will be explored, with special attention given to their adaptations to modern times, and within the continuing development of a variety of ways of viewing animals, plants and minerals.
Analyzing Agency of Iron Age Migrants in Construction of the Hungary’s Golden Stag Plaques
History/Political ScienceFor nearly one hundred years, Hungarian research of ancient nomadism has been energized by the discoveries of a gold stag plaque, among other items, from two Carpathian burials. In this paper I trace cultural ties through the extant art buried with the Carpathian herders and similar material associated with coeval Iron Age groups from the steppes of southern Siberia, Kazakhstan and classical populations around the Black Sea. Comparative analysis of the buried objects suggest a hyphenated route of passage taken out of Inner Asia by the Carpathian herders. Closer analysis of key iconographic elements reveal careful crafting of key steppe imagery to affirm deep cultural roots with steppe culture of Inner Asian. At the same time, stylistic execution of the commissioning objects suggest the personal agency of the owners to convey a cosmopolitan image, one that advertises cross-cultural fluency between the mobile and the settled communities of the Scythian and Classical world. The evidence from the Carpathian burials suggest a loaded composite of visual vernacular that signals mixed affiliations enabling passage through the obverse/reverse worlds of the civilized and the migrant to expand into western territories of the Eurasian steppes. At a time when the contemporary world is seeing mass shifts of peoples, understanding the historic vortex of ancient migrations and the use of visual imagery that signals intersecting affiliations seems especially pertinent.
