The Chastened to the Unchastened Crowd; Crowd Politics from Kossuth to Orbán

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Just a couple of years ago the way you knew it was a holiday (like March 15) was the streets were empty. Families were afraid to take their children to potential violent events. This January the opposition brought out a huge crowd to protest the new Constitution and a few weeks later an even larger crowd collected to show their support for Viktor Orban. This paper will place the role of crowd politics (oppositional crowds as well as state-sponsored and official festivities) in its historical context from the 1848 revolution,through 1956 and 1989.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Alice Freifeld received her PhD (1992), M.A. and B.A. from University of California, Berkeley. She joined the University of Florida in 1994 after teaching at Wheaton College, University of New Hampshire-Durham, University of Connecticut-Storrs, University of Nebraska, and Transylvania University, Lexington, KY. Professor Freifeld has published Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914 (2000), which won the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize in 2001. She also coedited East Europe Reads Nietzsche with Peter Bergmann and Bernice Rosenthal (1998). She has published numerous articles and is currently working on a manuscript entitled Displaced Hungarian Jewry, 1945-48.