Accepted Abstracts

Identifying with Others: Righteous Among the Nations from Different Countries Connect and Experience the Holocaust in Hungary

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
My paper introduces my new identity recently discovered from a DNA test - Eastern European and Jewish Diaspora ancestry, previously unbeknownst to our family. Because my new DNA identity revealed more regions and countries than I originally thought in my ancestry (including Eastern Europe, Spain, and Northeastern Europe) this prompted me to examine the idea of Righteous Gentiles from several different countries who saved Jewish lives in the Hungarian Holocaust. The main portion of my paper features those honored as Righteous Gentiles from several nations who identified with the plight of their Jewish brethren in Hungary. Righteous Gentiles from different counties often collaborated with each other, and after the Holocaust were honored by Yad Vashem for having risked their lives. Among the rescuers, Raoul Wallenberg was aware and proud of his one-sixteenth Jewish ancestry from his great-great-grandfather (his maternal grandmother's grandfather) Michael Benedicks, who immigrated to Stockholm in 1780. In fact, Wallenberg, who saved 100,000 Jewish lives in the Hungarian Holocaust, sometimes exaggerated his Jewish ancestry, stating in 1930 to Swedish Philosopher Ingemar Hedenius that “A person like me, who is both a Wallenberg and half-Jewish, can never be defeated.”
I will discuss several other rescuers: Italian Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta and his assistant Gennaro Verolino, Swedish diplomats, Per Anger, Carl Ivar Danielsson, and Valdemar and Nina Langlet of the Swedish Red Cross. Tens of thousands were saved by Righteous Gentiles from other countries, as well, and some of these will also be mentioned: Charles Lutz of Switzerland, Polish Charge d’Affairs Henryk Slawik, Spanish diplomat Angel Sanz-Briz, Italian purveyor Giorgio Perlasca, and Scottish missionary Jane Haining. At the conclusion of the presentation, I will apply Frigyes Karinthy’s theory of six degrees of separation from his 1929 short story “Chains” [‘Láncszemek’] to survivors and rescuers. Each member of the AHEA audience will be invited to identify a survivor or rescuer and to apply to the six degree of separation concept. My aim is to propose that through Karinthy’s theory we will be brought closer to both survivors and rescuers -- --AHEA presenters, family members, and others.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Biro holds an MLS and Ph.D.from the University of Pittsburgh. She taught courses at Duquesne University in Children’s and Adolescent Literature, Cultural Diversity, Multicultural and International Literature, and Perspectives on the Holocaust. She presents and publishes on Hungarian Righteous Gentles, Raoul Wallenberg, Hungarian women survivors in the USA, and Hungarian topics in books in English for American youth.

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Not Just Another 'Romkocsma': Everyday Geographies of Budapest's Cafes and Bars

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
A city’s cafes, bars and other semi-public venues constitute a significant part of residents’ and tourists’ everyday geographies of sociality: when friends gather for a birthday, when colleagues meet for lunch, or when tourists search for the best selfie, they rely on—and contribute to—such spaces’ reputations to decide where they might ‘fit in’. Budapest is no exception, and spaces ranging from classical cafes to the so-called romkocsmák continue to attract waves of customers while contributing to significant physical and social transformations in the surrounding urban environment. This paper will draw on ethnographic fieldwork to explore the intertwined and changing landscapes of Budapest and its hospitality venues, focusing particularly on contemporary groups working to re-imagine the cafe/bar as a social enterprise designed to support civil society and activist work. It will also involve looking back at counter-cultural spaces from Budapest’s past—such as Tilos az Á and Fekete Lyuk—to trace lineages and transformations that contextualise Budapest’s current ’scene.’ While Habermas famously described the cafe as an idealised public sphere, the aim of this talk will be instead to explore how the politics, sociality and culture of the public sphere is experienced in different-yet-interconnected ways in the various bars and cafes of Budapest.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Shawn Bodden is a PhD Researcher in human geography at the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences. His doctoral research is an ethnographic study of everyday experience of politics and activism in Budapest.

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Haute Couture in Ornamented Fur, Skin and Felt in Siberian Iron Age Burials with Recognized Parallels in Hungarian Folk Art

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper reexamines archeological evidence of ornamented leather and felt work preserved in frozen tombs of herders and pastoralists at Pazyryk dating from the fourth – third c. BCE in the Altai region of Southern Siberia. The review is prompted by intensification of international scholarship that, responding to fresh excavations in and around the area, is generating productive debate on interactive economies and regional social complexity. Missing from the debate is recognition of large-scale production of organic commodities custom-made into tomb furnishings and elaborate articles of ceremonial dress out of fur, skin and felt for an elite class and their prized horses at the top of Pazyryk social order. The frail arts preserved in burial offer an exclusive view of a grassland industry generally missing in the archeological record. Parsing the data builds an understanding of patronage of an haute couture industry supported by auxiliary sectors of steppe economy including hunting, trapping, technical and creative processing, and trade. Quite possibly they offer a view into the distaff side of grassland economy. The author cites illustrative references for the parallel use of motifs, applique patterning and palette in Népi Gyapjú and Szűcs-Munka by later-day Hungarians which attest to the continued strength and viability of the industry among pastoralists.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mrea Csorba Ph.D. I received all three of he academic degrees from the University of Pittsburgh-. She has been teaching courses in art history at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University as an adjunct faculty member since the early 90’s. Her MA thesis (1987) investigated horse-reliant cultures associated with Scythian steppe culture. For her Ph.D. (1997) she expanded research of pastoral groups to non-Chinese dynastic populations documented in northern China. Part of this research was published in the British prehistory journal ANTIQUITY, Cambridge, England (ANTIQUITY 70, 1996, 564—587). Her research may be viewed at http://edtech.msl.duq.edu/Mediasite/Play/2ea00c36fc2b4050ba46072efc0b80111d
and at http://www.duq.edu/academics/schools/liberal-arts/centers/interpretive-and-qualitative-research/video mrc25@pitt.edu

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Hungarians in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper will describe the role of two world famous Hungarian photographers, Robert Capa and Kati Horna, in the Spanish Civil War. It will include a discussion of some of their photos from the War and give a brief biography of each. In addition, it will include information on the role of the "Rakosi Brigade," one of the International Brigades that participated in the War in support of the Second Republic. Two individuals who fought with the Brigade and became famous in their own right in Hungarian history, Laszlo Rajk and Ferenc Munnich, will also be discussed. As an introduction, a brief history of the Spanish Civil War and its outcome will also be included.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Katherine Gyekenyesi Gatto is Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies and former Chairperson (1990-97) of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Cultures at John Carroll University. In 2012, she founded the Women's and Gender Studies Program and was its director until 2016. The focus of Dr. Gatto's scholarly research is Spanish literature, Hispanic women writers and filmmakers, and Hungarian and Hungarian-American studies (literature and film). A former Fulbright scholar to Spain, Dr. Gatto has published the following books: Of Kings and Poets: Cancionero Poetry of the Trastamara Courts; The Lapidary of King Alfonso X, the Learned; Spain's Literary Legacy: Studies in Spanish Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century; Treasury of Hungarian Love: Poems, Quotations, and Proverbs in Hungarian and English. Currently she is completing two manuscripts, one on Hungarian Women in Text and Image, the other, on the Argentine film director, Maria Luisa Bemberg.

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The Contested Identity of Hungarian Operetta

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In 2013 “Hungarian operetta” achieved the status of Hungaricum which is a collective term indicating a “typically Hungarian attribute, uniqueness, specialty and quality.” The goal of the paper is to show the contradictions hidden in this interpretation by highlighting some cultural and political debates related to the national or “foreign” identity of this musical entertainment genre that enjoyed widespread popularity in Hungary.
Due to the presence of its stars and melodies in Hungarian cultural memory, operetta became a popular research topic in Cultural Studies, in Cultural and Social History. Furthermore, its products provided the most significant Hungarian presence in transnational show business in the first half of 20th century. As Richard Traubner stated, „The principal operetta cities have always been Paris, Vienna, London, Berlin, Budapest and New York, as there are the places were operetta activity was greatest, and where operettas with international circulation were created and where they still are performed.” By analyzing some home and foreign interpretations of the presumed identity of the Budapest centered operetta branch, my goal is to verify the correlations between the transforming definitions and the changing political and cultural contexts. In order to understand the dynamics behind these reinterpretations, the paper highlights three sociocultural contexts: the identity formation of Hungarian operetta in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in the interwar period (1918-1939) and in the one-party system.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gyöngyi HELTAI (PhD) is a theatre historian and currently a Hungarian Visiting Professor at the Department of History & Classics of the University of Alberta. Heltai graduated from Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest) where she studied Hungarian and Russian Literature and Cultural Anthropology. Heltai defended her PhD thesis in 2006 at Laval University (Québec, Canada). Between 2006 and 2017 she been teaching at the Atelier Department of European Social Sciences and Historiography of the Eötvös Loránd University. Her primary teaching and research areas are: Hungarian Theatre History, History of Hungarian Popular Culture (operetta), Culture of the Socialist Era and Intangible Cultural Heritage.

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Az identitáskeresés művészeti megjelenése El Kazovszkij munkásságában

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
El Kazovszkij (1948-2008) képzőművész életműve az utóbbi években újra a figyelem középpontjába került. Egyrészről, a nagysikerű a Magyar Nemzeti Galériában megrendezett A túlélő árnyéka című időszaki kiállítás miatt, amely a széles tömegek számára nyújtott betekintést El Kazovszkij festőként, performerként és díszlettervezőként hátrahagyott műveibe, másrészről pedig az utóbbi években vált elérhetővé a publikum számára a művész oroszból magyar nyelvre fordított verseinek a kiadása is. El Kazovszkij életművét erősen meghatározza, hogy az első képzőművészeti és irodalmi élményei, a nyelvi kultúrája elsősorban az orosz nyelvhez kötötte. A kamaszként Magyarországra kerülő festő, az első identitássokkon túljutva azonban elsajátította a magyar nyelvet, és a kép-szöveg kombinációt alkalmazó műveiben a szövegek már túlnyomórészt magyarul íródtak. A festmények és a versek létrehozásának folyamata tehát több megélt kulturális identitásnak az eredménye, amelyre ő maga is felhívta a figyelmet a vele készített interjúkban. A komparisztikai előadás arra keresi a választ, hogyan miként szervezi ez az identitáskeresés a művész vizuális és verbális művészetét, hogyan viszonyulnak egymáshoz, értelmezik újra egymást a különböző művészeti ágak az orosz és a magyar nyelvi kultúra felől vizsgálva őket. Az identitáskérdés művészeti megjelenítésének a megválaszolásához, El Kazovszkij versei és képzőművészeti alkotásai közül a hattyú-toposszal kapcsolatos válogatott művek értelmezésére vállalkozom. A hattyú szimbolikájának szintén az átmenetiséggel, a változással van kapcsolata, és gyakran tematizált, fontos részét képezi a művész magánmitológiájának. A hattyút ábrázoló képek és versek nemcsak az orosz mesékből és irodalomból táplálkoztak, hanem az antik kultúrkörből is, amelyet a művész egyszerre mozgatott, reprodukált, és egyesített a verseiben (Hattyú kuplék) és a festészetében (Palota-hattyú, A fej nélküli hattyú, Hattyúk tava) egyaránt.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Fruzsina Nagy received her BA degree at the University of Szeged, Faculty of Humanities, Hungarian Language and Literature major, specialization in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies; and her MA also at the University of Szeged, Faculty of Humanities, Philologist in Hungarian Language and Literature, specialization in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. Currently she is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Literary Studies. She is a recipient of a National Talent Program Scholarship, Grant Scheme for the Nation's Young Talents, Yale Center for British Art, 2018-2019.

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‘Ölelem a Térded!’ I Hug Your Knees (Not Kiss Your Hand!): Béla Zerkovitz, Dezső Kosztolányi, and Joséphine Baker

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
From dirt-poor beginnings in early 20th century racist America, African American cabaret performer Joséphine Baker rose to heights of global fame in interwar Europe, taking Paris by storm, later bedazzling the rest of Europe including two visits to Hungary. In 1928, this “Bronze Venus” was almost banned by the Hungarian Conservative Party, but after being screened before the police committee, her show was a huge success at the Orfeum Theatre in Budapest. According to a contemporary account from TIME Magazine, a Hungarian cavalry officer behaved too amorously, displeasing the Italian “Count” serving as her manager who challenged the officer to a sword-fighting duel. They met in a cemetery while Baker cheered from atop a tombstone. During her second Budapest visit, a young fan, hopelessly in love with Baker, shot himself after one of her concerts. Kosztolányi wrote a glowing article about her in the Pesti Hirlap. Béla Zerkovitz’ internationally renowned hit song, “Gyere Jozefin. . . ölelem a térded,” appears in the musical comedy Csókos Asszony/Kissing Lady, still regularly performed in the 21st century, though most spectators are clueless regarding the origin of the song. Despite her success as a Jazz Age mega-star, her worldwide performances were denounced as animalistic. Condemned as a primitive threat to civilization, still, she played to full houses who found her fascinating and amusing. This paper argues that Hungary was not isolated in post WWI European malaise, and by embracing Baker, who symbolized the Other of urban interwar European modernity, the country sought to evoke “metropolitan” or “European” culture and transform its capital city into a cosmopolitan metropolis.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mártha Pereszlényi-Pintér is the former Chairperson of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Cultures and Associate Professor of French at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. She earned her Ph.D. in Romance Languages from The Ohio State University, and studied at the Institut de Touraine (Tours) and the Bryn Mawr Program (Avignon) in France. Her research and publication accomplishments include French and also Hungarian Literature and Culture of the pre-modern period (Medieval, Renaissance, 17th century), Film, and Language for Business & the Professions. She has read papers at national and international conferences. While at OSU, she wrote or co-wrote 16 manuals for individualized instruction in both French and Hungarian with group grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Annenberg Foundation. She was born in Austria and emigrated to the USA with her Hungarian parents. She is also a past President of AHEA, and chaired or co-chaired four past AHEA annual Conferences.

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Dada and Futurist Soundscapes in Hungary

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Where does contemporary and postmodern art get its visual flair and drama? What are the roots of performance art and “noise” in classical music? Just over one hundred years ago in Berlin, something radical and new began to appear as comedic cabaret entertainment and visual art. This set in motion Zürich’s Cabaret Voltaire and a series of modernist, democratic responses to established art canons, encouraging new kinds of participatory art. Popular cabarets became virulently nationalistic and democratic. Italian Futurism inspired anti-war artistic movements in both Berlin, Moscow, and the Hungarian literary avant-garde. Dada poetry and sound movements flourished during the Russian Revolution, and artists in socialist Hungary, Yugoslavia, occupied Prague succeeded in publishing Dada journals. In each location that Dada flourished, it achieved a form particular to its surroundings. Parisian Dada co-opted local cabaret culture and combined anti-German (though rarely anti-war) themes into performances. Hungarian and Berlin Dada criticized war and “high art,” glorified anti-war democratic ideas: they merged populist Kitsch with revolutionary speech. This paper presents new research on Hungarian Dada, the Eight, Kineticism, the Activists, Kurt Schwitters, the journal Ma, and conferences sponsored by the Kassák Museum.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Laura Stanfield Prichard lectures regularly for the San Francisco and Chicago Symphonies and opera companies in Boston and San Francisco. Her twenty-five continuous years of college teaching have focused on interdisciplinary cultural analysis of music, dance, and art history: she is a specialist in African American, Latin American, and Pacific Rim cultures. She sings with the Boston and San Francisco Symphony Choruses was the Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus (1995-2003).

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Narrative Style and Gender Relations in the Creative Relationship of Miklós Mészöly and Alaine Polcz

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Miklós Mészöly (1921-2001) and Alaine Polcz (1922-2007) as a couple have a special status in Hungarian literature. Mészöly is one of the most important figures of postwar Hungarian fiction. His wife, Polcz, a therapist became an author at the age of sixty nine when her first book, a wartime memoir One Woman in the War (1991) gained attention. Polcz became famous when Mészöly was already past the height of his career and although she has been generally regarded only as an important "writer's wife" (írófeleség) and a middlebrow writer, even a dilettante, by the turn of the century she eventually became more popular than her husband. In this paper I will focus on a novel by Mészöly, Pontos történetek, útközben (Accurate Stories on the Road) published in 1970, based on Polcz’s tape recorded narration of her journeys to her native region, Transylvania, and to the Hungarian countryside, which she gifted to her husband. I pose two questions in the paper: The first is a question of style and narration, and the second is the question of gender. How can we grasp the characteristics of the narrative style of Mészöly by comparing his transcription to the text recorded on the tape made by Polcz? How was it possible for the husband to publish a novel exclusively under his own name from his wife’s ”raw material”, and how did the couple consider their roles as partners in marriage and in artistic creation? The consideration of these questions only becomes possible because of the publication, in 2017, of their four decades of correspondence, which I will discuss in detail.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
David Szolláth, Ph. D. (1975) is a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Center for the Humanities, Institute of Literary Studies in Budapest. He is an editor of Literatura – theoretical journal of the Institute of Literary Studies, HAS and author of the “A kommunista aszketizmus esztétikája” [Aesthetics of Communist Ascetism] (2011), he is currently working on a monographic study on Miklós Mészöly, Hungarian writer.

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Komor and Jakab: Architects of the Târgu Mureş Palace of Culture

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
At the conclusion of the AHEA conference in Kolozsvár/Cluj in 2015, many of us participated in a memorable excursion around Transylvania. One of our stops was Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureş. We were stunned by the beautiful Palace of Culture, replete with paintings and windows depicting Hungarian folk tales, intricately designed furniture, wall designs, chandeliers, and a gorgeous Art Nouveau exterior. Then we saw the nearby synagogue, designed by the same two collaborating architects. Who were they? They were Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab, perhaps the proto-starchitects of their era, the early twentieth century, and among the most sought-after architects in contemporary Hungary. They collaborated for 23 years, leaving numerous award-winning buildings, both public and residential, in towns throughout the country. In this talk we will examine some of their masterpieces: the Black Eagle Palace in Nagyvárad/Oradea and the synagogue in Szadbadka/Subotica, a bank in Temesvár/Timişoara, a concert hall in Pozsony/Bratislava, the Erkel Theatre in Budapest, and several private villas, before devoting more attention to the Palace of Culture. The partners were students of Ödön Lechner, the creator of Hungarian Art Nouveau, later advocates (at times overcoming the resistance of their clients) and creative innovators in this style as well as savvy businessmen.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Beata Szpura is an artist and educator. She has worked in the field of illustration for thirty years, illustrating book covers for Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Her work has appeared in major US newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Her paintings in the media of watercolor and oil have exhibited in the US, Poland, and Ukraine. She teaches color theory and fashion drawing at Parsons, and drawing and painting at Queensboro Community College.

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Böske Simon, Miss Hungaria and Miss Europa (1929): Beauty Pageants and Packaging Gender, Race, and National Identity in Interwar Hungary

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In this interdisciplinary paper, utilizing cultural studies, gender studies, and media studies, Vasvári investigates the socio-political role of beauty pageants in 1920s European – and more specifically – in Hungarian culture. The article is structured as a case study of the life of Böske Simon, who in 1929 won the first Miss Hungaria competition and in the same year also the title of Miss Europa. Vasvári examines how the problematic gender representation of women in such pageants and their reception by the press and by the public interact in the broader interwar cultural sphere in post-Trianon Hungary. She also aims to place Simon’s role as Hungarian beauty queen in a broader international focus by examining from a gender perspective the international development of beauty pageants and of commercial beauty culture in the 1920s. Finally, Vasvári examines the symbolic space allotted to the concept “modern girl,’ who came to represent both the enticements and the dangers of modernity, in the interwar [re]construction of gender and national identities. A coda to the main body of the article will be devoted to Béla Zsolt’s 1932 novel, A királynő családja, a merciless critique of the pretentions of the Jewish petite bourgeoisie, based in part on Böske Simon’s pageant experiences, a connection that has not been noticed in earlier criticism.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Louise O. Vasvári (M.A. and Ph.D., UC, Berkeley) is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. Currently she teaches in the Linguistics Department at NYU and is also Affiliated Professor at the University of Szeged. She works in medieval studies, diachronic and socio-linguistics, Holocaust studies, and Hungarian Studies, all informed by gender theory within a broader framework of comparative cultural studies. In relation to Hungarian Cultural Studies she has published numerous articles, as well as, with Steven Tötösy, Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (2005), Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies (2009), and Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies (2011).

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