Accepted Abstracts -- 2021

Indiai-magyar rapszódia. Amrita Sher-Gil emlékezete. (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Vannak nők, akiknek az élettörténete első pillantásra filmvászonra kívánkozik. Ilyen nő volt Alma Mahler, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, és ilyen a félig magyar, félig indiai származású festőművésznő (az indiai Frida Kahloként emlegetett) Amrita Sher-Gil #8222;életregénye” is. Ezen az "emlékezet-felidézésen” megismerkedhetünk a 20. század első felének izgalmas, az európai és az indiai mentalitást/hagyományokat sajátosan ötvöző személyiségének életével, világával. Avagy ahogy saját életmottójában minderről ő maga írt/vallott volt: „Indiában tudok festeni. Máshol nem vagyok természetes, nincs kellő önbizalmam. Európa Picasso-é, Matisse-é, Braque-é és másoké. India csak az enyém.”


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gizella Cseh is a philologist and teacher in Hungarian, Hungarian as a foreign language and culture, Slovak language, language coach, PR-Spokesman, journalist in culture, tourist guide.

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Kulturális keresztutak a magyar kisebbségi helyzetben, a Trianon utáni erdélyi széppróza tükrében. (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Abból a helyzetből, amely a Trianon utáni határontúli magyar kisebbség sorsát jellemzi az következik, hogy a kulturális keresztutak és a kulturális fennmaradási reflexű identitás-struktúrák kétirányú összefüggésbe kerülnek egymással. Vagyis ebből a történelmi helyzetből következően az igen erőteljes identitástudat meghatározza az útválasztást a kulturális keresztútnál; és fordítva, a kulturális keresztúthelyzet identitás-stratégiát meghatározó tényezővé válik. Ezen döntéshelyezetekre találunk releváns példákat számos, a két világháború közötti magyar irodalomban. Ignácz Rózsa, Bözödi György, Nyirő József, Benedek Elek, Tamási Áron műveinek szereplői olyan döntési helyzeteket modelleznek, melyekben egyaránt megjelennek a konformista és nonkonformista válaszok. A regények, szociográfiák kisebbségi helyzetbe került szereplői mindannyian keresztút előtt állnak – előbb, vagy utóbb, önként vagy külső nyomásra (mely lehet ideológiai, gazdasági, politikai, vagy családi nyomás, szélsőséges esetben akár létfenntartási, egizisztenciális kényszer): dönteniük kell. A kérdés az: adott helyzetben melyik a jó, és melyik a rossz döntés? Mi az, ami a döntés hátterében húzódik? Mi a szerepe az identitásnak ezekben a helyzetekben, illetve milyen mintázatokat eredményezhet az identitás-megtartásban vagy deformálódásban? A döntések milyen következményekkel járnak egyéni, csoport és nemzeti szinten? Tanulmányomban ezekre a kérdésekre kísérlem megtalálni a válaszokat, az említett irodalomból vett példákon keresztül, különböző identitáselméletek felhasználásával.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Erzsébet Dani, an associate professor at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, teaches several courses in the fields of library and information science, culture and literature. She graduated from Eszterházy Károly College, at Eötvös Lóránd University, and was awarded her PhD. degree in the Eötvös Loránd University Doctoral Program for Literature and Cultural Studies (2008). She got her habilitation degree (sociology, 2016) at the University of Debrecen. Her general research interest are: Hungarian national and cultural identity, reflected in Hungarian literature; education, culture, reading research. She has two scientific monographs, several published studies.

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The Trauma of Expatriation in Márai and Hemingway

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper seeks to offer an understanding of the controversial narrative representation of expatriation in the works of Sándor Márai and Ernest Hemingway. Although there is no evidence yet that two authors ever met in person, their portrayal of living abroad for an extended period of time is surprisingly similar, as is the way they conducted and ended their lives. Sharpening the focus on transnationality by juxtaposing Márai’s American and European experiences with those of Hemingway, I shall investigate in depth Amerika délibáb (Márai) along with In Our Time (Hemingway) to explore their shared interest in the traumatic aspects of identity construction abroad and whether minorities could ever be treated as integral and representative parts of a foreign society. The current study (which will appear in my upcoming book) delves into the expansive ways literature by immigrants negotiates diasporic spaces to create “imagined communities” where estrangement and engagement coexist. The works of the two main authors of my research mirror the misfortunes of their native societies in the twentieth century, hence their own expatriation. Interestingly, however, both authors also highlight their restlessness in their new “homes”. Hemingway (who moved from America to France and back) and Márai (who moved from Hungary to Italy and then America) depict living uncomfortably in a space between two worlds, one perhaps dead and the other struggling to be born. Such themes as ambiguity, assimilation, sentimentality, homesickness, and divided loyalties appear in the texts under scrutiny. The complex way identity is negotiated by immigrants writing about their home abroad experience plays a central role in my study, as do tensions concerning language and belongingness in the struggle for home. The main methodologies to be utilized include psychoanalysis, gender studies, and social history.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Teodora Domotor received her Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Surrey, UK. She currently works as an Assistant Professor at Károli Gáspár University in Budapest, Hungary. Her primary research goals are directed towards the study of twentieth-century transnational American literature with a strong emphasis on the narrative representation of national and gender identity. At present she investigates the portrayal of immigrant men’s infantilization and symbolic castration in the works of modernist American and Hungarian-American emigré writers. She is committed to interdisciplinary research: gender studies, psychoanalysis, and social history form the basis of her arguments. Her articles, chapters, and book reviews have appeared (or are forthcoming) in American and European publications.

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Narrative Images of Hungary in the Intergenerational Memories of Late Generation Hungarian Americans (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In this paper, I discuss the narrative meaning of images of Hungary as a “geographical site” in intergenerational memory retellings quoted from interview-based life histories of late-generation Hungarian Americans. The term “site” implies the topographically-recognizable place of ethnic identification to which individuals gravitate emotionally and psychologically. The selected narrative samples show how the narrators construct their ethnic subjectivity by emphasizing and interpreting the locations where particular events happened to their ancestors. The analysis distinguishes two types of ethnic subjectivity-related sites, which are the ancestral homeland and the roots trip. References to these “geographical sites” in intergenerational memory narratives appear on two levels. The first level identifies the actual and the possible locations within the narrator’s world, including the here-and-now geography of the interviews as well as any other site of everyday activities in which the interview takes place. The second level concerns the locations of events in the complexity of multiple storyworlds that integrate the sites of intergenerational memories with those of the narrator’s own memory. The family memory narratives shed light on how the linguistic and narrative representation of places and place-related activities prompt agency construction. In many stories, the intergenerational memory and own memory narratives intersect and modify traditional Labovian story structures to ensure telling rights and add new meaning to the places. Code-switching between English and a heritage language, in this case, Hungarian, becomes a platform for constructing the narrators’ sense of place.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mónika Fodor works as an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies of the University of Pécs. She teaches courses in American Studies, Applied Linguistics, and TESOL. Her research interest includes narratives, identity, ethnicity, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork. She has authored book chapters and journal articles in the fields of American Studies and Sociolinguistics as well as the combination of these two fields on narrative, identity, teaching culture and narrative, and translation studies. Her most recent work is a book titled Ethnic Subjectivity in Intergenerational Memory Narratives: Politics of the Untold published by Routledge in 2020.

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Self-Identity and Community Through Social Media: The Digital Diasporas of Hungarians in the UK (Accepted) Withdrawn

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper discusses the digital communities of Hungarians in the UK: these communities (typically Facebook groups, blogs or other interactive websites) started to pop up on the internet in large numbers since the mid-2010s, when the intra-EU migration of Hungarians to the UK increased, and when the experience of migration – due to the ubiquity of the internet and that of digital technologies – has growingly become digitally mediated not only in Europe, but around the world (see e.g. Diminescu & Loveluck 2014, Georgiou 2013, Marino 2015). Although scholarly attention on Hungarian expat communities – and Hungarians living in “Western diasporas” in general – has been on the rise for a while, to this day not much has been said about the media-related aspects of this story, despite the fact that today much of the day-to-day public life of these communities occurs on the internet, in online spaces. The present paper focuses on these spaces and conceptualises them as “spaces of digital togetherness” (Marino 2015), i.e. where diasporic experiences and identities are constructed and negotiated on a daily basis, and which act as a kind of “social glue” that connects Hungarian expats / migrants with each other. The paper uses critical discourse analysis combined with digital ethnography in order to 1) identify what Hungarian expats/migrants do with media, what typical interactions they have in these online spaces; and 2) how they create, through the use of these spaces, a sense of cultural belonging, that is a specifically Hungarian digital (trans)cultural identity.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gyorgyi Horvath is a media, literature & gender scholar, with a PhD in Media (2019) from the London School of Economics and another PhD in Literature (2006) from the University of Pecs. Originally from Hungary, she used to teach Literature & Gender at the University of Pecs, ELTE University (Budapest) and the Balassi Institute (Budapest), before she switched fields to Media and moved to London. Her latest book, Utazo elmeletek (Budapest: Balassi, 2014), studied the depoliticisation of ”Western” cultural Marxism in post-socialist Eastern-European contexts, and in 2015 won the prestigious Erdody Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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The Importance of a Cultural Mediator at the Cultural Crossroads: Augusta Markowitz’s Activity in New York Through the First Half of the 20th Century. (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Augusta Markowitz was devoted disseminator of cultural and especially Hungarian cultural information in New York. From 1897 until 1944 she served the New York Public Library system first as a young Assistant, later promoted to Branch Librarian. Most of her carrier she was the head of the Woodstock Branch Library in an area of large Hungarian population. She was responsible not only for her branch service, but for the Hungarian material of the whole NPL system. Above all she maintained a non commercial Hungarian Book Service in New York. Her Hungarian book lists helped with book selection other libraries and Hungarians in the US. She was a great integrator. As professional American librarian was aware of and joined the Library service for foreigners (immigrants) program of America, as Hungarian built up stable contacts with leading Hungarian editors, libraries and the contemporary literary world and press in Hungary by visits and correspondence. For decades her library in Woodstock with a large Hungarian collection served as Hungarian cultural center of events, exhibitions and became the source of information. Circle of intellectuals, artists, politicians and the general readers all enjoyed her service. In 1934 the Hungarian government awarded her its Red Cross Award of Merit for her valuable activity. This research is based on archival material and also on contemporary publications and press identified in New York and in Hungary.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ilona Kovács, librarian, retired department head of the National Széchényi Library, Budapest. She gained her diplomas at the Budapest University (ELTE, 1961) and at Kent State University, Ohio (MLS, 1975), and her doctoral degree at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA 1993). Her research area is Hungarians abroad focusing on American Hungarians. As head of the Hungarica Documentation she was director of grants for collecting information and documentation and build up Hungarica databases and also conducting surveys to publish a series of publications on Hungarica material of libraries in Europe, Australia and Canada. She attended several international conferences in Europe, USA, Canada and Hungary and published over 100 articles, studies and books. She was a Fulbright scholar at the American Hungarian Foundation in the AYs 1995 and 2001/03.

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The Hungarian Contribution to the Films of Ernst Lubitsch (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) is considered to be Hollywood’s most elegant and sophisticated director, known for his urbane comedies of manners. Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not To Be, Heaven Can Wait are some of his best-known gems. He is still the subject of scholarly work, most recently Joseph McBride’s HOW DID LUBITSCH DO IT? published in 2019.Throughout his career he had a number of Hungarian collaborators as writers and actors. But all of the best known films of the sound era were based on stories and plays written by Hungarians--Ernest Vajda, Melchior Lengyel, Miklos Laszlo, Laszlo Bus-Fekete, Lajos Biro. To what extent was Lubitsch’s success due to the witty, urbane cynicism of the café culture of Budapest writers and intellectuals? This paper will examine their contribution.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Steven Kovacs is a filmmaker and professor of film at San Francisco State University. He is the author of a book on French Surrealist film and dozens of articles on film, art, and politics. He is a producer and director of feature films and documentaries, including ’68, ANGEL BLUE, THE LADY IN RED, and Academy Award Nominated documentary ARTHUR AND LILLIE.

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Roman Baths and Bathing Culture in the Province of Pannonia (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The study examines the Roman bathing culture at the province of Pannonia (today Dunántúl, in Hungary). The territory of the Roman Empire baths were built for public, military and private purposes. Hungary is rich in thermal water and many thermal waters were used in the Roman Age. In Latin terms the big bath was called therma, and the small bath was called balneum. In Aquincum (today Óbuda) there were 5 big baths during the Roman period. All of the Roman baths have an apodyterium, a changing room, a frigidarium, a cold water room, a tepidarium a heating room and a caldarium, a warm water room. They also have a topology, an order or classification to be used. There are row-type baths, where rooms follow each other in a row, and there are ring-type baths, where rooms follow each other in a round shape. There is also a double-row-type, meaning the baths were used together men and women, because Roman baths were used separately by men and women. In some cases the caldarium was doubled was doubled in size to serve more bathers. There is a symmetrical ring type, which is a mixture of the double row-type and the ring type. There is also a small emperor type, which is a mixture the row-type and the symmetrical ring-type baths. There is a large emperor type. In Hungary there were Roman baths in cities, in the legionary and in the auxiliary camps and in villas. Roman villas were built in the country and all the villas have baths.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Tünde Lang is studying in the Interdisciplinary Doctorate School at the University of Pécs, Department of Ancient History. She finished her MA studies in 2015. An archaeologist, her research theme is Roman baths and bathing culture. A Museum Educator and a History teacher, she studied Museum Education at Eötvös Lóránd University, Faculty of Education and Psychology.

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Double Testimonies: Antifascism and Anticommunism as Modes of Historical Representation by Sándor Márai and Imre Kertész (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Sándor Márai and Imre Kertész, both involved in communism as youngsters, were relentless opponents of Marxism-Leninism in their thirties, and they kept refusing it for decades. On the basis of personal experiences, they both adjudicated fascism and also communism substantially misleading ideologies, and maintained that these two different ideologies were very similar in their tyrannical collectivism and abusive informational methods. Márai and Kertész both composed literary works coping with depressing memories of fascist and communist political systems, and experimented with narrating strict historical facts in a literary manner. Explained in several essays and talks, Kertész regarded Márai as an ideal, believing that his predecessor’s oeuvre represents a proper ethical way of being “polgár”, bound to a partly real, partly imagined community of Bürgertum or bourgeoisie (understood in a positive sense). On the one hand, Kertész insisted that lying is a basic condition of fascist and also communist structures. On the other hand, he declared that independent literature has the ability to tell the truth via fiction. In my paper, I aim to investigate antifascism and anticommunism as modes of historical representation. Targeting such important books as Memoir of Hungary by Sándor Márai, as well as The Union Jack by Imre Kertész, I conduct an inquiry into the cultural, ethical and aesthetical problems of their autobiographical and biofictional works.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
János D. Mekis, PhD is an associate professor at the Department of Literary Theory and Modern Literatures, University of Pécs, Hungary. Former Head of Department, core member of the Literary Doctoral School. His research area is Hungarian Modernism, theories of narrative, and literary autobiography. Author of 100+ academic publications, including three scholarly monographs. Visiting professor at universities in Groningen, Jyväskylä, Brno and Paris. He is a member of the following organizations: Executive Committe of the International Association for Hungarian Studies; International Comparative Literature Association; National Research, Development and Innovation Office, Hungary; Doctoral Committee of the Hungarian Accreditation Committee.

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The Origins and Evolution of Interwar Hungarian Public Discourse on Narcotics (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In 1924 Hungary ratified and codified the 1912 Hague International Opium Convention, which was the first international drug control treaty. However, the new law that regulated and criminalized the use of narcotics in Hungary was not the result of internal debate and had no real domestic political will behind it. On the contrary, it was the result of external demands. Article 230 of the post- WW I Trianon Treaty required Hungary to join the Hague Convention. What was the contemporary Hungarian attitude towards drugs and drug users? How did it change in the aftermath of the law? In order to answer these questions, the following study examines how the contemporary media, artists and intellectuals, and various organizations—both governmental and non-governmental— discussed and represented the issue of narcotics. By examining the changing landscape of narcotics from the 1876 Hungarian law that regulated the utility of opiates in healthcare to the 1936 Convention for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs in Geneva, which essentially aimed to criminalize all activities related to non-scientific or non-medical uses of narcotics, my study hopes to contribute to the decentering of the history of drugs and drug prevention.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zsolt Nagy (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2012) is a historian of modern Europe with specific focus on East and East-Central Europe. He is the author of Great Expectations and Interwar Realities: Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy, 1918-1941, published in 2017 by Central European University Press, as well as articles in Contemporary European History and the Hungarian Studies Review. His current research investigates the history of narcotics and drug prevention with special focus on Hungary.

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A nagy füzet, Le grand cahier, Borders and “La barrière” (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In Hungarian films of many genres, characters cross the border or allude to having crossed it in the past as a marker of family trauma and separation. The act of leaving Hungary during World War II, or the Revolution of 1956, or more recently after the collapse of communism—crossing the border for perhaps the final time—leads to loss not only of country but of family ties and relationships.
In several films, brothers or twins are separated, often with one brother staying and one leaving. In The Notebook (A nagy füzet 2013), escape provides the vehicle for the brothers’ separation. The fraternal pairs’ personal lives interact with history, especially the repressive state as manifested in Hungary’s border. Based on Agota Kristof’s French-language 1986 novel Le grand cahier, the film brings the border near the brother’s wartime home into focus in several scenes. The novel, too, uses several terms to define this separation between geographic locations that will ultimately divide the brothers. This paper will explore the visual and verbal descriptions of this dividing line to see how the novel was transformed into film. In both A nagy füzet and Le grand cahier, regimes and ideology tear brothers apart, and the border crossing, whether viewed on screen or alluded to, remains the physical symbol of this separation and loss.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
CLARA ORBAN received her Ph.D. in French and Italian at the University of Chicago. She is a professor at DePaul University. Her interests range from the avant-garde in literature and painting to language pedagogy with emphasis on languages for Business and Italian cinema. She is also a certified sommelier and her two most recent books are on wine. Her primary interest in Hungarian studies is in film.

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The Long Twentieth-Century of the Hebrew-Hungarian Siddur (Jewish Prayer Book) of Hungarian Jews (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In the period that can now be called the long twentieth-century, meaning between the 1860s and the 1990s, the Jews of Hungary have lived through periods of acceptance and rejection by Hungarian society and leadership, going through Emancipation and assimilation, two World Wars, anti-Semitism culminating in genocide, Soviet-imposed communism and finally the present regime. Hungarian Jews of the modern era were far from a monolithic group, but since the 1867 Emancipation they became divided between the Orthodox, who largely rejected modernization, and the Neologs, who embraced it (in between them was a small group called Status Quo Ante). In the decades leading from the 1860s to the 1940s the Orthodox communities decreased, whereas the Neolog ones increased and this tendency became perpetuated after the Holocaust and under communism (little is known of Jews who converted to Christianity or became atheist or otherwise lost contact with Judaism). This presentation offers a close comparison between two editions of a major text of Neolog Hungarian Jews, namely their bi-lingual Hebrew-Hungarian prayer book or siddur. The first was created in the late nineteenth-century and used throughout most of the twentieth-century, and the second appeared in the 1990s and since then replaced the older edition. This comparison will focus on parts of the prayer book that refer to the life of Jews in their host countries including Hungary of the long twentieth-century.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Prof. Ilana Rosen of the Dept. of Hebrew Literature at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev is a researcher of folk and documentary literature of Jews and Israelis in the twentieth century. She has written five books and over forty articles on these topics. Her last study, Pioneers in Practice – an Analysis of Documentary Literature by Veteran Residents of the Israeli South, was published in 2016 by the Ben Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism. As of 2013 she is the Book Review Editor of Hungarian Cultural Studies, published by the University of Pittsburgh.

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Variations of Jewish Identities in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated and its Hungarian Translation (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The Hungarian translation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel of 2002, Everything Is Illuminated misses the original text at two crucial points. First, the title in Dezsényi Katalin’s Hungarian version is translated by introducing a neologism “vilángol”, evoking concepts of radiance and worldliness as an active verb, in sharp contrast to Foer’s insistence on the passive in the original. The other, to my mind, even graver mistake in the translation is how it reverses the very meaning of the concept of illumination in the grandfather’s tormented soliloquy. These two pertinent mistakes are all the more significant in reading the Hungarian translation. The grandfather’s inarticulate rant is the only attempt to render events of the Holocaust, whose crucial absence (in his own narrative as well as in his grandson’s self-definition) not only defines the plot but also divides time in Everything Is Illuminated into two radically different planes. This historically significant historical absence, in turn, reinforces and displaces the central role the Holocaust plays in defining third-generation Jewish identity in its variations in the United States and Central-Eastern Europe, represented by the fictional author figure hiding behind his historical manuscript and his Eastern-European guide in the text, respectively. Thus, my comparative analysis of the two texts, the original and the Hungarian translation will focus on conceptual differences between Jewish identities as featured in Foer’s text and its misconceived Hungarian translation, possibly rooted in historically different experience and perceptions of the Holocaust.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
László B. Sári László Sári B. is an associate professor at the Department of Literatures and Cultures in English, University of Pécs, where he teaches contemporary American fiction, British flim history and literary and cultural studies. His two books to date address post-war Hungarian literature and politics, and contemporary American minimalist fiction respectively. He also works as a freelance reviewer and translator of contemporary American fiction.

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Inside Animalinside, Ottilie Mulzet's Translation of László Krasznahorkai's Text in the Krasznahorkai-Neumann Volume ÁllatVanBent. (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Building on the pioneering translations of László Krasznahorkai's novels by the poet George Szirtes, Ottilie Mulzet's versions of Krasznahorkai's Seibo There Below (2013) and, most recently, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2019) have firmly established him as by far the best-known Hungarian writer in the English-speaking world. The critic Rita Horányi has called Mulzet's early translation of the very short but dense text ÁllatVanBent (2010) as Animalinside, "the most successful English translation of Krasznahorkai's work", while pointing out that sometimes "the translation suggests that the original text uses language in a manner that is more deliberately strange than is actually the case." (Horányi 2018). This paper is a detailed, holistic examination of Mulzet's treatment of the text of ÁllatVanBent and makes a clear case for the truth of Horányi's latter statement (and, more broadly, against Mulzet's aggressive foreignization of the text), thus also challenging Horányi's former claim.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
I spent 42 years teaching mainly Hungarian language and culture at the Universities of London and North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have compiled bilingual dictionaries, written a textbook, and published dozens of articles and reviews, as well as translating numerous works from Hungarian, including novels, short stories, excerpts from books, poems, memoirs, and film scripts, among other genres. Awards received include the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit (2007) and, most recently, the László Országh Prize of the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (2016).

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The Reconstruction of Szeged: a city at cultural crossroads (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ironically, the tragic event of the Great Flood (1879) in Szeged had positive consequences for this provincial market town; the city’s planners had a free hand in introducing the latest achievements of urban planning when they designed the new master plan of the town. My presentation aims to focus on the traces of intercultural exchange in relation to the reconstruction of Szeged. Firstly, the presentation argues that the Great Flood was well-reported by the international media and raised the attention of the large public at an unprecedented, global level. Newspapers such as The Times in London and Le Figaro in Paris closely followed the events of the tragedy and covered the reconstruction works on a weekly basis. Several U.S. newspapers, for instance, the New York Times, and the Harper’s New Monthly Magazine also reported about the Flood. The reactions of the Hungarian, North-American and European media contributed considerably to the reconstruction of the city. Secondly, the paper focuses on the asymmetrical comparison of the American and Hungarian urban planning scenarios after natural disasters through the examples of Chicago and Szeged. Chicago’s rebuilding (1871) was among the first models for Szeged’s reconstruction but the royal commission opted for the Parisian model. Finally, it analyzes the cultural impacts of the disaster. For instance, Franz Liszt’s piano play (Revive Szégedin! Marche Hongroise d(e) Szabady-Ochestree par J. Massenet, transcribe pour piano par Franz Liszt) was dedicated to the rebirth of the city. The central theme of this presentation is to highlight the multiple levels of intercultural exchange in relation to the reconstruction of Szeged.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Lívia Szélpál works as an assistant lecturer at the Department of English Literatures and Cultures, University of Pécs, Hungary. She teaches courses in American history and American literature and culture. Her research interests include the history (including the unconventional histories) of the USA, the issue of history on film, urban history, modern and contemporary American culture.

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Hungarian Diaspora Culture: a Sociological and Linguistic Case Study of Cleveland (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Communities throughout the Hungarian diaspora are always at cultural crossroads; how can they slow down the inevitable forces of cultural assimilation and to what extent will they endure? How do they navigate the norms and aspects of the host country while trying to keep the values and traditions brought over from their ancestral home? A detailed analysis of one specific diaspora community, that of the Hungarians in Cleveland, can shed light on the broader context of Hungarians abroad. Touching on waves of emigration, ways of ascertaining a realistic number of the actual population, using ethnographic research and detailing how the community interacts on a regular basis, the study also places the city into a broader context of Hungarian-American communities and shows the linguistic factors enabling language proficiency well into the second and third generations of immigration. When most Hungarian-Americans eventually assimilate, the sociology of this city, which is but one of many in North America, shows how a group can use the power of community to maintain a strong ethnic identity, to live in two worlds simultaneously: one Hungarian and one American. Put simply, this paper shows how the Hungarian diaspora can maintain its language, culture, and traditions, and in so doing illuminates what it really means to be Hungarian in Cleveland.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Born and raised in Cleveland, Endre Szentkiralyi studied English and German at Cleveland State University, earned an MA in English at the University of Akron, and earned his PhD in literary and cultural studies at the University of Debrecen. He has edited several books of oral histories and helped produce documentary films about Hungarian-Americans. His books include Cold War to Warm Cooperation: the Military Service of Cleveland Hungarians 1950-2014 (Zrínyi Publishing) and Being Hungarian in Cleveland: Maintaining Language, Culture, and Traditions (Helena History Press, 2019). He currently teaches English and German at Nordonia High School near Cleveland, Ohio.

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Challenges and Perspectives of the Roma Heroes Educational Methodology in Hungary

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The presentation aims to discuss the questions, the structure, and the practical application of the Roma Heroes Educational Methodology in the Hungarian higher education. The methodology has been developed by the Independent Theater Hungary, in co-operation with three European theater companies, Rampa Presentina (Italy), The Roma Actors Association – Giuvlipen (Romania), and C. para La I+D Independiente Del Teatro Profesional En Andalucía (Spain). The goals of this methodology are to make students familiar with and discuss the diversity, challenges and values of Roma dramas, their heroes, and the Romani communities in Hungary and across Europe. The concept of heroism in the methodology is emphasized, whereby the stories presented to the students are discussed within the framework of heroic journeys instead of victim narratives. This new approach is innovative for two reasons. It responds to and challenges stereotypical representations of Romani communities in the Hungarian and international media where Romani people are portrayed as violent, vulgar, and uneducated, and are generally linked to prostitution, poverty, and crime. In doing so, it aspires to support Romani students in improving a positive racial identity. The questions that the presentation seeks to answer are: What instruments are available for this methodology to provide practical advice and course development suggestions for Hungarian university lecturers? How can university lecturers finalize group-specific professional plans for each seminar? What aspects can be enforced in the practice of theater education?

KEYWORDS: educational methodology, Roma dramas, Hungarian and European Roma communities, heroism, pedagogy, positive racial identity



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
David Szoke is a PhD-candidate at the University of Szeged, Hungary. His scholarly interest is in minority studies, 20th century English literature, film studies, and interculturalism. He has published articles for the Iris Murdoch Review, Tiszatáj Literary Journal, and Apertúra Journal of Film Studies. His reviews have appeared in Hungarian Cultural Studies.

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Roaring Twenties After the Treaty of Trianon? Jazz and the New Dances in 1920s Hungary (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
After the Treaty of Trianon the main goal of Hungarian cultural policy was to gain cultural hegemony and to naturalize national identities. However this national cultural policy coincided with the spread of jazz and new dances which affected not only the American and Western European public but also the Hungarian one. The new popular music and dances violated the conventions in most countries, but in Hungary they also threatened the constructed national identity. They were foreign to traditional Hungarian culture, furthermore, they crossed racial and gender boundaries as jazz music rooted in Afro-American culture and the new dances redefined the way people looked at the female body. Therefore Hungary’s authoritarian government – as it couldn’t eliminate it – attempted to monitor and control this new form of leisure. This paper aims to show how jazz and the new dances spread all over the country as well as to examine the controversial regulations which were made by the national and local authorities.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Eszter Vámos is PhD student at the University of Pécs. Her research focuses on the leisure and entertainment of interwar Pécs. She has a bachelor's degree in History and a master's degree in Modern European and Hungarian History.

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Characterologies in Interwar Hungary: from National to Transnational (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
By the 1930s, systematic descriptions of national character could claim a century-long tradition in Hungary since Jellemisme [Character Criteria] by Jáczint Rónay was published in 1847. World War I, the ensuing bourgeois revolution and communist coup, and the Trianon Peace Treaty prompted some prominent intellectuals to revisit the issue of national character. Their efforts yielded the claim that national tragedies and losses in national history derived from autochthonous, and not merely European, and even Asian, historical, and cultural factors. My presentation addresses this discourse by analyzing the heated debate in Hungary that followed the 1936 publication of A vándor és a bujdosó [The Wanderer and the Exile] by Lajos Prohászka. Drawing on the history of ideas, Prohaszka argued that the Hungarian national spirit inclines towards the “exile,” a tendency toward isolation and closure. The mirror image of this type is, according to Prohászka’s scheme, that of the metaphysical ”wanderer,” the German. The publication of this book provoked the resistance of prominent historians and philosophers of the time. The synthesis that Prohászka’s characterology proposes between traits of the “exile” and the ”wanderer,” like the arguments of those who contested it, represented an effort to come to terms with the breakup of the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire. However, while the debate raged about how to preserve Hungarian national identity, the majority of these intellectuals ignored or silently wished away the looming shadow of late 1930s National Socialism.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gabriella Vöő (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the Department of English Literatures and Cultures, University of Pécs, Hungary. She specializes in nineteenth-and twentieth-century American literature and culture as well as the reception of British and American authors in Hungary. Her publications include essays on US antebellum fiction and poetry, gender in the context of nineteenth-century cultural politics, as well as the books (2011) and Our Contemporary, Mr. Poe: Explorations in the Collected Tales (in Hungarian, 2016).

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Life as Narrative: Identity construction among English majors from Vajdaság (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
I was recently asked by an acquaintance, ‘Do you consider yourself Hungarian or American?’ Identifying as a bilingual and bicultural Hungarian-American who has lived for over thirty years in Szeged, I smiled and answered, ‘Well, … both’. The benign but ultimately reductive and essentialist view of cultural identity implied in this question prompted me to wonder about the identities held by my own students at the University of Szeged, including identities tied to regions within and without Hungary, to socio-economic status, and to second language(s). Proceeding from work by Bruner (1987) and Fougère (2008) on the construction of identity through self-narrative, the paper will present findings from qualitative research on narratives produced by a small group of native speakers of Hungarian from the Vojvodina/Vajdaság region of Serbia, who are in a BA program in English Studies at the University of Szeged. Themes explored will include: sensemaking (the process of an ever changing understanding of an ever changing identity); a sense of belonging with a focus on insideness and outsideness, competence and role fulfillment, and center and periphery dynamics; questioning and learning about the self; and development and change, including heterotopias and the ‘third space’, and dwelling in-between. In demonstrating how these particular learners tell their identity, the findings may have implications for foreign language learners, teachers, administrators, teacher trainers, educational policymakers, coursebook and other materials designers and anyone involved in foreign language learning and teaching, which is by definition an experience marked – and enriched – by multiple cultural and linguistic identities.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Thomas A. Williams, PhD, is a senior assistant professor at the Department of English Studies, University of Szeged, where he researches identity construction among language learners and teaches classes on linguistic pragmatics and identity as well as English language teacher education courses. A certified translator, he also teaches – and does – specialized translation in a range of genres and subject areas.

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