Cultural Studies paper by Fodor, Mónika
Narrative Images of Hungary in the Intergenerational Memories of Late Generation Hungarian Americans (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):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.