Accepted Abstracts

‘You are a Magyar’: Sexological and Literary Interdependence in Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Imre: A Memorandum (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Based on Foucauldian queer theory combined with historical archives and the keyword ‘effeminacy,’ the cornerstone of David Halperin’s ‘new gay history,’ Simon Joyce in LGBT Victorians (OUP, 2022) argues that ‘the standard narrative’ is that European sexology was grounded in scientific research and assumed ‘that same-sex desire was necessarily accompanied by forms of cross-gender identification and expression,’ whereas British sexology was based in the humanities and assumed the possibility of a ‘reciprocal partnership’ between two virile men (21–24). This Foucauldian fallacy comes from anglocentric scholarship’s gross neglect of Károly Kertbeny’s theory and alleged history of the super-virile homosexual man. Whereas it is certainly true that the transnational distribution of Continental sexology was extremely limited by the so-called Hicklin Standard in the UK and the US, anglophone authors were heavily indebted to sexual sciences in their discussion of male same-sex desire in their works. A case in point is American music critic Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Imre: A Memorandum (1906), one of the very first openly homosexual novels in English with a happy ending. In the prefatory, the English Oswald offers his manuscript about his romance with Imre to fight ignorance and help laymen understand male same-sex desire in light of the new classificatory science of sexualities coming from German-speaking Central Europe. As a result, this paper intends to establish the dependence and alliance between sexology and belles lettres by arguing that it is a scientific subtext set against the backdrop of Continental sexology which propels the plot of Imre.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zsolt Bojti is lecturer at the Department of English Studies, Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary). He defended his doctoral dissertation, Wilde, Stenbock, Prime-Stevenson: Homophilia and Hungarophilia in Fin-de-Siècle Literature, in March 2022. Currently, he is working on the new scholarly edition of Imre: A Memorandum (1906) by Edward Prime-Stevenson in the Oxford World’s Classics series.

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A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Repatriation and its Narrative Representation (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In this presentation, I aim to address some of the key issues that are relevant to a contemporary psychoanalytic understanding of repatriation as a psychological experience. I shall also rely on Hungarian and American literature in an effort to bridge and expand theoretical conversation with another discipline.
The complex process of identity (re)construction informs repatriation as much as expatriation. While readjusting to one’s home culture may be less difficult than adjusting to a foreign culture as a sojourner or expatriate, re-entry should still be viewed as one form of cultural adjustment, the process of which has several similarities and differences with adjustment to life in a foreign country. Preparedness for repatriation and cultural identity change predict distress. The symptoms presented by returnees range from ineffective communication with friends to dealing with stereotypes, uncertainty over cultural identity, social withdrawal, and decreased relationship satisfaction; all resulting from a changed identity affected by previous foreign influences. The most common physical and mental manifestations of re-entry shock – including anxiety, loneliness or feelings of loss – inform the works of authors who experienced geographic mobility over the last century, which this paper sets out to analyze.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Surrey, UK. She currently works as Assistant Professor at Karoli Gaspar University (Budapest). As a visiting scholar, she conducted research at Columbia University (NY) and JFK Presidential Library (Boston), with whom she maintains an active relationship. Her primary research goals include the study of the narrative representation of immigration and identity in twentieth-century transnational American literature with an interdisciplinary (psychoanalysis, gender studies, social history) approach. In addition to articles and chapters in American and European publications, she is working on her first monograph focusing on the trauma of expatriation.

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Roland Orcsik’s novel :Phantom commando (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
My paper deals with Roand Orcsik’s 2016 novel Phantom commando that goes back the early 1990s, the time of the War in Yugoslavia. In the home front a Hungarian family is dealing with shortages waiting for unspeakable horrors to happen, building a fortress out of their house and storing food and water for months of survival. The novel presents six narratives by a family of three and their friends, relating how different generations, different linguistic and ethnic communities connect with each other.
The paper brings in two other novels Zoltán Danyi’s Dögeltakarító(Corpse remover) (2015) and Orsolya Bencsik’s Több élet (More Life)(2016) both dealing with this period as a generational experience.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr.Margit Köves has been teaching and working in India in 1983. She edited collections of Hungarian prose and poetry in Hindi and translated works by Hungarian authors jointly with Indian poets and translators, her last published translations in Hiindi are Petőfi’s Selected Poems (Szvadhínta, pjár) 2022 and János Vitéz (Yanosh Bahadur).
She has been working on Indian and Hungarian Cultural Encounters in the work Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, Ervin Baktay and Amrita Sher-Gil, and the writings of László Krasznahorkai, János Háy, Gábor Lanczkor and Roland Orcsik. She is teaching Hungarian in the Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies.

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