Language/Literature papers
Antal-Ferencz, Ildikó
Freelance journalistThe Road Less Travelled - memoir of prof. Ács Zoltán - from the creative editor’s view
Type of Abstract (select): Individual PresentationAbstract (max. 250 words):
When I began reading the English manuscript received from MCC Press in 2024, I was very grateful for the opportunity, but the text left me confused. By then, I had already lived in the US for two years, and was actively involved in the North American Hungarian diaspora community and had written about Hungarian Americans, who were proud of their Hungarian roots,language, and cultural heritage and passionately served the local Hungarian communities and organizations that their ancestors or themselves had established. In contrast, Zoltán Ács — born in an Austrian refugee camp to a family with a rich Hungarian cultural heritage (noble and educated ancestors and parents who were deeply committed to the Hungarian cause), who later ended up in the projects in Cleveland, OH — experienced his Hungarian identity more as a burden during his childhood and youth. He dropped out of high school to financially help his family, and as a teenager, a young adult he struggled to value his Hungarian heritage. Though he maintained contact with relatives in Hungary, he only began to truly appreciate his Hungarian roots decades later, during the rapid ascent of his professional career, at the time of establishing and benefiting from professional ties in Hungary. His journey along the road less travelled is admirable and exemplary, both personally and professionally. My job was to find the missing pieces and make his journey understandable and engaging for Hungarian readers living outside the North American Hungarian diaspora as well as those outside his professional field.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ildikó Antal-Ferencz has a degree in economics. In 2016 she became a freelance journalist, focusing mainly on family matters. She is author or co-author of several books, hosted radio programs, round table discussions and conferences, appeared on television programs in Hungary. She had been living in the US between 2022 and 2025 with her family. She authored 200+ articles about the Hungarian diaspora in North America and released five volumes (three in Hungarian and two in English) of her interview book ‘Being Hungarian in America’. She is also the creative editor of prof. Zoltán Ács’ memoir ‘The road less travelled’.
Fenyvesi, Anna
University of SzegedAmerican Hungarian family histories as chronicles of collective memory: Authors’ motivations and attitudes
Type of Abstract (select): Individual PresentationAbstract (max. 250 words):
The presentation provides, first, a brief overview of the "Hungarian Roots & American Dreams" project—a book series that grew out of a Facebook group—showing how family histories of immigration from Hungary to the United States (and in some cases, remigration to Hungary) become living family chronicles and tools for preserving collective memory. The over 100 stories featured in the two volumes of the series so far (edited by Anna Fenyvesi and Réka Bakos; the first volume was published in 2024, the second in 2025) provide an almost comprehensive picture of the cataclysmic historical events of 19th- and 20th-century Hungarian and United States history.
The second half of the presentation discusses the results of a survey administered among the authors (n=61) of the two volumes, mapping out authors’ motivations for embarking on writing their stories, attitudes to the writing process, and changes in their perception of their family and their own place “in the world” and “in history” as a result of the writing process. The results of the survey demonstrate the ways in which the writing of family histories gains meaning for authors, underscoring the importance of these histories not only at the level of preserving accounts of personal and family history as building blocks of community history, but also their role as “stories of ourselves”, i.e. building blocks of our narrative identity that help us interpret and understand the world around us.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Anna Fenyvesi is a linguist and associate professor at Institute of English and American Studies at the University of Szeged. She has studied the linguistic and cultural life of Hungarian-American communities since the 1990s, when she spent several years in Pittsburgh as a graduate student. Her linguistic research focuses on bilingualism, linguistic heritage, and identity preservation, most recently supported by a Fulbright research grant in 2024. Since 2019, she has also been carrying out family history research.
Grunwald, Marie-Therese
Eötvös Loránd TudományegyetemInterpreting Hungarian Culture and Identity in Ottó Tolnai’s Wilhelm-dalok, avagy a vidéki Orpheus to an American readership
Type of Abstract (select): Individual PresentationAbstract (max. 250 words):
According to prominent Tolnai literary scholar, Beáta Thomka, “The countryside is the land of wonders. Those who grow up here have broader horizons, [Ottó Tolnai] quotes Kosztolányi in the motto. At the end of the 1970s, Tolnai first performed Wilhelm Songs at a memorable reading in Novi Sad with a special atmosphere. “...the mousetrap snapped shut,” reads the first line: an overture, an acoustic introduction to a project that would keep him in a state of unwavering excitement for a decade and a half” (Thomka, 89)”. Relatively still unknown outside of Hungarian literary circles, The Balkans or the Eastern European region, Ottó Tolnai made his publishing debut with short stories in 1956 and then with poetry in 1960 in the former Yugoslavia. Wilhelm-dalok was published in Hungary in the 80s and has been a source of inspiration to generations of aspiring poets ever since. My project of translating this poetry collection in English has shed light on various aspects of literary translation such as translating transculturalism by means of exploring Tolnai’s broader cultural and historical perspective, ethnic minority identity, and Hungarian language and culture through a transcultural mediator’s lens which is especially relevant in Tolnai’s work since his origins allowed him to travel to the west at a time when most of his broader peer group on the other side of the border could not. Wilhelm-dalok, avagy a vidéki Orpheus is an avant-garde poetry collection, which highlights many modern-day themes such as existentialism, morality, greed, and spirituality through its main protagonist, Wili, the toothless bard and halfwit country bumpkin, as well as one of Tolnai’s most memorable alter-egos. Presenting Ottó Tolnai to an American readership is obviously a challenge, but not an impossible feat if the transcultural mediator remains committed to the author’s aesthetic sensibility and intent, as well as by applying a sensitivity to both the local and global experience.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Marie-Therese Grunwald was born in 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland. She moved from Los Angeles, California to Budapest in 1994 to learn more about her Hungarian culture and identity. After learning Hungarian, she completed her studies at Eötvös Loránd University with a master's degree in English language and literature, and Philology as well as acquiring her teaching diploma. She is currently in her third year of the Modern English and American literature and Culture Doctoral Program at her alma mater, where she is specializing in interpreting culture and cultural mediation as part of the MODA doctoral program through the literary translation of Ottó Tolnai's Wilhelm-dalok, avagy a vidéki Orfeusz.
Pavlish, James V.
John Carroll UniversityCleveland and Budapest: Correspondence and Cooperation between József Reményi and Dezső Kosztolányi
Type of Abstract (select): Individual PresentationAbstract (max. 250 words):
József Reményi and Dezső Kosztolányi maintained a rich correspondence and dynamic collaboration throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a period marked by intensified transatlantic cultural exchange between Hungary and the United States. Their friendship, grounded in mutual respect and intellectual curiosity, evolved into a productive partnership that bridged literary cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. Following Reményi’s visit to Hungary in the 1920s, Kosztolányi became a key advocate for his friend’s literary ambitions, facilitating Reményi’s publications in Nyugat and offering a favorable review of his Cleveland-based novel Emberek, ne sírjatok! (“People, Don’t Cry!”).
Kosztolányi’s engagement with American literature also deepened through Reményi’s influence. He translated short stories by William Faulkner and Evelyn Scott, both of which appeared in Reményi’s 1929 anthology Mai amerikai dekameron (“Modern American Decameron”), published by Nyugat. These translations not only introduced contemporary American voices to Hungarian readers but also reflected Kosztolányi’s growing appreciation for the modernist sensibilities emerging from American fiction. Mentions of Cleveland and Ohio in Kosztolányi’s later writings further attest to the transnational impact of this exchange.
Ultimately, the Reményi–Kosztolányi correspondence illuminates a neglected dimension of early twentieth-century Hungarian literary modernism: its dialogic engagement with American cultural narratives. Both writers shared a profound commitment to the idea of world literature (világirodalom), viewing translation, critique, and correspondence as vehicles for intellectual expansion and cross-cultural understanding. Their collaboration stands as a testament to the permeability of national literatures and to the enduring power of literary friendship in shaping transnational modernist discourse.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
James V. Pavlish is a retired adjunct professor of Spanish language and literature at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. He holds a BS in Linguistics from Georgetown University, an MA in Spanish from Cleveland State University, and of Master’s in Theology from St. Mary Graduate School of Theology (OH). He has read several papers on the works of Dezső Kosztolányi, and papers on comparative literature at numerous national and international venues, including the Crossing Borders Conference in Vasto, Italy (2017), and AHEA conferences at Cleveland State University (2018), the University of Pittsburgh (2019), Quinnipiac (2023), Rutgers (2024, and Pécs (2025).
Szolláth, Dávid
ELTE BTK - Irodalomtudományi IntézetShould I stay or should I go? Notes on Krasznahorkai’s narrative technique
Type of Abstract (select): Individual PresentationAbstract (max. 250 words):
László Krasznahorkai is said to be „slow”, „hard to read”, „depressing”. But his novels are actually exciting, often impossible to put down. We know that the excitement of the plot is not the factor by which we evaluate serious, canonical works of fiction. Plot-twists, tension-building, cliffhangers – all the narrative tricks used to captivate the audience mostly belong to the toolkit of pulp fiction and TV series. It is all the more surprising that the above-mentioned devices can also be found in the works of the most prestigious contemporary Hungarian writers. By using the tools of narratology and creative writing, the presentation examines why it is worth paying attention to these undervalued narrative techniques in Krasznahorkai's novels. Examples will be taken from Satantango, The Melancholy of Resistance, The Prisoner of Urga and War and War. How do Krasznahorkai's works keep the reader turning the pages tirelessly, despite the slowness, the long sentences, and the repetitions, as they eagerly await the next chapter? How does he keep the reader interested in his detailed descriptions? Krasznahorkai entices with delay and retains with detail. The reader feels like they want to go and stay at the same time. They are simultaneously interested in the details of the scene they are reading, and would stay and look around, but they are also very curious about the slowly unfolding story. What do these tell us about the joy of reading and the international success of his works?
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dávid Szolláth PhD (
Varga, Zsuzsanna
University of GlasgowThe construction of reputation: the work of László Krasznahorkai in the globalised world of literature
Type of Abstract (select): Individual PresentationAbstract (max. 250 words):
This presentation offers insights into the meteoric rise of László Krasznahorkai, whose dark, dystopian vision has mesmerised the readership since the publication of Sátántangó in 1985. Taking Adam Levy’s claim that “[m]any of the writers still active—Nádas, Esterházy, Krasznahorkai, Kertész and Konrád—have close ties to Germany, the region’s seat of literary consecration, which has given momentum to their popular rise in English” as its starting point, the presentation offers insights into the critical reception of Krasznahorkai’ s notoriously challenging work in German and in English, and also explores the complex interaction between critical perspectives and the mechanisms of international literary prize awarding processes.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zsuzsanna Varga teaches Hungarian studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Her research focuses on Central European cultural history, with special regard to the circulation of books. An interest in travel also shapes her work on travel writing. Recent projects have included Worlds of Hungarian Writing (2017), Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe (2017) and Reflections in the Library: Selected Literary Essays of Antal Szerb (2017).
Visy, Beatrix
Library and Information Center - Hungarian Academy of Sciences, BudapestDoes Bach Belong to Everyone? The Connection Between Apocalypse and Racism in Krasznahorkai’s Works
Type of Abstract (select): Individual PresentationAbstract (max. 250 words):
The presentation examines how extremist views, racism, neo-Nazism and xenophobia become manifestations of the apocalypse of our times in László Krasznahorkai's 2021 novel ’Herscht 07769’. The story is set in a small town in Thuringia, Germany, where a radical, nationalist, neo-Nazi group, led by 'The Boss', appropriates anything deemed 'German enough' (beer, sports, scientists, artists, etc.) for the national spirit and consciousness. The group of course hates and rejects anything that is ’racially foreign’. This is how the universal composer Johann Sebastian Bach can also become a national symbol in the novel’s world. The slightly slow-witted but well-intentioned protagonist becomes a killing angel who settles scores with gang members and evil itself, thus trying to restore metaphysical order to the world. For him, Bach represents order and the perfect world. Krasznahorkai presents extreme nationalist views and xenophobic tendencies in a small-town setting, however, the issues raised point towards global problems. Nevertheless, he does not provide a reassuring answer on how the world and individuals can confront these extreme phenomena. The fact that this problem is not confined to one particular area, but is present all over the world, including the United States, is also evident in Krasznahorkai's
essay 'Someone's Knocking at My Door', which describes the origins of racism and was first
published in the Anxiety column of the New York Times in 2013.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Beatrix Visy is Literary historian, literary critic, her main fields of research are 20th and 21st century Hungarian Literature, mainly Mihály Babits's work and the narrative aesthetics of photography. She is author of five books on literary history. She is editor of the literary studies review Literatura.