Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek & Louise O. Vasvári 
Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies 

The studies presented in the collected volume
Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies— edited by Steven Totosy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvari—are intended as an addition to scholarship in (comparative) cultural studies. More specifically, the articles represent scholarship about Central and East European culture with special attention to Hungarian culture, literature, cinema, new media, and other areas of cultural expression. On the landscape of scholarship in Central and East Europe (including Hungary), cultural studies has acquired at best spotty interest and studies in the volume aim at forging interest in the field. The volume’s articles are in five parts: part one, ‘History Theory and Methodology of Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies, ‘ include studies on the prehistory of multicultural and multilingual Central Europe, where vernacular literatures were first institutionalized for developing a sense of national identity. Part two, ‘Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Literature and Culture’ is about the re-evaluation of canonical works, as well as Jewish studies which has been explored inadequately in Central European scholarship. Part three, ‘Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Other Arts, ‘ includes articles on race, jazz, operetta, and art, fin-de-siecle architecture, communist-era female fashion, and cinema. In part four, ‘Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Gender, ‘ articles are about aspects of gender and sex(uality) with examples from fin-de-siecle transvestism, current media depictions of heterodox sexualities, and gendered language in the workplace. The volume’s last section, part five, ‘Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Contemporary Hungary, ‘ includes articles about post-1989 issues of race and ethnic relations, citizenship and public life, and new media.

Table of Content

Introduction to
Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies, by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári

Part One: History, Theory, and Methodology for Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies

The Study of Hungarian Culture as Comparative Central European Cultural Studies, by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári

Literacy, Culture, and History in the Work of Thienemann and Hajnal, by András Kiséry

Vámbéry, Victorian Culture, and Stoker’s
Dracula, by David Mandler

Memory and Modernity in Fodor’s Geographical Work on Hungary, by Steven Jobbitt

The Fragmented (Cultural) Body in Polcz’s
Asszony a fronton (A Woman on the Front, by Louise O. Vasvári

Part Two: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Literature and Culture

Contemporary Hungarian Literary Criticism and the Memory of the Socialist Past, by Györgyi Horváth

The Absurd as a Form of Realism in Hungarian Literature, by Lilla Tőke

On the German and English Versions of Márai’s
A gyertyák csonkig égnek (
Die Glut and
Embers), by Peter Sherwood

Exile, Homeland, and Milieu in the Oral Lore of Carpatho-Rusyn Jews, by Ilana Rosen

Part Three: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and the Other Arts

Nation, Gender, and Race in the Ragtime Culture of Millennial Budapest, by Éva Federmayer

Jewish (Over)tones in Viennese and Budapest Operetta, by Ivan Sanders

Curtiz, Hungarian Cinema, and Hollywood, by Catherine Portuges

Lost Dreams and Sacred Visions in the Art of Ámos, by Debra Pfister

Art Nouveau and Hungarian Cultural Nationalism, by Megan Brandow-Faller

Part Four: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Gender Studies

Hungarian Political Posters, Clinton, and the (Im)possibility of Political Drag, by Erzsébet Barát

The Cold War, Fashion, and Resistance in 1950s Hungary, by Katalin Medvedev

Sándor/Sarolta Vay, a Gender Bender in Fin-de-Siècle Hungary, by Anna Borgos

Women Managers Communicating Gender in Hungary, by Nóra Schleicher

Part Five: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Contemporary Hungary

Commemoration and Contestation of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary, by John Joseph Cash



About the Jewish Renaissance in Post-1989 Hungary, by Kata Zsófia Vincze

Aspects of Contemporary Hungarian Literature and Cinema, by Ryan Michael Kehoe

Linguistic Address Systems in Post-1989 Hungarian Urban Discourse, by Erika Sólyom

Images of Roma in Post-1989 Hungarian Media, by László Kürti

The Budapest Cow Parade and the Construction of Cultural Citizenship, by Lajos Császi and Mary Gluck

Urbanities of Budapest and Prague as Communicated in New Municipal Media, by Agata Anna Lisiak

The Anti-Other in Post-1989 Austria and Hungary, by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek

Part Six: Bibliography for the Study of Hungarian Culture

Selected Bibliography for Work in Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies, by Louise O. Vasvári, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, and Carlo Salzani

Index

About the author

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek’s areas of scholarship include comparative literature and cultural studies; comparative media and communication studies; postcolonial studies; migration and ethnic minority studies; film and literature studies; audience studies; and European, US-American and Canadian cultures, among others. His single-authored books include Comparative Cultural Studies and the Future of the Humanities; Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application; and The Social Dimensions of Fiction. His edited volumes include New Work in the Study of World Literatures and in Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies; Digital Humanities and the Study of Intermediality in Comparative Cultural Studies; Perspectives on Identity, Migration, and Displacement; Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies; and Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature. Zepetnek has published approximately 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and his work has been translated into Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Marathi, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. Tötösy de Zepetnek is series editor of the Purdue University Press series Books in Comparative Cultural Studies and editor of the Purdue University Press journal CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture.

Louise O. Vasvári teaches in the departments of Comparative Literature and Romance Languages at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Her interests include Hispanic literatures, folklore, medieval literature, translation theory, and applied linguistics and she has published widely in these areas. She is particularly interested in the Libro de buen amor and she published over a dozen articles on various aspects of this text. Her most recent book is The Heterotextual Body of the ‘Mora Morilla’ (London, 1999). Vasvári has published previously ‘A Comparative Approach to European Folk Poetry and the Erotic Wedding Motif’ in CLCWeb 1.4 (1999).