Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies

Steven Totosy de Zepetnek's areas of scholarship include (comparative) literature and cultural studies, comparative media and communication studies, postcolonial studies, and migration and ethnic minority studies. He is the editor of the journal CLCWeb and series editor of the Comparative Cultural Studies. Louise O. Vasvari is professor emerita at Stony Brook University. Since 2000 she has taught in the Department of Linguistics at New York University, at the University of Szeged, and at Central European University. Vasvari works in medieval studies, historical and socio-linguistics, translation theory, Holocaust studies, and Hungarian cultural studies, all informed by gender theory within a broader framework of comparative cultural studies.

This volume of essays on Hungarian studies, published as part of the Purdue University Press monograph series in Comparative Cultural Studies, consists of twenty-six essays written by scholars from various academic fields (literature, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, gender studies), working at academic institutions both in and outside Hungary. The essays are grouped in five parts according to their topics: history and theory; literature; the arts; gender studies; and cultural studies on contemporary Hungary. Part One (addressing history and theory) starts with a programmatic essay by the two editors, both distinguished scholars of Hungarian background whose work has greatly contributed to the dissemination of Hungarian literature in the English-speaking world. In their essay, Steven Totosy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvari outline a theoretical framework for comparative Hungarian cultural studies. The editors claim that a comparative cultural approach has hitherto been only rarely applied to Hungarian and Central European studies, for several reasons, some ideological the intellectual legacy ofdictatorship, the supercilious attitude of some Hungarian scholars towards American scholarship and the resistance towards being treated as a postcolonial society, others material, such as the lack of resources due to financial strictures in Hungarian academic life. Andras Kisery s (The City College of New York) article is an excellent example of how enlightening and novel such an approach can be at its best. The article discusses the work of two Hungarian scholars, the literary historian Tivadar(Theodor) Thienemann and the historian Istvan Hajnal, both of whose work anticipated much later scholarly interest in the materiality of the text: the technological and social aspects of literature and history as central to their textual meaning rather than as mere extrinsic factors. In discussing Thienemann s and Hajnal s work as well as two letters written by Thien Focusing on Hungary, 27 articles contribute to comparative cultural studies generally and the study of Central and East European culture in particular.They cover the history, theory, and methodology for comparative Hungarian cultural studies; literature and culture; the other arts; gender studies; and contemporary Hungary. Among the topics are memory and modernity in Fodor's geographical work on Hungary, the absurd as a form of realism in Hungarian literature, art nouveau and Hungarian cultural nationalism, women managers communicating gender in Hungary, and the Jewish renaissance in post-1989 Hungary. (Annotation (c)2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)Reference Research Book News October 2011