Return to Article Details Introduction to the American Studies Bibliography

In 2022, chief editors of AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary decided to compile a biannual American Studies Bibliography that surveys Hungarian contributions to the field with the aim to continue earlier traditions of American Studies bibliographies in Hungary, provide a slightly revised form of the annotated bibliographies available until 2022 and also include an array of inter-American subjects pertaining to the work and research done by Hungarian Americanists.

Two kinds of bibliographies of American Studies in Hungary exist so far: the first format was devised by Vadon Lehel, who published an all-encompassing American Studies bibliography of Hungarian authors until 2000 (2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2007d), while the second was conceived within the frames of the American Literary Scholarship (ALS) published by Duke University Press and focused on the reception of American literature in Hungary.

The first bibliography edited by Lehel Vadon, came out in 1997 and it was inspired by László Országh’s 1965 essay “Az amerikanisztika feladatai Magyarországon” (The Tasks of American Studies in Hungary). Országh (1907-1984) and his work influenced many future Americanists of the country, with Hungarian American Studies as such actually starting with his innovative work (Abádi Nagy 2009, 15; Cristian 2016, 17). Vadon’s bibliography presented Hungarian publications in the field up to 1990 and was later extended to the publications up to the year of 2000. The result was a three-volume work, Az amerikai irodalom és irodalomtudomány bibliográfiája Magyarországon 2000-ig (A Bibliography of American Literature and Literary Studies in Hungary until 2000), which is still a unique, internationally recognized bibliography providing invaluable assistance to researchers in American Studies, documenting the reception of American literature in Hungary (Szathmári 2012, 9).

In 2007, Vadon’s bibliography continued with the inclusion of library and publication data (Vadon 2007b, 33) but no other comprehensive bibliography on the entire field of American studies has been since done, with the exception of the Duke University Press’ “International Scholarship: Central European Contributions,” which was conducted only in the field of American Literature. American Literary Scholarship featured bibliographic essays arranged by writers and periods, serving as a “systematic evaluative guide to published studies of American literature” (American Literary Scholarship webpage) from across the world, including the Central-European region and Zoltán Abádi Nagy was commissioned to prepare the list of contributions from Hungary between 1997 and 2008 (Abádi 1999, 2003, 2006) for this journal. Abádi Nagy was familiar with Vadon’s enlisted sources on American Studies in Hungary (Abádi 2000, 2009 and 2012) and updated the information on the annotated format of the list of publications American editors requested with a selected list of Hungarian publications placed among other Central European contributions.

In 2009, the task of creating the section on “Central European Contributions” was taken over by Enikő Bollobás, who compiled and edited four “Contributions” for the journal from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic between 2009 and 2020. In 2016, Bollobás invited Réka M. Cristian to join the venture and Cristian continued Bollobás’s work extending the “Contributions’” coverage as editor in 2019 to more European contributions including, besides Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia also Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Unfortunately, in 2020 Duke University Press discontinued the publication of its paper-based bibliography and with it the Central European Contributions, too, so there was a gap in continuing such compilations. This gap made the founding editors of AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary continue the tradition of American Studies bibliography pertaining to Hungary on a new, digital platform, with an enlarged context of topics, inviting two guest editors for the task. Keeping in mind the goals and ideals set out in the preface to Lehel’s bibliography, the guest editors of the present, first digital compilation aim to:

As a result, AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary is now issuing its “American Studies Bibliography: Hungarian Contributions” in a revised, digital format with more comprehensive material than before, starting with the year 2020. The main task of the guest editors has been to set up a framework that might slightly change in the coming years but specifies basic editing principles and serves as the basis for this project. The main idea has come down from earlier bibliographies in that the “American Studies Bibliography: Hungarian Contributions” project concentrates on 1) Hungarian contributions to American Studies, 2) periodical overviews, and 3) thematic clusters of annotated entries. In general, Hungarian Americanists are defined as an imagined community connected mostly to institutions: they are primarily teachers, researchers, educators, undergraduate and graduate students at various institutions of higher education, most of them also members of the Hungarian Association of American Studies (HAAS). For their purposes, American Studies is defined broadly as an interdisciplinary and transnational study of the cultures of the United States in a global context. It is thus a broad research area looking into “the historical roots of multidirectional flows of people, ideas, and goods and the social, political, linguistic, cultural, and economic crossroads generated in the process,” as Shelley Fischer Fishkin defined it in her Modern Language Association Address (Fisher Fishkin 2005, 22).

As part of this global flow, our list also includes elements of Inter-American Studies scholarship with upcoming issues of this bibliography to follow biannually, alongside publications of annotated bibliographies arranged in thematic sections. In addition, there are also some elements of novelty compared to the earlier lists both in the collection of contributions and the organization of the publication. Firstly, based on the idea of the imagined community of Americanists in Hungary, contributions are invited through the institutional frameworks of Hungarian Americanists and eventually come on a voluntary basis. Moreover, the categories of annotated entries have been extended: in addition to literature, culture, and history we have also included Inter-American Studies, Hungarian-American relations, race and ethnic studies, children’s and young adult literature. Alongside publications in English and Hungarian, this current compilation has relevant publications also in Spanish by our colleagues from the Inter-American Research Center, University of Szeged, Hungary.

The production of this “American Studies Bibliography: Hungarian Contributions” has not been free of some difficulties and hesitations, but we hope it can be a sound foundation to rely on in the future. The current issue covers the years 2020, 2021, and 2022, with the plan to make up for the gap since the last Duke publication in this initial specimen. Commissioned associate editors for the project in 2023 are Ágnes Zsófia Kovács and Lívia Szélpál, whose work was also to consider basic principles and standardize the procedure. Solidifying principles of selection and organization on the go, we corresponded with contributors individually, collected data, edited the material, compiled lists and distributed entries into clusters. In addition, we have divided the editorial work into portions and produced two separate parts for the first such a compilation: one based on the reception of American literature entitled “American Studies Bibliography: Hungarian Contributions to American Literature Between 2020-2022” and one on the reception of American culture and history, “American Studies Bibliography: Hungarian Contributions on History and Culture Between 2020-2022.”

This special issue of the American Studies Bibliography: Hungarian Contributions published by AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary is a pilot project. In the future we plan to further refine the methodology and process the data of as many publications as possible from the American Studies community in Hungary. Hope as years pass, the project will not only be able to inform researchers on what was published in the field or on what can be read or written next, but also become a sensitive indicator of our research interests in the field.

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