The compilation below surveys American Studies scholarship published in Hungary in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Ágnes Zsófia Kovács compiled and organized the material.

a. General: Cultural Theory, Cultural History

2020.

The AMERICANA e-Journal of American Studies published three issues in the period between 2020 and 2022. The 2020 AMERICANA e-Journal of American Studies (Vol. XVI, Nr. 1) was a special issue focusing on “The Trianon Treaty, Post-War Settlement and the Anglo-Saxon World: 100^th Anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon,” guest edited by Zoltán Cora and edited by Réka M. Cristian and Zoltán Dragon. The 2021 AMERICANA e-Journal of American Studies (Vol. XVII, Nr. 1) and the 2022 AMERICANA e-Journal of American Studies (Vol. XVIII, Nr. 1) were miscellaneous issues including American literature and culture, edited by Réka M. Cristian and Zoltán Dragon.

2021.

Sándor Czeglédi’s essay entitled “Do(es) Digital Humanities (DH) Transform American Studies on Both Sides of the Atlantic?” (Pannon Digitális Pedagógia 1, 1 [2021]: 1-15) looks into the contexts in which Digital Humanities (DH) as a phrase has been present since the early 2000s in the American Quarterly and in the European Journal of American Studies (EJAS), with respect to the available conference themes and topics of these two organizations by highlighting the relative importance attached to DH by both professional bodies and concluding that the flagship publication of the American Studies Association has been more eager to embrace the methods and approaches offered by Digital Humanities than the European one, yet this activism has mostly been manifested in the areas of feminism and critical race theory.

Revisiting the Past: American Culture in Contemporary Context (edited by Irén Annus and Ágnes Zsófia Kovács) collects and connects publications by the staff of the Department of American Studies, University of Szeged in their first volume of the ebook series on Szeged Studies in American Studies (SZESAS) across a wide range of subjects including American popular cuture, visual culture, children’s literature, modernist literature, autobiography, performance studies and Interamerican Studies.

2022.

“Bollobás Enikő amerikanisztika, prozódiai, költészettörténeti és líraelméleti témájú írásairól” pp. 37-51 and “Bollobás Enikő tudományos műveinek visszhangja” pp. 187-192 in Réka M. Cristian and Pál Hegyi, eds. “Örvendj az ünnepeden!:” Írások Bollobás Enikő tiszteletére (Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, Cser Kiadó, ELTE Bölcsészettudományi Kar, 2022) are two chapters written by Réka M. Cristian in honor of the prominent Hungarian Americanist, Enikő Bollobás, where the author surveys Bollobás’s impressive work in the broader field of American studies, literary history and theory of literature, alongside the reception of her works.

Critical Explorations of U.S. Culture, Literature and History edited by Réka M. Cristian and Zoltán Dragon is the second volume of the ebook series on Szeged Studies in American Studies (SZESAS), which collects and connects publications by the staff of the Department of American Studies at the University of Szeged across a wide range of subjects including American popular culture, visual culture, children’s literature, modernist literature, autobiography, performance studies and Interamerican Studies.

b. Culture and History to 1800

2020.

Andrea Kökény’s “A telepesszabadság szerepe az amerikai nyugati terjeszkedésben: a Mayflower szerződés 400. évfordulójára” (“The Role of Civil Liberty in American Westward Expansion: on the 400th Anniversary of the Mayflower Compact”) in Acta Historica, 145 [2020]: 43-54, celebrates the 400^th anniversary of the Mayflower Compact by examining the role of civil liberty and settler initiative in American westward expansion from the founding of the first permanent English colonies at the beginning of the 17^th century through the middle of the 19th century when the United States of America reached its continental borders.

c. 19th-century Culture and History

2020.

“Visual Allusions to the Mexican-American War: Paintings from the Düsseldorf School” (Acta Hispanica – Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila Jozsef Nominatae 25, suppl. 2 [2020]: 629-640) offers an iconological investigation of three well-known paintings related to the Mexican-American War, executed by American artists at in the Düsseldorf Academy at the time. In this article, Irén Annus contextualizes her research first by elaborating on the war and the public debates surrounding it as well as its general portrayal in American visual culture. She then turns her attention to three specific images and demonstrates how they convey symbolic representations or allusions of the war, approaching it from the perspective of morality and political philosophy, while also encouraging viewers to contemplate the social and economic implications of the very first war the American nation got involved in on foreign grounds.

“Nine Decades of Dealing with Diversity: Language-Related Attitudes, Ideologies and Policies in Federal-Level US Legislative and Executive Documents from 1774 to 1861” (ELOPE—English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries 17, 2 [2020]: 27-45) by Sándor Czeglédi explores the shifting orientations toward languages and linguistic diversity in the United States by analysing relevant Congressional and presidential documents from the beginning of the American nation-building experience until the outbreak of the Civil War. The results show that the most salient language policy development of the post-1789 period was the overall shift from the symbolic, general language-related remarks towards the formulation of substantive, general policies, frequently conceived in an assimilation-oriented spirit in the broader context of territorial expansion.

In “The Relations between the Texas Republic and Mexico. The Santa Fe Expedition” (Acta Hispanica, Suppl. II. [2020]: 15-24), Andrea Kökény expands on the Texan Santa Fe exhibition which was a commercial and military enterprise initiated by Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, second President of the Republic of Texas, in the summer of 1841 with the aim to gain control over the lucrative Santa Fe Trail and to establish Texas jurisdiction over the area. The members of the expedition expected a warm welcome by the citizens of New Mexico, but instead, were ‘welcomed’ by a detachment of the Mexican Army and forced to surrender. The paper discusses the organization, course, and consequences of the ill-fated expedition.

Zoltán Vajda’s article on “Having It Both Ways? Sympathy and Self-Love in Thomas Jefferson’s Moral Philosophy” pp. 83-92 in Mónika Fodor, ed., FOCUS: Papers in English Literary and Cultural Studies XII (Pécs: University Press Pécs, 2020) addresses the problem of sympathy and self-interest in Thomas Jefferson’s moral philosophy. He argues that Jefferson’s use of sympathy builds on the dichotomy of different interests of the “Head” and the “Heart” concluding with the ways in which he displayed a specific attitude toward both models of sympathy.

2021.

In “How Modern is the Modern Plain English Movement? – An Overview of Relevant Legislative and Executive Policy Initiatives in the United States from the 19th Century” (Palimpsest 6, 12 [2021]: 47-60), Sándor Czeglédi traces the official beginnings of the American Plain English movement to the mid-19th century by examining the relevant legislative and executive proposals in the U.S. before 1875, and argues that the 1850s and 1860s have been a particularly neglected period in scholarship from the Plain English perspective so far, despite the fact that the harbingers of future policies had actually been conceived well before the Civil War.

Andrea Kökény’s “A rabszolgaság intézménye Texasban a mexikói időszakban, 1821-1836” (“Slavery in Mexican Texas, 1821-1836”) Acta Historica, 146 [2021]: 125-139, discusses the problem of slavery in Texas before the Mexican-American war, examining the economic, social and political transformation of the borderland region between 1821-1836 and showing how the Mexican government and the inhabitants of the region (Americans as well as Tejanos) related to slavery in Texas.

Zoltán Vajda’s essay on “A republikánus erény fogalmának differenciálódása újvilági kontextusban. Az antiföderalisták esete az 1787. évi amerikai alkotmánnyal” (“The Differentiation of Republican Virtue in the Context of the New World: The Affair of Anti-Federalists with the US Constitution of 1787), pp. 163-183 in Ágoston Nagy és Milán Pap, eds., Klasszikus és modern republikanizmusok. Eszmetörténeti tanulmányok (Budapest: Ráció Kiadó, 2021) argues that Anti-Federalists no longer understood republican virtue as a communal ideal but rather as a character trait of particular groups of a deeply divided society. The same author’s “Friendship Never Ends: Spaces of Sympathy in Thomas Jefferson’s Dialogues of the Head and the Heart” pp. 27-34 in Ágnes Zsófia, ed., Sentiment, History, and Intermediality: Essays in English and American Studies (Szeged: JATEPress, 2021) investigates the role of sentimental philosophy in Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence with Maria Cosway and argues that Jefferson employed sentimentalism to generate a sense of continuity in friendship in the face of the disruption of the physical space of sympathy, and that his strategy relied on cultural proximity as well as self-love.

2022.

In “The Language Policies of the American Civil War (1861–65)” (Alkalmazott Nyelvtudomány/Hungarian Journal of Applied Linguistics Studies 22, 2 [2022]: 49-65), Sándor Czeglédi compares and contrasts orientations towards languages and linguistic diversity as reflected in the presidential and congressional documents of the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War. The findings reveal that although both the Union and the Confederate Congresses mainly focused on practical, narrowly-defined language (micro)management concerns (specifically on substantive, specific policies) which frequently either ignored or deliberately denied minority language rights, the North also made substantive, general language policy decisions by promoting the first, federally-endorsed Plain English campaign in the history of the United States. Czeglédi’s “Contrasting Language Ideologies: Language-Related Policy Proposals in the Democratic and Republican Party Platforms in a Historical Perspective,” pp. 205-225 in Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Marcin Trojszczak, eds., Concepts, Discourses, and Translations. Second Language Learning and Teaching (Cham: Springer, 2022) analyses how language-related issues have appeared on the official agendas of the major parties of the American political scene since the mid-19^th century, focusing mainly on (1) educational policies for language minority children; (2) linguistic access to civil rights and government services; and (3) the debates concerning the federal-level officialization of English. The results show considerable consistency in the respective partisan attitudes towards officialization, whereas references to access-oriented policy proposals and bilingual education have gone through more significant reinterpretation and reevaluation over the decades.

Andrea Kökény’s “Diverzitás és homogenitás a vadnyugati szekérkaravánok közösségeiben” (“Diversity and Homogeneity in the Wagon Train Communities of the Wild West”) in B. Rénes, Zs. Barnai, N. Gódány, E. Lendvai Tímár, Zs. Lehoczki, Á. Demjén, eds.: Dimenziók 3. Diverzitás és homogenitás a történelemben, a társadalomban és a környezetben (Dimensions 3. Diversity and Homogeneity in History, Society and Environment) (Budapest: Martin Opitz Kiadó, 2022, 131-139.) surveys the history of immigration via the Oregon wagon trail. The Oregon Trail was the great overland route that carried the wagon trains of American migrants to the West Coast during the 1840s, exploring the immigrants’ backgrounds, motives, and expectations, the organization of the wagon trains, and the settling of the frontier. The focus is on the connections between Anglo Americans, Native Americans, French Canadians, and the British Hudson’s Bay Company and the interactions of individuals, families, business ventures, local and national authorities. Furthermore, “Az amerikai bevándorlók identitásának rétegei a Texasi Köztársaság idején” (“The Identity of the American emigrants in the Texas Republic”) (Acta Historica, 147, 2 [2022]: 63-69) by the same author scrutinizes the consequences of the Texas Revolution focusing on the transformation of identities. Based on primary sources – official documents, private letters, and newspaper articles – Kökény’s article explores how the American immigrants’ lives and attitudes changed when the American Congress acknowledged the independence of Texas in 1837 but refused to annex it into the Union. The emphasis is on the intertwining aspects of immigration and citizenship that characterized the transitional period that led to the annexation of Texas to the USA in 1845. Kökény’s “A civil társadalom szerepe a vadnyugaton” (“The Role of Civil Society in the Wild West”) in A. Kiss., Á. Matuska, and R. Péter, eds.: Fidele Signaculum: Írások Szőnyi György Endre tiszteletére / Writings in Honour of György Endre Szőnyi, Szeged: SZTE BTK Angol-Amerikai Intézet, 2022, 549-562) analyzes the practice of self-government on the Oregon wagon trail, arguing that this was the birth and practice of self-government in the Wild West and demonstrating how the settlers were transformed into citizens, and how this transformation contributed to the development of modern American identity.

“The Spanish-American War on Film: An International Approach,” pp. 363-378 in Renée Dickason, Delphine Letort, Michel Prum, and Stéphanie Bélanger, eds., War and Remembrance. Recollecting and Representing War (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022) by András Lénárt considers the cinematic representation of the Spanish-American War of 1898 in American, Cuban and Spanish films. While in Hollywood films this war was represented as a heroic adventure to save the oppressed people, for Spain it was a national tragedy, sided with an ambiguous Cuban attitude.

In his essay on ”Thomas Jefferson and the Moral Power of William Shakespeare,” pp. 993-1002 in A. Kiss, Á. Matuska and R. Péter, eds., Fidele Signaculum: Írások Szőnyi György Endre tiszteletére/Writings in Honour of György Endre Szőnyi (Szeged: SZTE BTK Angol-Amerikai Intézet, 2022), Zoltán Vajda delves into questions about Jefferson’s reception of Shakespeare’s moral vision arguing that in Jefferson’s vision of morality Shakespeare’s tragic gestures had a significant role to play in his conception of the moral sense and its development in the individual self. In another essay on “Poverty to Assimilation: Thomas Jefferson on Native Americans as Indigent People” (Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 28, 1 [2022]: 113-136) Vajda claims that Jefferson’s general concern with Native Americans was also fueled by his understanding of their lifestyle and his republican ideal of freeholders was also a key to his conception of Native American poverty.

Éva Eszter Szabó’s “The Crisis of the American Sense of Mission at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries” (Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 28, 1 [June 2022]: 76-120) explores how the events and consequences of the 1898 Spanish–American War provoked the transformation of the nation’s sense of mission, marked by contradictions between the need to preserve the traditional American value system and the call of a new type of expansionism overseas. Through contemporary congressional debates, the paper examines the forces at work both for and against the transformation of the American sense of mission.

d. 20th-Century History

2020.

In his “Introduction to the Special Issue: The Trianon Peace Treaty, Post-war Settlement and the Anglo-Saxon World: 100th Anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon” AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary 11, 1 [2020]), Zoltán Cora discusses the importance and impact of peace treaties and post-war settlements in Hungary and East-Central Europe with special regard to the 100th anniversary of the Trianon Peace Treaty in the light of the Anglo-American perspective. In the similar context, “The Treaty of Trianon and the Hungarian Post-war Settlement in the Eyes of the British,” AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary 11, 1 [2020], authored by Erik Papp and Zoltán Cora, surveys how British foreign policy evaluated Hungary’s role with respect to its effect on the European power-balance scrutinizing how various interest groups exercised considerable impact on the outcome of the negotiations. This study also investigates to what extent using the nationalist movements proved to be effective tactics for the Entente Powers in reaching their war aims.

Zoltán Peterecz’s “Hungary and the League of Nations: A Forced Marriage” in Peter Becker and Natasha Wheatley, eds. Remaking Central Europe. The League of Nations and the Former Habsburg Lands (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, 145–165) investigates what kind of relationship existed between the League of Nations and Hungary with Hungary becoming a member in 1922. Another essay of Peterecz, “Royall Tyler and the Evaluation of the Treaty of Trianon” (AMERICANA E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020) inquires how Americans judged the Treaty of Trianon. For example, Royall Tyler worked many years in Hungary during the interwar era and his intimate knowledge of Hungarian history and culture, politics and language gave him a good platform to look and analyze the various aspects of the Trianon Treaty.

2021.

In his “Humor a két világháború közti időszak angolszász diplomácia magánszéfrájában,” in Sz. Rási, Á. Domonkosi, A. T. Litovkina, A. L. Nemesi, eds A humor ösvényein. Válogatás a VI. Magyar Interdiszciplináris Humorkonferencia anyagából. (On the Paths of Humor. Selections from the Sixth Hungarian Interdisciplinary Humor Conference) (Eger – Budapest: Líceum Kiadó – Tinta Kiadó, 2021, 267–279), Zoltán Peterecz inspects various features typical in the humor used by various Anglo-Saxon men during the first half of the twentieth century in their private sphere. Based mainly upon private correspondence, the article shows several examples that give a general taste of the wry humor that these people generally used. Additionally, Peterecz’s “Theodore Brentano – the First American Minister to Hungary, 1922–1927” (Hungarian Studies, 35, 1, [December 2021]: 66–79) introduces the first ever American minister to Hungary through his work in our country. After World War I, the United States and Hungary established diplomatic relations for the first time in 1921 and soon after Brentano arrived in Hungary, serving for five years. The article focuses on his work and the international relations with Hungary during the time of Brentano’s assignment. Furthermore, in his book on Royall Tyler and Hungary: An American in Europe and Crisis Years, 1918–1953 (Reno, Nevada: Helena History Press, 2021, xx + 314 pages) Peterecz studies the life and career of Royall Tyler, who spent many years in Hungary as an officer of the League of Nations and came to be an expert on this central European country.

2022.

In the chapter of “A Century of Conflicts between Cuba and the United States,” pp. 236-256 in Pablo A. Baisotti, ed., A New Struggle for Independence in Modern Latin America (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2022), András Lénárt discusses the most important events and conflicts between the U.S. and Cuba in the 20^th century by emphasizing both points of view in order to draw attention to the major and minor motives behind this controversial relationship, with special regard to U.S. presidents and politicians, and the Castro brothers.

In his Royall Tyler és a Horthy-korszak krízisei. Pénzügyi, gazdasági, politikai és diplomáciai kérdések egy amerikai szemén keresztül (Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 2022, 415 pages) (Royall Tyler and the Crises of the Horthy Era: Financial, Economic, Political, and Diplomatic Questions through the Eyes of an American), Zoltán Peterecz explores the life and career of Royall Tyler, an American who spent many years in Hungary as an officer of the League of Nations — and came to be an expert on Hungary.

e. 20^th-Century Culture

2021.

“Mrs. vagy Ms. America? – Kit igazolt a történelem?” (“Mrs. or Ms. America? Who has History Proven?”) (Országút II, 38 [2021)]: 12-14) written by Enikő Bollobás, argues that it was the common law concept of coverture that—as late as the 1950s and ‘60s—created a situation in which women were dependent on men while also felt protected by them. Using the miniseries Mrs. America as the filmic text to illustrate her argument, the author explains that Southern women opposed equal rights partly because they were concerned that after the ratification of ERA they would lose the legal and financial security they had enjoyed for centuries.

Irén Annus investigates in her chapter on “Shapes of Faith: Catholicism in the Art of Thomas Nast,” pp. 43-52 in Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, ed., Sentiment, History and Intermediality: Essays in English and American Studies (Szeged: JATEPress, 2021) the portrayal of the Irish and their Catholicism in a selection of Thomas Nast’s cartoons. The study employs Borer and Murphree’s frame analysis and argues for a historically contextualized approach, proposing that such a perspective not only uncovers the reasons behind Nast’s degrading visual criticism of the Irish and the Roman Catholic Church, but also reveals that Nast expressed no objection to or criticism of the Catholic faith itself and expressed compassion for the Irish whenever he believed it was well deserved.

2022.

The study “Multimediality and the Narrative Artwork of Faith Ringgold,” pp. 37-48 in A. Kiss, Á. Matuska and R. Péter, eds., Fidele Signaculum: Írások Szőnyi György Endre tiszteletére / Writings in Honour of György Endre Szőnyi (Szeged: University of Szeged, 2022) by Irén Annus explores various strategies employed by the African American woman artist Faith Ringgold with the specific purpose of challenging and subverting traditional American artistic practices, forms and contents by focusing on her inventive, creative power in particular, such as her narrative quilts and soft sculpting performances, along that of her multimedial art that characterizes these works in fresh, creative and subversive manners.

f. Visual Culture

2020.

András Lénárt’s “A Disney-küldetés. Amerika-közi filmpolitika” (“The Disney Mission. Inter-American Film Policy”) (Filmvilág 63, 6. [2020]: 34-37) considers the cinematographic aspects of the United States’ stance toward Latin America in the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s, within the framework of the Good Neighbor Policy formulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Several famous filmmakers, including Walt Disney, played a crucial role in this mission.

In “Out of the Kitchen and onto the Battlefield: The Visual Representations of Gender through the Character of Snow White” (Híd, 2020 October-November: 129-150), Emma Bálint contrasts the representation of Snow White in three films: Disney’s renowned Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the Hungarian animated film Snow White (1984) directed by József Nepp, and Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), concluding that, despite the unique way each film interprets the fairy tale, the character of Snow White in particular does not show any significant character development.

2021.

“La conquista del público hispanohablante. Las versiones en español rodadas en Hollywood en los años 1930” (“The Conquest of the Spanish-Speaking Public. Spanish Versions Shot in Hollywood in the 1930s”), pp. 59-72 in: María Marcos Ramos, ed., Mucho más que cine: historia, literatura y arte en el cine en español y en portugués (Madrid: Editorial Dykinson, 2021) by András Lénárt analyzes Spanish-language films made in Hollywood in the 1930s for distribution in Latin America and Spain, presenting the circumstances and consequences of the production of these cinematic versions.

Irén Annus’ study “Queer Eye on the Rise: Hegemonic Masculinity Confirmed,” pp. 5-20 in Irén Annus and Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, eds., Revisiting the Past: American Culture in Contemporary Context (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2021) takes a closer look at the Emmy Award-winning American makeover show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003-2007), recognized for making history by introducing only openly gay guys as experts. Relying on Connell’s theorizations on hegemony and masculinities, the chapter investigates the pattern of gender roles and hierarchies in the series, concluding that the program continues to operate through traditional, essentialist categories and capitalizes on mainstream hetero-normativity, gender stereotypes and hierarchies. These are disrupted for the duration of the makeover, by the end of which masculine hegemony is affirmed – but with the Fab Five being elevated to the very top of the symbolic gender order. In her essay entitled “Neo-Western to the Rescue: Breaking Bad and the Crisis of Hegemonic Masculinity” (pp. 21-35) from the volume mentioned above, Annus investigates the revitalization of the Western, a unique American genre, following the cultural crisis that emerged after 9.11. With a focus on Breaking Bad (2008-2013), one of the most appreciated neo-Western series in the US, the chapter discusses the social, economic and cultural dismay of the era that the series portrayed and its consequent impact on traditional American masculinities. The paper suggests that particular attempts and strategies to return to these have all failed and that the open ending of the series allows for the contined re-negotiation and re-construction of new American masculinities.

Zoltán Dragon’s essay on “Photographic Extimacy in the Collage of Images: Technologies in Julie Taymor’s Frida,” pp. 101-106 in Kovács, Ágnes Zsófia (ed.) Sentiment, History, and Intermediality: Essays in English and American Studies. (Szeged: JATEPress, 2021) addresses the unique visual strategies deployed in Julie Taymor’s Frida to argue for the hidden photographic trait as the organizing element in the filmic representation. Referring to Frida Kahlo’s newly discovered archive of photographs, Dragon argues that the artist was first trained as a photographer, assisting her father, Guillermo Kahlo, often relying on photographs to create her paintings later on. In Taymor’s rendition of the life of the artist, the tableau vivants often refer back to photographic images that punctuate the filmic narrative in unexpected ways.

Réka M. Cristian’s “Crossways of Film and American Studies” pp. 36-48 in Irén Annus and Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, eds. Revisiting the Past: American Culture in Contemporary Context (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2021) scrutinizes the intricate relationship between film and American studies arguing that Hollywood’ productions alongside the American film theory and criticism are essential milestones in imagining America with important moments long absent in the works about the discipline of American studies. Cristian’s other chapter from the same volume, “Gourmet Adventures: Film, Adaptation, and Cooking” (pp. 49-61), discusses the topics of adaptation and cooking in Nora Ephron’s foodie film Julie and Julia based on Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which had a profound impact on several aspects of post-World War II American vernacular culture), and Julie Powell’s novel Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (based on the author’s blog documenting a year of cooking all Child’s recipes). The article focuses on the issue of intertextual dialogism and refunctioning as primary means of adaptation and also on the issue of microhistorical event(s) and stardom involved in the making of Ephron’s film. Another essay on film entitled “Paradigm Dramas in American Film Studies: A Brief Overview” pp. 81-88 in Kovács Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, ed. Sentiment, History, and Intermediality: Essays in English and American Studies (Szeged: JATEPress, 2021) is Réka M. Cristian’s incursion into the most important milestones representing the present-absent type of relationship between film studies and American studies in the twentieth century.

In her “Mae West Turning Dirty Snow White through her Comic Performances” in Irén Annus and Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, eds. Revisiting the Past: American Culture in Contemporary Context (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2021), Zsófia Anna Tóth focuses on West’s works and artistic output from the point of view of comic performativity arguing that West overexaggerated her femininity to cover up her masculine characteristics, which resulted mainly from the cultural assumption that the production of humor is a male privilege, but she generally displayed many masculine features, not just through her comic talent. Consequently, as a successful comic entertainer, it was often questioned whether she was indeed a woman. Another essay of Tóth’s, “Merida and her Mother Bear: Feminist Cultural Pedagogy à la Disney/Pixar” in Irén Annus and Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, eds. Revisiting the Past: American Culture in Contemporary Context (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2021) surveys the figure of the bear in various stories where they are typically males and negative characters. She discusses this issue through the film Brave (2012), an exceptional animation since here the bear is female, and even if being ambiguous, it eventually becomes a positive character and an agent who challenges through humanimal transformations traditional notions of femininity and masculinity as well as the limits of humanity and hierarchies within human communities and provides an outstanding example of feminist cultural pedagogy.

2022.

In her chapter on “The Global Appropriation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,” pp. 5-18 in Réka Mónika Cristian and Zoltán Dragon, eds., Critical Explorations of US Culture, Literature and History (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2022), Irén Annus explores a 2003 Mollywood adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), a film originally entitled Pride and Prejudice – A Latter-day Comedy. In line with Joy Sperling’s claim that “cultural meaning is located … in transactions among (trans)cultures,” the paper draws on Arjun Appadurai’s model of global cultural flows and demonstrates the specific avenues through which this movie has been able to successfully connect to global mediascapes, ideoscapes as well as ethnoscapes in multifaceted ways.

“At the Crossroads of American Cinema and American Studies” in Réka Mónika Cristian and Zoltán Dragon, eds., Critical Explorations of US Culture, Literature and History (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2022) authored by Zsófia Anna Tóth traces the relationship between American studies and film studies, surveying the transnational aspects of American Studies and looks at the question of Americannes of films from a global point of view. Tóth’s “The Carnivalesque (Re)Presentation of America in the Different Versions of Chicago” from the same volume looks into how various versions of Chicago provide readers and viewers with a rather carnivalesque (re)presentation of the United States.

Réka M. Cristian discusses the concept of negotiated cinema and pleasurable negotiation in “Negotiated Films: Alberto A. Isaac’s Mujeres Insumisas and Julie Taymor’s Frida” pp. 197-206 in A. Kiss, Á. Matuska and R. Péter, eds. Fidele Signaculum: Írások Szőnyi György Endre tiszteletére / Writings in Honour of György Endre Szőnyi (Szeged: University of Szeged, 2022) arguing that in Isaac’s Mujeres insumisas negotiation is achieved through successful attempts to include elements of classical narrative cinema into the body of the art cinema, while in Taymor’s Frida the negotiation is accomplished by embedding subversive items in the mainstream structure of the Hollywood film.

"Jazzing the Image: Haptic Photography in the Swirl of Melodies," pp. 283-292 in A. Kiss, Á. Matuska and R. Péter, eds. Fidele Signaculum: Írások Szőnyi György Endre tiszteletére / Writings in Honour of György Endre Szőnyi (Szeged: Institute of English and American Studies, University of Szeged, 2022) by Zoltán Dragon investigates the haptic and multimedial nature of famed US photographer, Eugene W. Smith’s Jazz Loft project. The special collection of not only photographs but sound recordings, super 8 film sequences, inside jazz performance coverages and outside street life constitutes, in Dragon’s view, an uncanny archive, a disorganized database of the loft years in the photographer’s life producing a tactile and haptic multimedial environment that elicits truly visceral reactions from the audience. According to the author, the developing techniques and the organization and never-ending curation of photographs were executed on the rhythm of jazz, connecting the different artistic techniques in one phenomenological conglomerate that defies traditional ways of consumption and interpretation.

In "The Woods Keep Getting Darker: The Forest in Contemporary Fairy Tale Rewritings for Young Adults (Detinjstvo 2022/1: 76-87)," Emma Bálint explores the way the fairy-tale forest is represented and reinterpreted in the collection of graphic narratives titled Through the Woods (2014) written and drawn by the Canadian artist, Emily Carroll. Bálint demonstrates that by overshadowing the rejuvenation traditionally offered by the forests of classic literary fairy tales, contemporary fairy tale rewritings for young adults tend to present the arboreal setting as dystopian wilderness filled with nothing but fright and fragmentation.

Ildikó Limpár studies androids as Frankensteinian monsters, and thus posthuman, undead entities in her “Westworld (Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, 2016– present) – Posthuman Undead,” pp. 249-256 in Simon Bacon, ed., The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion (Genre Fiction and Film Companions, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022), by examining emblematic cinematic representations of the android characters as monsters dying, decomposing, or resurrecting.

In her essay “History on Board: The 1996 Film Adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels,” pp. 122-137 in D. Clare, G. Hartvig, A. C. Rouse, C. Maczelka, eds. Across Borders and Time: Jonathan Swift (SPECHEL-Angol és Magyar Kulturális Egyesület, 2022), Lívia Szélpál focuses on the representation of ‘the milieu of the eighteenth century’ in Charles Sturridge’s 1996 British/American Hallmark TV film adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels. The movie was released in 1996, in the year of the US presidential elections and during the tumultuous era of the Iraqi no-fly zones (1991–2003) and the Dot-com bubble (c. 1995–c. 2000), a socio-historical context which had a considerable impact on the character of the film. Referring to it as the most faithful cinematic version, Szélpál highlights the features of fantasy adventure film and psychological drama in Sturridge’s production.

g. Ethnic Studies, Race Studies, Gender Studies

2020.

Mónika Fodor’s book on Ethnic Subjectivity in Intergenerational Memory Narratives: Politics of the Untold (New York: Routledge, 2020) explores how intergenerational memory narratives embedded in one’s own life narrative impact ethnic identity construction among European Americans. Working with thematically selected life experiences from interviews conducted with second and late-generation European Americans, Fodor demonstrates how the storytellers position themselves in a range of social, cultural, and political discourses to claim or disclaim ethnicity as part of their identity. The book ties narrative content, structural, and performance analysis to the sociolinguistic concept of “symbolic capital” and “investment” to unpack the changing level of identifying with one’s ancestral ethnic heritage and its potential to carry meaning for late-generation descendants.

2022.

Judit Ágnes Kádár’s volume, Ethnic Positioning in Southwestern Mixed Heritage Writing (New York: Lexington Books, 2022), investigates how Southwestern writers and visual artists provide an opportunity to turn a stigmatized identity into a self-conscious holder of valuable assets, cultural attitudes, and memories. The Southwest is a region riddled by Eurocentric and colonial concepts of identity, yet at the same time highly treasured in the Frontier experiences of physical mobility and mental and spiritual journeys and transformations. In her book, Kádár argues that the process of ethnic positioning is a choice made by mixed heritage people that results in renegotiated identities, leading to more complex and engaging concepts of themselves.

h. American-Hungarian relations

2022.

In “Bollobás Enikő Kultúraközvetítő Munkássága, Szerepe az Amerikai-Magyar Irodalomtörténetben” (“The Oeuvre of Enikő Bollobás and her Role as a Cultural Mediator in American – Hungarian Literary History”) pp. 21-35 in Réka M. Cristian and Pál Hegyi, eds. Örvendj az ünnepeden!": Írások Bollobás Enikő tiszteletére, (Rejoice on Your Celebration!: Essays in Honor of Enikő Bollobás (Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó-Cser Kiadó, 2022) Lívia Szélpál presents the oeuvre and legacy of Enikő Bollobás within the fields of American Studies, Jewish Studies and Hungarian Literature. The article in the Festschrift highlights the outstanding scholarly achievements and the milestones of Bollobás’academic career not only as a scholar and educator but as a cultural mediator and innovative promoter of intellectual freedom as well.

András Tarnóc’s essay “Az ‘összetartó sokféleség’ avagy ‘az iszap alatt húzódó szikla feltárása:’ tisztelgés Bollobás Enikő születésnapján” (On the Convergence of Diversity or Exploring the Bottom of the Lake: In Honor of Enikő Bollobás’ 70^th Birthday), pp. 175-186 in Réka M. Cristian and Pál Hegyi, eds. Örvendj az ünnepeden! Írások Bollobás Enikő tiszteletére. (Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó-Cser Kiadó, 2022), provides a comprehensive overview and evaluation of the scholarly career of the internationally acclaimed American Studies professor. The appraisal of Bollobás’ milestone achievements in literary history, applied linguistics, translation studies and women’s studies utilizes a cultural studies inspired research apparatus including Fernando Coroníl’s perspective on culture and Richard Merelman’s model of culture projection.

i. Inter-American Issues

2020.

Réka M. Cristian, Zoltán Dragon and András Lénárt are the authors of the article on “Studies of the Americas: Research and Teaching in American, Latin-American, and Inter-American Studies at the University of Szeged” (Ad Americam: Journal of American Studies [2020] 21: 49-62), which surveys the development and the current status of American, Latin-American, and Inter-American Studies at the University of Szeged with special focus on the research and publications of the faculty members from the Department of American Studies, Hispanic Studies, and the Inter-American Research Center of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

“In the Name of Democracy: US Cold War Policy in the Western Hemisphere” (Hungarian Review 11, 6 [2020]: 56-66) by Éva Eszter Szabó explains how a combination of direct and indirect interventions in Latin America was employed by the US to ensure the maintenance of order and stability in the Western Hemisphere amidst Cold War challenges determined by the fear of a second Cuba.

In “A kubai kapcsolat – Az amerikai maffia havannai tevékenysége a Batista-rezsim és Fidel Castro forradalma idején” (“The Cuban Connection – American Mob Activity in Havana during the Batista Regime and the Revolution of Fidel Castro”) (Orpheus Noster 12, 4 [2020]: 21-32), András Lénárt discusses the role of U.S. organized crime in Cuban politics, economy, and society from the 1930s to the 1950s, and highlights the main features of this type of crime, its gangsters and some key events.

Zsuzsanna Csikós presents Cuban cultural policy in the first period of the Castro regime in her “Alkotói szabadság vagy forradalmi hűség? A Castro-rendszer viszonya az írókhoz és az irodalomhoz az 1960-as években” (“Creative Freedom or Revolutionary Fidelity? The Castro Regime’s Attitude to Writers and Literature in the 1960s”) pp. 201-220 in Csikós Zsuzsanna-Horváth Emőke, eds., Diktátorok és diktatúrák a Karib térségben (Dictators and Dictatorships in the Caribbean) (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2020).

The article on “Transnational Encounters, Deep Maps and the Sixto Rodriguez Phenomena” (Acta Hispanica – Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József Nominatae [2020] 25/1: 663-671) by Réka M. Cristian concentrates on a series of transnational flows and polylocal agencies marking the art of the Mexican American folk musician and performer Sixto Rodriguez. After issuing two albums in the seventies, Rodriguez was quickly forgotten in the USA but luckily not outside of it: his first album, Cold Fact (1970), became the unofficial anthem for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa in the seventies and the performer was paradoxically ‘rediscovered’ due to a hoax with the help of enduring South-African, Botswanan, Zimbabwean, Australian and New Zealander fans and through the research of the Swedish-Algerian filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, who made and directed Searching for Sugarman (2012), an Oscar-winning documentary film, with performer-activist Rodriguez becoming a transnational figure in the context of global discourses and Deep Maps strategy rather than just an American singer.

Katalin Jancsó’s “Social and Environmental Conflicts in the Peruvian Amazon” (Corvinus Journal of International Affairs 5, 2, [2020]: 26-38) concentrates on the history of the rubber boom of the 19^th century, the consequences of the exploitation of mahogany, cedar and other trees and activities such as gold mining, the extraction of oil, and the construction of roads and infrastructure that led to a significant reduction in forest areas leading to increased local resistance during the 20^th century Peruvian Amazon region.

2021.

Revisiting the Past: American Culture in Contemporary Context (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2021), edited by Irén Annus and Ágnes Zsófia Kovács collect and connect publications by the staff of the Department of American Studies at the University of Szeged across a wide range of subjects including American popular culture, visual culture, children’s literature, modernist literature, autobiography, performance studies and Inter-American Studies.

Aranycseppek Latin-Amerikában. Egy sokszínű kontinens születése (Golden Beads in Latin America: The Rise of a Diverse Continent) (Szeged: SZTE Press, 2021) Katalin Jancsó introduces the history of migration in the Latin American subcontinent as a complex phenomenon. Due to five centuries of immigration beginning from colonial times, Latin America is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world, being the majority of the societies in almost every country now mestizo. The extraordinary levels of immigration in most Latin American countries between 1880 and 1920 triggered unprecedented social, demographic, and economic changes in the subcontinent, completely redrawing the ethnic map of the region in some areas. The migration trends have reversed over time and the subcontinent has now become a clear net emigrating region.

Katalin Jancsó’s other book, Az inkák és yaguák földjén. Írások Peruról (In the Lands of the Incas and the Yaguas. Essays on Peru) (Szeged: Americana, 2021) is a collection of essays from the last fifteen years. The twelve essays are linked to four major thematic units: in addition to women’s history, one can read about Hungarian-Peruvian relations and about Hungarians who came to this remote region. The most distinctive of the thematic blocks presents research from recent years, including social conflict, environmental challenges, economic problems, terrorism, and drug trafficking, which are at the center of four articles, focusing on the Amazonian indigenous communities and their long struggle to maintain their land, culture, and rainforest ecosystem.

2022.

Critical Explorations of U.S. Culture, Literature and History, edited by Réka M. Cristian Réka and Zoltán Dragon Zoltán (Szeged: AMERICANA eBooks, 2022) collect and connect publications by the staff of the Department of American Studies at the University of Szeged across a wide range of subjects including American popular culture, visual culture, children’s literature, modernist literature, autobiography, performance studies and Inter-American Studies.

In “Peru” (“Peru”), pp. 519-526 in Gusztáv Kecskés D. and Tamás Scheibner, eds., Egy világraszóló történet: Az 1956-os magyar menekültválság kézikönyve (A World-Changing Story: A Handbook of the 1956 Hungarian Refugee Crisis) (Budapest: Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2022), Katalin Jancsó describes how the Peruvian press reported on the events in Hungary in the fall of 1956. By examining the contemporary press, it is even possible to learn details of what reactions other Latin American countries and the United Nations had at that time. The sources of the analysis are two national daily newspapers: El Comercio, a conservative daily founded in 1839, which is still the most important newspaper in Peru today, and La Crónica, established in 1912, which had a smaller readership and no longer exists.

Katalin Jancsó’s essay “Az identitás változásai a független Latin-Amerikában. Az argentin példa (1810-1910)” (“Changes in Identity in the Independent Latin America. The Argentine Example (1810-1910”), pp. 51-62 in Balázs Dénes et al., eds., DIH – Diverzitás és homogenitás a történelemben, a társadalomban és a környezetben (DIH – Diversity and homogeneity in history, society, and the environment) (Budapest: Martin Opitz Kiadó, 2022) surveys how Argentine identity changed through the 19^th century and at the beginning of the 20^th century.