Ad Americam. Journal of American Studies 21 (2020): ISSN: 1896-9461, https://doi.org/10.12797/AdAmericam.21.2020.21.03 Licensing information: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Réka M. Cristian University of Szeged, Hungary [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4990-1152 Zoltán Dragon University of Szeged, Hungary [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6028-5410 András Lénárt University of Szeged, Hungary [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4402-8198 Studies of the Americas: Research and Teaching in American, Latin-American, and Inter-American Studies at the University of Szeged The article 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 fields and publications of the faculty members from the Department of American Stud- ies, Hispanic Studies, and the Inter-American Research Center of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Key words: University of Szeged; Inter-American Research Center; AMERICANA e-Jour- nal of American Studies in Hungary; AMERICANA eBooks; HAAS; AHILA The University of Szeged has had a compelling history. Its roots can be traced back to the University of Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca, Klausenburg), named Magyar Királyi Ferenc József Tudományegyetem [Royal Hungarian Franz Joseph University] in 1872, which was originally established in 1581 by István [Stephen] Báthory (1571- 1576), Voivode and Prince of Transylvania, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Lithuania. After the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the university was left homeless and 50 Réka M. Cristian, Zoltán Dragon, András Lénárt had to be temporarily relocated as a university in exile to Szeged in 1921 (Minker 23-32). In 1945, the academic institution was called Szeged University and in 1962 it was renamed József Attila University (JATE), after the Hungarian poet Attila József (1905-1937); in 2000, the institution received its current name, the University of Sze- ged (SZTE) (Szentirmai and Ráczné Mojzes 29-30). The English and American Studies at the University of Szeged also had an in- teresting institutional history. For many years, American Studies in Hungary was considered an offspring of the ‘mother’ field of English Studies. The first phase of the institutionalization of American Studies in Hungary consisted of scattered at- tempts made by various English Departments to introduce a more focused research and teaching of topics and fields relating to the United States, especially American literature. Among the professors who conceived and prepared the ground for such emerging American Studies programs and departments at a number of Hungarian universities and colleges were László Országh, Sarolta Kretzoi-Valkay, Péter Egri, Zoltán Abádi-Nagy, Zsolt Virágos, Lehel Vadon, Enikő Bollobás, Zoltán Kövecses, Tibor Frank, and Bálint Rozsnyai (Cristian 2016, 18). English Studies in Szeged, as György E. Szőnyi says, was established relatively recently; the founding of an Eng- lish major and an Institute of English Philology took place in 1946, with Jenõ Koltay- Kastner as the first head (1946-1949), followed by Elõd Halász (1949-1950), both “outsiders” to the field. Interestingly, during these years no diplomas were issued in English and there is hardly any data about the life of the institute. As a result of the political changes in the country in the 1950s, “the teaching of most Western lan- guages was discontinued until 1960,” with the English major being only “revived in 1965, part of programs offered by the Institute of Germanic Philology,” Szőnyi ob- served. However, starting from 1969 there was an independent Department of English Language and Literature, which thirty years later, in 1996, was upgraded as the Institute of English and American Studies, now consisting of three departments: the Department of English Studies, the Department of American Stud- ies, and the Department of English Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics. As of 1993, English Studies in Szeged have also comprised PhD studies, running three accredited doctoral programs: English and American Literature and Cultures, Theoretical Lin- guistics, and English Applied Linguistics. (Szőnyi) During the 1970s, the sociologist of culture Elemér Hankiss and the comparative literature scholar Mihály Szegedy-Maszák (the head of the department in 1969-1970) were also teaching in Szeged; László Deme was the chair of the Department in 1970- 1973 but the first significant and fully independent leader of the English Studies as such was Sarolta Kretzoi-Valkay. She consolidated both the department and the syllabus of the degree program between 1973 and 1976. As Szőnyi stressed, it was due to her perseverance that young, ambitious, and well qualified staff members were recruited here in the 1970s; they were the pioneering generation that started to design the teaching and research profile of English Studies and emerging American Studies in Szeged. The next head of the Department of English Language and Literature was Halász Elődné Annamária Szász (1978-1980) followed by Bálint Rozsnyai, who took over as head in 1980 and stayed at the helm of the department until 1992, founding Amer- ican Studies at József Attila University (JATE) as an independent discipline with Studies of the Americas… 51 a unique profile to be gradually developed into a major program by the 1990s (Ber- náth 160), which was also lead by him—and by György Novák as acting head for one academic year (2005). The next chairs of department were Zoltán Vajda (2009- 2014) and Réka M. Cristian (2014-present). At the beginning of the 1990s, Hungarian higher education witnessed a prolifera- tion of American Studies departments in the country (Cristian 2011, 2). The Ameri- can Studies in Szeged was for a while an independent program of study that later grew into the Department of American Studies, now part of the Institute of English and American Studies of the University of Szeged (Cristian 2016, 20). The Depart- ment of American Studies (webpage: http://amerikanisztika.ieas-szeged.hu/) was a product of the departmental boom of the early 1990s, with its American Studies program launched in the mid-1980s after the European Association of American Studies (EAAS) organized its conference in Budapest (Cristian 2016, 20). As Bálint Rozsnyai recalls, 1985 was a productive year for Hungarian scholars interested in American Studies: the European Association of American Studies organized its biennial conference in a Com- munist country for the first time in its history; and the first university program in Ameri- can Studies was launched in the fall. The time was different from the worst period of Communist dictatorship even though hardly anyone thought the end [of the regime] was not too far away. The importance of the EAAS conference was both political and schol- arly, in comparison the significance of the starting of the AS program was very modest. (Rozsnyai) Similar to other Hungarian and Eastern and Central European American Studies centers, since its outset, the American studies program in Szeged has favored partic- ular dynamics in understanding American culture/s. The program offered a wide, multidisciplinary pool of subjects for study and a teaching portfolio conceived as cultural studies focusing on various aspects of American history, society (racial, eth- nic, and religious groups, as well as women) and culture (including literature, film, and the arts), approached from a variety of perspectives, with a multiplicity of topics and methodological approaches (Cristian 2011, 4, 11) applied from the Hungarian, Szeged, vantage point. As Bálint Rozsnyai observed in the inaugural issue of Ameri- cana E-Journal of American Studies, American Studies is not American property. In Hungary, we have a special understand- ing of American culture, in the same way as Poles have their own special understanding of it. The specialty of the understanding is not the product of an essentialist position: rather it is the outcome of an interaction (series of interactions) of various actors—the US is one among them. Hungary and Poland have their particular understanding/inter- pretation of ‘America’—in it, the (ex-)Soviet Union is undoubtedly a significant factor. (Rozsnyai) Today, the Department of American Studies has four associate professors (among them three colleagues with habilitations) and two senior assistant professors with American Studies currently taught as a distinct program at BA level and also at graduate MA level, with teaching, mentoring, and supervising also at the Faculty of Arts’ Doctoral School of Literary Studies, English, and American Literatures and Cultures Program. The teaching staff plays an active role in the academic-scientific 52 Réka M. Cristian, Zoltán Dragon, András Lénárt life of the university by cooperating in national and international scholarly societies, such as the Hungarian Association for American Studies (HAAS), the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (HUSSE), and the International Association of Inter- American Studies (IAS) among many other national and international professional associations. Furthermore, an important area of research within our department is related to identity studies, a relatively new interdisciplinary field at the intersection of cultural studies and geography, gender and masculinity studies, minority stud- ies, and area studies. This integrates the study of key social categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and religion,