‘IDENTITY-BUILDING IN THE
ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD’
Siófok, Hungary
Thursday, April 28 – Sunday, May 1, 2011.
Conference Program
‘Identity-building in the English-speaking world’
Siófok, Hungary – Thursday, April 28 – Sunday, May 1, 2011.
Registration:
Thursday, April 28 between 12 and 18 PM in Siófok – venue of the conference
THURSDAY - APRIL 28
15.00- 15.15Official Opening / Hivatalos megnyitó
Dr. Balázs Árpád, Siófok város Polgármestere /Mayor of Siófok town andDr. h.c. Péter Szabó Ph.D Rector of Kodolányi János Univerity of Applied Sciences.
15.15-15.30
Dr.Csilla SÁRDI, Head of the English Department and Vice-Rector of Kodolányi János University of Applied Sciences:The Role of the Department of English Language & Literature in the 21st Century
Useful instructions and guidelines during the conference and while in Siófok by organizers
15.30Plenary lecture:
Prof. Dr. Waldemar ZACHARASIEWICZ, Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria : Collective Identities and Stereotyping in North American Discourses
16.30-17.00Coffee break
17.00-19.00Session
Chair: Prof. Dr. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, member of the Academy of Austria
János KENYERES, Budapest: Problems of Identity in Recent Canadian Fiction
Krisztina KODÓ, Budapest, Hungary: Creation of Cultural Icons Within Canadian Art – Emily Carr and The Group of Seven.
Anna JAKABFI, Budapest, Hungary: Upton Sinclair(1878-1968)’s American Identity.
19.30Buffet reception
FRIDAY - APRIL 29
9.00-11.00 (Sessions run parallel)
Session IRoom 115. First Floor.
Chair: Krisztina KODÓ
Robert MAHONY, USA: The Colonial Past: Jonathan Swift and the Concept of Allegiance in Colonial Ireland
Sladjan PETKOVIC, Doboj, Croatia: Individual versus Collective in James Joyce’s Dubliners.
Kálmán RICHTER, Budapest, Hungary: Identity or identity creation: conflict of laws in English-speaking Europe.
Session IIRoom 116. First Floor
Chair: Csilla SÁRDI
Irina PERIANOVA, Sofia, Bulgaria: Crossings Taken – Passages Lost
SZEMERE, Pál, Budapest, Hungary: Transcultural Trash Tabloids.
Adeline VASQUEZ-PARRA, Brussels, Belgium: Acadian Identity in the 18th century: permanence and transformation of a Maritime Culture in Canada and the United States
11.00-11.30Coffee Break
11.30-13.00
SessionRoom 116. First Floor
Chair: János KENYERES
Tamás DEMÉNY, Piliscsaba, Hungary: Building Identities by Returning Home in Zora Neale Hurstons’s and Richard Wright’s Autobiographical Writings
Judit MOLNÁR, Debrecen, Hungary: In and Out of Montreal: Duddy Kravitz’s Being on the Road
Borbála RICHTER, Budapest, Hungary: And then the British came: the impact of English in southern Africa at the turn of the 19th century.
13.00-14.30LUNCH break
14.30-16.00
SessionRoom 115. First Floor.
Chair: Judit-Ágnes KÁDÁR
André DODEMAN, Grenoble, France: David Adam Richards’ Miramichi Trilogy
Taras LUPUL,Chernivtsi, Ukraine: Ukrainian Canadians
Gábor WERTHEIMER, Budapest, Hungary: Jewish identities in post 2nd World War American literature.
Barbara SALCBURGEROVA, Ruzomberok, Slovakia: Symbols, Scenes and Sociology – Clash of Cultures from Hollywood point of view.
16.00-17.00
PLENARY SESSION:
Professor Dr. Tibor FRANK, Professor of History, Director of School of English and American Studies of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary – The Making of the American Identity
17.00-19.00 Dinner break
19.00-20.30Canadian Cultural Evening
Poetic reading titled Blood is Blood by Endre FARKAS and Carolyne Marie SOUAID, Montreal, Canada.
SATURDAY, APRIL 30
9.00-11.00
Session I.Room 115. First Floor.
Chair: Borbála RICHTER
Tibor FRANK (Urbanist), Toronto, Canada: Immigrants’ Identity: Hungarians in Canada
Christina-Georgina VOICU, Iasi, Romania: Hybridity, Dialogism and Identity in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.
Olivera PETROVIC, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Cultural Transition in Timothy Mo’s Novel Sour Sweet.
David PALATINUS, Budapest, Hungary: Trauma and Identity: Derrida’s ‘On Forgiveness’ and McEwan’s ‘Atonement’
Session II. Room 116. First Floor.
Chair: Robert MAHONY
Svetlana MITIC, Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Sahib and the Drama of Post-Socialist Post-War Society of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Diana YANKOVA, Sofia, Bulgaria: Transgressing Communicative and Linguistic Boundaries: Statutory Texts in Unifying Europe.
Ivan LACKO, Bratislava, Slovakia: The Power of Will – Undercurrents of Shakespearian Politics in Tony Kushner’s Plays
Mária PALLA, Budapest, Hungary: The Identity Formation of the Diasporic Subject in the Fictional World of Salman Rushdie.
11.00-11.30Coffee break
11.30-13.00
SessionRoom 108.First Floor.
Chair: Judit MOLNÁR
Elisabetta PAVAN, Venice, Italy: ‘What Else Should We Teach?’ – Socio-Cultural Competence in act.
Judit, NAGY, Budapest, Hungary: Metaphors of Belonging and Not Belonging in Canadian Ethnic Writers’ Short Stories
Neva CEBRON, Koper, Slovenia: Teaching English as a “lingua franca” to achieve intercultural communicative competence.
13.00-14.30LUNCH break
14.30-16.00
Session I. Room 115. First Floor.
Chair: Krisztina KODÓ
Peter BARRER, Bratislava, Slovakia: From Better Britons to One-Eyed Cantabs: Popular Representations of an Urban Pakeha Identity in New Zealand’s South Island.
Michael GEANEY, Dublin, Ireland: The Irish Language, Identity and Politics in the past 30 years in Ireland
Eszter SZENCZI, Budapest, Hungary: Searching for a Stolen Identity in Canada
Session II.Room 116. First Floor.
Chair: David PALATINUS
Vitaly MAKAR, Chernivitsi, Ukraine: Canadian Multiculturalism: the Role of the Ukrainien Ethnic Group
Dora BERNHARDT, Budapest, Hungary: Local and Global (North American) Identity in the Work of Douglas Coupland.
Judit-Ágnes KÁDÁR, Eger, Hungary: Indianness, Whiteness and Cultural Appropriation and Recent Canadian and American Going Indian Narratives.
16.00-19.00Dinner break
19.00-21.00Irish Cultural Evening
Hosted by the Embassy of the Republic of Ireland
Official opening of the evening by His Excellency John Deady, the Ambassador of Ireland in Budapest: State of cultural/ political identity in Ireland today
Irish Songs and Poems – presented by Michael GEANEY
Ending of conference
Sunday 9.00-11.00 – Post-conference sightseeing walk in Siófok for those interested
Kodolányi János University of Applied Sciences
English Department
Conference ’Identity Building in the English-Speaking World’
Siófok, Hungary April 28-30, 2011
ABSTRACTS
of the Conference Papers
Peter BARRER, Ph.D.,Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia
From Better Britons to One-eyed Cantabs: Popular Representations of an Urban Pakeha Identity in New Zealand’s South Island
The city of Christchurch in New Zealand’s South Island was once renowned for its ‘Englishness’, an image which is still emphasised in promotional material and other official representations of the city. This paper challenges the robustness of this imagery and asserts that popular representations of Christchurch’s pakeha inhabitants (‘Anglo’ white New Zealanders descended from colonial settlers to the region, who form the city’s ethnic majority) are far more complex and fraught with various tensions: masculine vs. feminine, Maori vs. pakeha, urban vs. rural and conservative ‘respectable’ culture vs. youth-oriented ‘anti-culture’. Following a review of the academic literature, the paper examines self- and other-assigned representations of Christchurch pakeha in the New Zealand media and in popular culture. This paper asserts that there has clearly been a move away from Anglophilic representations of the city and its inhabitants towards representations of parochialism/local nationalism centred on sporting and other local traditions, which clearly depict Christchurch pakeha as a second ‘indigenous’ identity in the region.
Dora BERNHARDT, Institute of English Languages and Cultures and English Linguistics,
Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, Budapest, Hungary
Local and Global (North-American) Identity in the Work of Douglas Coupland
In this presentation I want to argue that Douglas Coupland can be regarded as an ideal representative of the ambivalence of contemporary (Western) identity between the local and the global. Several of his novels are played out against an American landscape and all of his heroes are immersed in North-American pop-culture; at the same time, the many autobiographical elements of his Vancouver background time and again ground him in that particular place and identity. In my paper I will look at some of the characteristics of this ambiguous identity as they appear in Coupland’s books, and also try to connect them to his his creative work.
Neva CEBRON, Ph.D., University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia
Teaching English as a “lingua franca” to achieve intercultural communicative competence
Raising intercultural communicative competence has gained a central place in many considerations and discussions in the globalized world. The present paper therefore examines and analyses approaches to achieving intercultural competence proposed by a number of prominent authors from the American and European cultural environment, such as E.T. Hall, Gert Hofstede, R.D. Lewis, Anna Wierzbicka, Elsa Oksaar, Michael Byram, Manuela Guilhelme. They base their theoretical and applied methods of teaching, as well as their approaches to raising intercultural awareness in the intercultural dialogue, while highlighting slightly different levels of communication, thus also suggesting somewhat different conclusions. As a consequence two approaches have been developed: cross-cultural and intercultural communicative approach. We could say that even considerations about the intercultural dialogue show signs of cultural conditioning. Furthermore, the paper deals with the application of such theoretical premises in the English classroom at the tertiary level. Building on language teaching methods, the paper suggest ways of extending the theme to cross-curricular units, since actualization of theoretical insights in the classroom lends itself nicely to intertwining both a critical cultural awareness of multilingualism in ones own environment and the intercultural communicative competence, leading thus to an "intercultural citizenship".
Tamás DEMÉNY, M.A., Ph.D.student; Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba, Hungary
Building Identities by Returning Home in Zora Neale Hurston's and Richard Wright's Autobiographical Writings
Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright have been considered opposites in their attitudes to African American identities. While Hurston portrays her hometown and Southern folk traditions in order to celebrate cultural values, Wright repudiates the South altogether, seeing no values to be salvaged from there. I will argue that these opposite points of view are both based on the same authorial attitude: in order to report on their homes, both authors withdraw from the South to have the objectivity of an outsider while at the same time maintaining the authenticity of an insider. A close study of the narrative techniques employed in Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road and Wright's Black Boy will reveal that both authors report on conditions of being black in the segregated South by framing their authorial distance around descriptions of the emotional stake involved in their attachments to parental homes. But it is exactly through this contradictory attitude of distance and closeness that the South can become a place of "interstitial intimacy" (Homi Bhabha's term) in their books, creating a possibility for non-Southerners to both know and feel minority life, understand and experience minority identities there. In that sense, both books can be referred to as autoethnographies.
Andre DODEMAN, Ph.D., University of Grenoble, France
Writing the Province: David Adams Richards’ Miramichi Trilogy
Set in the maritime province of New Brunswick, David Adams Richards’ Miramichi trilogy (Nights Below Station Street (1988), Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990) and For Those who Hunt the Wounded Down (1993)) is characterized by its sense of home, place and for its depiction of the tight relations between national and regional identity in contemporary Canada. This paper intends to focus on the reasons why Richards has concentrated his work on regional Canada unlike writers like Hugh MacLennan who have devoted their fiction to the creation of a national myth capable of transcending regions and provinces. These reasons also account for Richards’ formal choice to write realistic fiction. While many writers chose postmodern art forms in the second half of the twentieth century, Richards resorted to realism in order to portray a specific maritime experience and convey a given idea of Eastern Canadian authenticity. A close analysis of this choice shall help to question notions of regional and national identity, the various forms by which identity is constructed and the porous borders between literary paradigms.
Professor Dr. Tibor FRANK, Professor of History, Director of School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
The Making of the American Identity
Tibor FRANK, Urbanist, Dr. President of Urban Innovative Solutions,Inc. Missisauga, Ont. Canada
Immigrants’ Identity in Canada – some case studies, focus on Hungarians
Canada is usually described as a multicultural nation, meaning that there are many races, with diverse cultural background and heritage. As a result of centuries of immigration, this country is a mix of people. In fact Canada’s policies towards immigration focus on multiculturalism. Even the Native Canadians (aboriginals) can trace their origins to immigrants. At any given time of recent history, between 10% and 20% of Canadian citizens were born outside of Canada. This number currently lies at about 15%. The presentation will briefly examine the early years of immigration, look at different aspects of attitudes towards new immigrants in Canada, as well as briefly examine immigration in recent decades. We will look at ethnic and racial diversity, the development of multicultural policy and how prospects look for the future. We will develop case studies for a few different scenarios. We will focus on Hungarian immigrants in several different era of the last century and compare them how they dealt with their cultural identity. The greater the diversity of the racial and cultural mix, the greater the need for tolerance and openness in accepting one another as fellow Canadians. With globalization and the ever increasing movement of people from one country to another, the challenge of appreciating and accommodating cultural differences has become a universal experience. A multicultural policy that is sensitive to the needs of both long-time residents and the newly arrived will probably meet with the greatest success. Canada’s future depends on the commitments of all its citizens to a unified Canadian identity, while still taking pride in the uniqueness of their individual heritage.
Michael GEANEY, Dublin, Ireland
The Irish Language, Identity and Politics in the Past Thirty Years in Ireland
Anna JAKABFI, Dr.Habil. visiting professor,Kodolányi University of Applied Sciences, Székesfehérvár-Budapest, Hungary
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)’ s American Identity
Upton Sinclair, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author is best known as a muckraker after his first and best-known novel The Jungle (1906). He wrote more than 90 books in several genres. The topic this paper will discuss is primarily based on the lengthy, eleven novel-cycle, the Lanny Budd series - named after the main hero - which tackles world history between 1919 and 1953. The protagonist meets the top politicians and economic gurus of Europe and the power elite of the United States. Lanny Budd is an art expert, connaisseur of paintings, raised in and attached to Europe, however he is proud of his American origin and its democratic values. He becomes a secret presidential agent of F.D.Roosevelt. In this capacity using art as a camouflage he contributes to the successful concluding of World War II for the United States. The seemingly detached ivory tower dweller is deep down a dedicated American democrat with strong emotional ties to France, England and a democratic Germany.
Judit-Ágnes KÁDÁR, Ph.D. Eszterházy College, Eger, Hungary
Indianness, Whiteness and Cultural Appropriation and Recent Canadian and American Going Indian Narratives
Going and playing Indian narratives have always centred around the false assumption that Indianness is a representation of a fundamentally alien culture that could locate Western white Anglo culture as the civilized opposite of the cultural Other that stands for uncivilized, savage, barbarous and primitive. Up until quite recently, these strongholds of colonial racist rhetoric and epistemology were reinforced by various forms of cultural representation, including high and low literature, films, photos, ethnographic and Wild West shows. However, in the last forty years, cultural critics gradually started to reveal the fact that Indianness has very limited reference to any actual First Nations culture, while its generic nature and distance from a distinct group of peoples makes this term refer to what is missing from non-Native, that is, white Anglo and European culture. The basic recognition and the manifestations of whiteness as an epistemological barrier are the cornerstones of my extended research, while the present paper examines how whiteness as a relational identity operates in general and in the context of recent Canadian and American fiction in particular, why the notion of Otherness serves the traditional race relations and is challenged by recent literary texts, what is behind the term Indianness and how is the stereotypical Indian image deconstructed in arts, and how Indianness as a constructed identity is targeted through the passing rituals literary works like Philip Kreiner’s Contact Printor Armand Ruffo’s Grey Owl: the Mystery of Archibald Belaney depict.
János KENYERES, Ph.D., Vice-Director, School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, President of the Central European Association of Canadian Studies CEACS
Problems of Identity in Recent Canadian Fiction
Identity means such different concepts as personal identity, characteristics or feelings that distinguish a person or a group of persons from others, and sameness. In other words, the concept of identity relates to individuality as well as belonging to a group, being different as well as being identical. The paper intends to explore aspects of these seemingly contradictory meanings of identity as manifested in three contemporary short stories, “The Inert Landscapes of György Ferenc” by Tamas Dobozy, “The Second Strongest Man” by David Bezmozgis, and “Simple Recipes” by Madeleine Thien.
Krisztina KODÓ, Ph.D., Professor, Kodolányi University of Applied Sciences, Székesfehérvár-Budapest, Hungary
Creation of Cultural Icons Within Canadian Art – Emily Carr and The Group of Seven
Emily Carr and The Group of Seven are considered cultural icons in Canada. The paper intends to focus on the artistic development of these personalities. How and why their achievements and artistic output may be considered unique within Canadian cultural history. They were ultimately looking for ways of presenting on canvas their own interpretations and feelings of Canadian nature and landscapes specifically. Their technique and vibrant colours were experiments in expressing their religious, and philosophical beliefs, as well as their devotion to nature.