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The English Department is proud to invite you to

a public lecture followed by a sing-along session with the banjo

by

David Livingstone, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Head of the Literary Section of the Department of English and American Studies
Palacký University, Olomouc

Shakespeare('s) Lives: Adaptations of the Bard in Contemporary Literature

April 19, 2023, 6.00 pm, P005

Like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, Shakespeare is still very much around today, but not always in forms we might expect. This talk will primarily explore Shakespearian themed books from the last fifty years. This will cover not only novels which are contemporary adaptations of the plays (especially novels in the so-called Hogarth Shakespeare Series), but also books dealing with Shakespeare the historical person. There will also be references to the development of this tradition as well as a brief discussion of the film adaptations and TV series (Shakespeare in Love, Upstart Crow).

David Livingstone is an American who has been living and working in the Czech Republic for more than thirty years. He teaches Shakespeare, modernism, Czech culture, children’s literature and American folk music at Palacký University, Olomouc. His doctoral dissertation, entitled Subversive Characters and Techniques in Shakespeare's History Plays, attempted feminist and cultural materialist readings of the first Henriad in particular. He has recently published a book, In Our Own Image: Fictional Representations of William Shakespeare, which looks at the wealth of novels, plays, short stories, films, television series and even comics focused on Shakespeare as a character.

The English Department is proud to invite you to

a public lecture

by

Anna Zsubori, B.A., M.A., M.Litt., PhD.

University Teacher in Communication and Media
Loughborough University (UK)

The Good, the Bad and the Disney: Tweens’ Negotiation of Gender through the Disney Princess Phenomenon in Anti-gender, Post-socialist, "Illiberal" Hungary

April 13, 2023, 14.20 pm, P201

This interdisciplinary talk, as part of a bigger project, examines Hungarian tweenagers’ negotiation of gender after engaging with diverse scholarly works from several fields – such as communication, cultural, feminist media, film and tweenhood studies – on the one hand, and conducting audience research with Hungarian informants on the other. It does so by investigating the concept of ‘the’ princess, including, but not limited to, Disney Princesses, while offering unique theoretical contributions and discussing the complexities of the academically-overlooked Princess Phenomenon. This talk gives an overview of the links between fairy tales and animation, followed by a brief history on audience research with children. Further, it covers the historical, social, and political context in contemporary Hungary and finally it analyses Hungarian children’s notions of gender by discussing their ideas about ‘the’ princess as a concept.

Anna is a communication, media and social studies scholar specialised in conducting audience research with international child participants, and a university teacher in communication and media. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Leicester under its Graduate Teaching Assistantship Scheme at the School of Media, Communication, and Sociology, and is a published researcher with a monograph under contract, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a media expert with management experience in film distribution. Anna achieved her B.A. in Media Studies and M.A. in Teaching Literature and Grammar in Hungary, and her M.Litt. in Film Studies from the University of Dundee, Scotland

The English Department is proud to invite you to

three exciting public lectures

by

prof. dr. habil. György Endre Szőnyi, Ph.D., D.Sc.

professor emeritus of English, University of Szeged
visiting professor of cultural/intellectual history, Central European University

The Development of Gothic Architecture in England
April 4, 2023, 10.40 am, P003

The Gothic style was invented by French monks in the 12th century and from there it spread all over Europe, creating interesting national idioms of the international style. The English story is rather peculiar. While at the beginning the imitation of French gothic was dominating, in the last phase (15th-early 16th century) a special English Gothic, the so called perpendicular style emerged. What is the meaning of this difficult word? How did it come to life? My video-illustrated lecture will show not only the best examples of English Gothic but I will also explain some technical details which made its appearance possible.

Whose Contemporary Was/Is Shakespeare?
April 4, 2023, 4.10 pm, P200

This BA level informative talk raises the question, how and why is Shakespeare still appealing today - we can say with Jan Kott's famous book title from the 1960s: he is our contemporary. At the same time it is also interesting to look at the genesis of the English Renaissance theatre in whose world Shakespeare was fully integrated. I will touch upon the early modern dramatic traditions, the development of the theatre buildings, and the influence of Aristotle's poetics as well as the medieval spectacles.

The Development of Esoteric Fiction from Romanticism to the Present
April 5, 2023, 6 pm, P005

As even modern psychologists and scholars of religious studies claim: we are magical beings. The lure of the occult is as strong as ever and literature has always been catering for the demand. In my talk I will briefly survey the development of esoteric fiction (strongly associated with the Gothic, the fantastic, the uncanny); how it became rather
independent in the twentieth century; and how it started merging again with fantasy writing in the 21st century up to the present. For the latest developments I will touch upon two trilogies which recently also inspired rather successful television series: Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Deborah Harkness' All Souls Trilogy (aka The Discovery of Witches).

GYÖRGY E. SZŐNYI is professor emeritus of English (University of Szeged) and visiting professor of  cultural/intellectual history (CEU, Budapest/Vienna). His interests include cultural theory, the Renaissance, the  Western Esoteric traditions, and conventions of symbolization – early modern and (post)modern.

Important monographs:

Pictura & Scriptura. 20th-Century Theories of Cultural Representations (in Hungarian, Szeged: JATEPress, 2004); Gli angeli di John Dee (Roma: Tre Editori, 2004); John Dee's Occultism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004, 2010).

Forthcoming:

The Multimediality of Culture and the Emblematic Way of Seeing (Turnhaut: Brepols, 2023).

In the making: The Enoch Readers. A Cultural History of Angels, Magic, and Ascension on High; The Lure of the Occult: Western Esotericism in Modern Fiction (planned in Hungarian).

Professor Szőnyi held various scholarships (Mellon, Fulbright), taught for two years at the University of Warsaw, spent about two years with research and teaching in the USA, and for a year had a visiting professorship at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (UK).

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