Book Launch and Culture Talk by Anna Zsubori
The English Department is proud to invite you to
a book launch and a public lecture
by
Anna Zsubori, B.A., M.A., M.Litt., PhD.
British Academiy Postdoctoral Fellow in Communication and Media
Loughborough University (UK)
Children’s Conceptualisation of Gender and LGBTQ+ Adults' Reactions to Being Framed as Threat in Anti-gender, Anti-LGBTQ+ ‘Illiberal’ Hungary
November 19, 2024, 8.50 am, P300
This interdisciplinary talk examines Hungarian tweenagers’ negotiation of gender on the basis of audience research conducted with Hungarian informants. 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 analyzes Hungarian children’s notions of gender by discussing their ideas about ‘the’ princess as a concept.
Book Launch of the Monograph Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Hungary (with Dávid Levente Palatinus)
November 20, 2024, 2.20 pm, P005
Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary examines how tweens in illiberal Hungary construct verbal and visual identities through engagement with Disney princess animations. Presenting and analyzing ethnographic research in the form of interviews with Hungarian tweens around the time of the populist government’s winning the general elections in 2018, Anna Zsubori reveals the importance of social and cultural context in establishing the Disney princess phenomenon as a heterogeneous cultural force. The ambivalent and sometimes even contradictory ideas of identity expressed by the tweens highlight the role that diverse audiences, local negotiations, and dynamic discourses play in the reception of the Disney princess animations. Combining thematic and semiotic textual analyses of the conversations, tweens’ drawings and building blocks, and broader contextual examinations of the sessions with Hungarian children, this book offers original contributions on both theoretical and methodological levels.
Anna Zsubori is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, an ambitious media sociologist specialising in conducting audience research with marginalised communities, and a scholar with several years of experience in teaching at University level. She received her PhD at the University of Leicester under its Graduate Teaching Assistantship Scheme at the School of Media, Communication, and Sociology (4 years of full support, equivalent value to AHRC funding), and has published several journal articles as well as a monograph. Anna is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a media expert with management experience in film distribution. She earned her BA in Media Studies and MA in Teaching Literature and Grammar in Hungary, and her MLitt in Film Studies from the University of Dundee, Scotland.
