About the Gender Studies Centre
Gender Studies Centre (GSC), a member organisation of AtGender, has come about as a result of the emergence of scholars at IEAS, UD who, although working in partly divergent disciplines like film studies, literary theory and criticism, linguistics, psychoanalysis, philosophy, visual culture, social history or nationalism studies, have a convergent interest, sharing the conviction that all walks of life are permeated by gender inscription, and that studying these gender inscriptions is a cutting-edge approach in current literary and cultural studies. Furthermore, the way and the consequences of this cultural inscription go beyond the realm of abstract knowledges called science or scholarship: they have an impact on how we live our everyday life, how we communicate with each other, what patterns of behaviour we adopt, how we manage our relationships, how we are positioned in the job market – in general: how we are positioned as subjects.
Cultural inscriptions, at the same time, do not mean any pre-determinism; quite the contrary: the very awareness that they are culturally and historically created and that they are not “naturally” given, provides a space for cultural critique, for a critical investigation of how and why notions of gender have come about, and what vested interests play a role in naturalising gender. The insights gained as a result of this investigation can be experienced as partly disturbing because taken-for-granted positions may be shaken; partly, however, the result may be exhilarating and liberating because age-old, but for many unsatifactory and unworkable automatisms can be done away with – both at the abstract and the everyday levels of knowledge. The task undertaken by staff members at GSC is to address these issues and to open up new vistas by offering a new set of theoretical and methodological tools for a critical investigation of various cultural phenomena.
History
The history of teaching gender studies at IEAS goes back to the early 1990s. The first course in gender studies was launched in 1993, when Nóra Séllei returned from her TEMPUS exchange scholarship at the University of Hull, UK, where she had a formative experience: encountered a team of scholars, Marion Shaw, Patsy Stoneman and Angela Leighton, who launched an MA programme in “Women and Literature”. Having developed close and long-lasting working relationships with them, and gaining new ones as well, GSC has had international support from acknowledged scholars. Parallel with this, further colleagues entered the discipline at IEAS and started to apply approaches informed by gender studies in the research.
The gender studies team at IEAS has become known nationally and internationally. They maintain contacts with other Hungarian centres of gender studies (IEAS, University of Szeged; Centre for Gender and Culture, Corvinus University, Budapest, Department of Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest) and with international scholars as well. We have had visiting scholars either for one-off lectures or for doing whole courses: Marion Shaw (currently Emeritus Professor, University of Loughborough, UK), Patsy Stoneman (currently Emeritus Reader, University of Hull, UK), Angela Leighton (professor, University of Cambridge), Ann Heilmann (professor, University of Hull, UK), Ruth Evans (professor, University of Stirling, Scotland), Mark Llewellyn (University of Liverpool), and Eleanor Bell (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland). But we also keep contacts in the Central-Eastern European region: with the Department of English at the Catholic University, Ruzomberok, Slovakia, the University of the West, Timisoara, Romania, Masaryk University, Brno, the Czech Republic, Comenius Egyetem, Bratislva, Slovakia, Burgenland Research Centre, Eisenstadt, Austria, and beyond: Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Canakkale, Turkey.
Courses and students' output
GSC has been offering courses in an ever increasing number since other senior and more and more junior colleague joined the team. These courses are present at every level of studies, from BA through MA to Ph.D., and have always been popular with students, whether in a seminar or lecture format, whether required, required optional or optional. An introductory course on gender studies is currently a required component of the British Studies track in the BA programme, but interested students can have a great number of other, related courses as well. The tangible result of this interest of students is about one hundred degree theses and almost thirty extracurricular essays, some of the national prize-winners, written on related topics.
For details click on:
Current courses / Gender Studies Centre
Courses on offer / Gender Studies Centre
Theses completed / Gender Studies Centre
Extracurricular essays / Gender Studies Centret
The quality of teaching is also indicated by the fact that our students stand a good chance to do successful postgraduate studies. Several of them have managed to gain a prestigious scholarship as MA students at the Department of Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest: Márta Kőrösi, Judit Garamvölgyi, Eszter Zimányi, Éva Kovács, Andrea Csiki, Viktória Soós, among others; Márta Kőrösi and Ágnes Györke even gained full or partial Ph.D.-grants at CEU. Furthermore, at IEAS, UD György Kalmár defended his Ph.D. thesis on gendered metaphors of truth in philosophical discourse in 2007, and in 2009 yet another Ph.D. was defended successfully, by Annamária Csatári, whose thesis was written on Margaret Drabble's and A.S Byatt's sister narratives.
Teaching staff
Dr. Séllei Nóra, head of Centre, professor
Dr. Bényei Tamás, professor
Dr. Kalmár György, reader (associate professor)
Dr. Bülgözdi Imola, senior lecturer (assistant professor)
Dr. Győri Zsolt, senior lecturer (assistant professor)
Dr. Mathey Éva, senior lecturer (assistant professor)
Ureczky Eszter, senior lecturer (instructor)
Hudácskó Brigitta, lecturer (instructor)
Former members:
Kiss Boglárka, Phd-student
Máté Éva Gyöngy, PhD-student
Szabó Orsolya, Phd-student
Conferences and publications
Gender Studies Centre and its members intend to participate in academic life actively. The range of their activities is indicated by their professional output (see individual CV-s and the list of gender-related publications). The Centre, however, has organised two international conferences as well. The conference: ‘Alternative Approaches to English-Language Cultures in the Nineteenth Century’ (Debrecen, September 1998) had a strong component in gender studies, including Patsy Stoneman's plenary lecture on Jane Eyre intertexts; whereas in the case of the conference ‘Woman as Subject, the Female Subject’ (Debrecen, April 2006) the main focus was on gendered subjectivity. Organising this conference was made easy by an enthusiastic team of student helpers.
(For further research details click here.)
These two conferences had further results, in the form of a volume each: Alternative Approaches to English-Speaking Cultures in the 19th Century. (Debrecen: Dept. of British Studies, 1999.), edited by Nóra Séllei and Tamás Bényei; and the best papers for the latter one were selected and edited for the volume A nő mint szubjektum, a női szubjektum. ([Woman as Subject, the Female Subject]. Orbis Litterarum. Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, 2007.) by Nóra Séllei, who also guest-edited a special issue of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies: Femininity and Subjectivity (9.1 [2003]), with an international pool of contributors.
Research projects
Between 2012-2013, five members of the Centre (Dr. Nóra Séllei, Debrecen team leader, Eszter Ureczky, Éva Gyöngy Máté, Boglárka Kiss and Orsolya Szabó) were involved in an international project conducted by five gender studies institutions, entitled:
Is Women's Education a(t) Risk?,
financed by the TEMPUS-Grundtvig Life-long Learning Public Foundation.
Further participants:
Burgenland Research Centre, Eisenstadt, Austria;
Gender Studies Centre, Faculty of Philosophy, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia;
Gender Studies, Sociology Department, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, the Czech Republic;
Romanian Society for English and American Studies, The Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, Timisoara, Romania.
The closing event of the project:
Venue: Debrecen, Bem tér 19.
Time: 2-6 p.m., 28 May 2013
The invitation (in Hungarian);
The brochure of the project results (in Hungarian)
