Zsuzanna Lénárt-Muszka - CV

Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka, PhD

Curriculum Vitae

March 2025

 

Research interests

The portrayals of motherhood, womanhood, and embodiment in contemporary North American (US & Canadian) short fiction.

 

Teaching experience

  • 2024- : assistant professor, Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen, Hungary
  • 2020-2024: junior lecturer, Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen, Hungary
  • 2016-2020: part-time instructor, Institute of English and American Studies and Center for Foreign Languages, University of Debrecen
  • 2012-2019: ESL teacher, LingoGroup, Oxford, and Globus language schools; examiner, Globus language school

 

Qualifications, education

  • 2016-2020: Doctoral School of Literature and Cultural Studies, North American Studies, University of Debrecen, title: PhD
    • Dissertation defense: 8 November, 2021, certificate no.: 180/2021/PHD, qualification: summa cum laude
    • Title of dissertation: Mothers in the Wake of Slavery: The Im/possibility of Motherhood in Post-1980 African American Women’s Prose
  • 2015-2017: teacher of English, MA, University of Debrecen
  • 2010-2012: MA in American Studies, University of Debrecen
  • 2007-2010: BA in English Studies, University of Debrecen; Business English and translation specialization

 

Grants and scholarships

  • 2023-2024: Postdoctoral Scholarship of the New National Excellence Program, “The Narratological and Rhetorical Strategies of Contemporary North American Short Fiction”
  • 2022- : participant in the European Commission’s Recovery and Resilience Facility program: “Infrastructure and skills development of practice-oriented higher education at the University of Debrecen” (RRF-2.1.2-21-2022-0000); developed and taught skills development classes
  • 2021-2022: EFOP-3.4.3-16-2016-00021 “Development of the University of Debrecen for the Simultaneous Improvement of Higher Education and its Accessibility” grant; co-authored the e-learning course „All Eyes on EYE”
  • 2018-2019: rounds 1 and 2 of EFOP 3.6.1 “Venture Catapult” Grant for Young Researchers, aimed at developing entrepreneurship skills and social innovation; co-authored the e-learning course “Debating and Innovation”
  • 2018: Universitas scholarship
  • 2011: Pro Regione scholarship
  • 2009-2010: DETEP scholarship

 

Memberships and positions in professional associations

  • 2024- : Center for International Migration, University of Debrecen, secretary, course co-ordinator
  • 2024- : International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship (IAMAS), member
  • 2022- : American Hungarian Educators Association (AHEA), member
  • 2021- : Central European Asociation for Canadian Studies (CEACS), member
  • 2018-: Gender Studies Network of the Society for the Study of English, member
  • 2018: Workshop of the journal Alföld, member
  • 2016- : Hungarian Society for the Study of English (HUSSE), member
  • 2016- : Hungarian Association for American Studies (HAAS), member
  • 2011-2012: Hatvani István College for Advanced Study, member
  • 2009-2010: Talent Management Program (DETEP)

 

 

Academic experience

 

  • Editorial board membership

2024 - : editorial member of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, a peer-reviewed, Scopus-indexed journal

 

  • Peer reviewer

Mississippi Quarterly, World Literature Studies, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice,  Journal of Narrative Theory, Demeter Press Demeter Press

 

  • Writing Center of the Institute of English and American Studies

2020-2023: tutor; then: faculty advisor, organizer

 

  • Member of the Institute Council, 2021-

 

  • PR and recruitment coordinator of the Institute, 2021-2024

 

  • Development of e-learning materials
    • 2021-2022: co-author of All Eyes on EYE, an e-learning EYE prep course for students (with Dr. Ildikó Csépes, Dr. Fruzsina Szabó, Dr. Balázs Venkovits)
    • 2021: co-author of an EFL methodology e-learning course for students (with Dr. Fruzsina Szabó); English version: Boost Your English, 2024
    • 2018- 2019: co-author of an e-learning course titled “Debating and Innovation” (with Dr. Balázs Venkovits)

 

  • Organizing, chairing
    • 2024: co-organizer of “Looking Back and Ahead: Exploring Uniquely Canadian Cultural Narratives”, Debrecen University Symposium, 2024, University of Debrecen
    • 2024: co-organizer of “Johnson-Reed 100 Years Later”: Critical Reflections on the Global Legacy of US Immigration Quotas, 1924-2024, University of Debrecen
    • 2022-: co-ordinator of the collaboration between the Institute of English and American Studies and American Corner Debrecen; organizer of the event series “IEAS goes to AC”
    • 2022-: organizer of the video essay competition of the North American Department of IEAS
    • 2021: committee member, OTDK (National Student Research Society); assessor of two papers in the national round
    • 2019: organizing and chairing the panel “Black Women’s Experiences of Trauma” at the HAAS 13 conference (Debrecen)
    • 2018-: (co-)organizer and chair the Young Researchers’ Workshop of the Institute of English and American Studies (Debrecen, Hungary)
    • 2017-: member of the Organizing Committee of DEbate (a debate competition for high school students), judge

 

 

  • Language testing
    • 2018-2023: annual complex testing and assessment of the English language proficiency of Stipendium Hungaricum PhD students at the Institute of English and American Studies (Debrecen, Hungary)
    • 2019: revision of the oral exam tasks of the English Yardstick Exam of the Institute of English and American Studies
    • 2017-: test-maker, examiner, and co-coordinator of the English Yardstick Exam of the Institute of English and American Studies; co-developer of the diagnostic test DEtect

 

  • Courses taught

BA, English studies

  1. BTAN23000BA American Literature 1   
  2. BTAN23001BA American Literature 2.
  3. BTAN25007BA English in Advertising and the Media
  4. BTAN10000BA Essay Writing and Research
  5. BTAN27014BA Skills Development in Business English
  6. BTAN10001BA Skills Development: Reading & Speaking
  7. BTAN10002BA Skills Development: Speaking & Listening
  8. BTAN10003BA Skills Development: Writing & Composition
  9. BTAN33006BA Black Women’s Writing
  10. BTAN33000BA 21st-Century North America Through Short Fiction

MA, American Studies

AN3018MA Canadian Short Fiction

MA, Teacher training

  1. BTAN3101OMA English Language Teaching Methodology 1.
  2. BTAN5100OMA English Language Teaching Methodology 2.
  3. BTAN5204OMA Teaching Contemporary American Culture and Litearture
  4. BTAN5107OMA Language Awareness
  5. BTAN2002OMA: Teaching Argumentation

PhD

BTP2BR_T_45_01 Mentoring Part-time Instructors: Teaching Toolkit

Other

  1. BTNYF00141 Angol felsőfokú előkészítő C1
  2. BTTAP103 Vitakészség, érveléstechnika
  3. BTAN(L)33011BA / BTAN3312OMA Regional and Multicultural Studies: Introduction to Canada and Australia (team-taught lecture)
  4. BTEM0010-03 Migráció, irodalom, film (team-taught lecture)
  5. BTEM0010-06 (Hi)stories of Migration (team-taught lecture)

 

  • Courses developed
      • AN3018MA Canadian Short Fiction
      • BTAN33000BA 21st-Century North America Through Short Fiction
      • BTAN33006BA Black Women’s Writing
      • BTP2BR_T_45_01 Mentoring Part-time Instructors: Teaching Toolkit (with Gabriella Moise)
      • BTTAP103 Vitakészség, érveléstechnika
      • RRF grant: Vitakészség, érveléstechnika and Debating Skills
      • E-learning course: All Eyes on EYE. Elearning.unideb.hu. With Dr. Ildikó Csépes, Dr. Balázs Venkovits, Dr. Fruzsina Szabó. 2022.
      • E-learning course: Útmutató a sikeres és önálló nyelvtanuláshoz: Kézikönyv és módszertani kisokos a DE hallgatóinak és munkatársainak (2021). Elearning.unideb.hu. With Dr. Fruzsina Szabó. English version: Boost Your Englsih, 2024.
      • E-learning course: Vita és innováció: Bevezetés a vitamódszer használatába a tanórán és azon kívül (2019. Moodle. With Dr. Balázs Venkovits.

 

  • Mentoring and thesis supervision

Mentoring:

    • Hatvani István College of Advanced Study and DETEP: Fazekas Fruzsina (2022- ), Valicskó Sára Viktória [Porcsin Sára Viktória] (2023- )

Thesis supervision

Teacher training MA:

Szilágyi Réka, 2018

Veréb Petra, 2021

Szalontai Veronika Katalin, 2022

Gábor Adrienn, 2023

Sipos Vivien, 2023

 

BA:

Bak Gabriella, 2022   

Bak Ildikó, 2022

Mártin Andrea, 2022

Szabó Rebeka, 2022

Zilahi Fanni, 2022

Kövér Beatrix, 2024

 

MA:

Bak Ildikó, 2024

Zilahi Fanni, 2024

 

Publications

 

https://m2.mtmt.hu/gui2/?type=authors&mode=browse&sel=10055821&view=simpleList

 

Conference presentations

  1. 2024 October: Looking Back and Ahead - Exploring Uniquely Canadian Cultural Narratives (Debrecen University Symposium): “Mapping the Maternal: Narrating Embodiment in Canadian Short Fiction”
  2. 2024 June: IAMAS, Boston and online: “Maternal Embodiment and Reproductive Choices in Contemporary US Short Fiction”
  3. 2024 May: Maple Leaf and Eagle conference, Helsinki/online: “Language and Belonging in Selected Stories by David Bezmozgis and Téa Mutonji”
  4. 2023 April: EAAS Access to Equality: Reproductive Justice in the United States conference, Debrecen: “Portrayals of Reproductive Rights Abuses and Embodiment in Contemporary Black, Chicana, and Native American Fiction”
  5. 2023 March: Women and Their Body conference, Paderborn, Németo./online: „Resisting Reproductive Rights Abuses: Womanhood and Motherhood in Contemporary American Short Fiction: Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s ’The Old Doctor’s Story, ’Danielle Evans’s ’Harvest,’ and Janet Campbell Hale’s ’Claire’”
  6. 2023 January: HUSSE conference, Miskolc: „Revisiting the Ghost Trope in Black Women’s Writing: Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s ’The Old Doctor’s Story’”
  7. 2022 October: Canadian Landscapes, a Central European Association for Canadian Studies conference, Budapest: „“Gendered Emotional Landscapes in Téa Mutonji’s Shut Up You’re Pretty”
  8. 2022 June: Neo-slave Narratives, Liverpool, UK/online: „Challenging the Lenticular Logic of Representation in Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose”
  9. 2022 May: Maple Leaf and Eagle conference, Helsinki/online: “Against the Disfigurement of Black Girlhood: Rebellious Teenagers in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones and Téa Mutonji’s Shut Up You’re Pretty”
  10. 2022 April: AHEA (American Hungarian Educators Association) conference, online: „Embodiment, Violence, and Intertextuality in Anna Szabó T.’s Szabadulógyakorlat.”
  11. 2022 March: Southeastern American Studies Association Conference, Birmingham, AL, USA/online: “The Regenerative Potential of Motherhood in Contemporary Black Women’s Writing.”
  12. 2022 January: HUSSE conference, Budapest/online: „The Ailing Maternal Body as a Site of Unknowability and Violence in Willa C. Richards’s ’Failure to Thrive’”
  13. 2021 December: Társadalmi innováció és egyetem a 21. században (Social Innovation and the University in the 21st Century), Debrecen/online: „Vita és innováció: a vitamódszer iskolai alkalmazása a társadalmi innováció szolgálatában” (Debating and Innovation: Using Debating in the Classroom in the Service of Social Innovation”)
  14. 2021 November: Alice Munro 90: Central European Interpretations konferencia, Budapest/online: „Ineffable Motherhoods: The Limits of Narratability in Alice Munro’s ’My Mother’s Dream’ and Willa C. Richards’s ’Failure to Thrive’”
  15. 2021 September: Contemporary Women Writing Race: Textual Interventions and Intersections Symposium konferencia, Loughborough, UK/online: „The Gendered, Racialized, and Embodied Aspects of Reproductive Technologies in Danielle Evans’s ’Harvest’”
  16. 2019 June: The Postmillennial Sensibility in Anglophone Literatures, Cultures and Media II. conference, Kosice, Slovakia: “Harvesting (from) the Black Female Body: Egg Donation and Motherhood in ’Harvest’ by Danielle Evans”
  17. 2019 June: HAAS conference, Debrecen, Hungary: “’From our own lips’: Narrative Authority and/as Healing in Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose”
  18. 2019 May: Tavaszi Szél conference, Debrecen, Hungary: “A vitamódszer alkalmazásának hatása a társadalmi innovációra: a vitázás elsajátításának és oktatásának összefüggései különböző kompetenciák és attitűdök fejlődésével” (“Using Debating in the Classroom and Its Impact on Social Innovation”)
  19. 2019 May: Tavaszi Szél conference, Debrecen, Hungary: “’Why I has the child say it back’: Trauma, Motherhood, and Memory in Dessa Rose by Sherley Anne Williams”
  20. 2019 January: HUSSE conference, Veszprém, Hungary: “Embodiment and Maternal Identity in Slavery: Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose”
  21. 2018 November: International Migration: Practice, Analysis, Discourse – Research and Methodological Innovation conference, Debrecen, Hungary: “Módszertani innováció a társadalmi problémák megvitatásában” (“Methodological Innovation in Discussing Social Problems”)
  22. 2018 May: HAAS conference, Budapest: “The Black Maternal Body in the 21st Century: The Politics of Media Representation”
  23. 2018 May: In/Equalities—Narrative and Critique, Resistance and Solidarity conference, Budapest: “Mothers, Mentors, and Cultures of Solidarity in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Sapphire’s Push”
  24. 2018 March: Interdisciplinarity in the Carpathian Basin – A conference organized by Márton Áron College for Advanced Study, Debrecen, Hungary: “A fekete női test kulturális reprezentációi: kortárs társadalmi viták” (“Cultural Representations of the Black Female Body: Contemporary Debates”)
  25. 2018 March: Fiatal Irodalmárok Fóruma, Debrecen, Hungary: “Az anyává válás traumája a kortárs afroamerikai prózában” (“The Trauma of Becoming a Mother in Contemporary African American Prose”)
  26. 2017 October: The American Short Story: New Horizons conference, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany: “Race, Class, and the Politics of Egg Donation in ‘Harvest’ by Danielle Evans”
  27. 2017 September: V. Hungarian Interdisciplinary Conference on Humor, Piliscsaba, Hungary: “Disenfranchisement, Self-reflexivity, and Identity Positions: Humor in African American Literature”
  28. 2017 March: Fiatal Irodalmárok Fóruma, Debrecen, Hungary: “A rabszolgaság hagyatéka: Az anyai test reprezentációi az afro-amerikai irodalomban” (“The Legacy of Slavery: Representations of Maternal Bodies in African American Literature”)
  29. 2017 May: Gendering the Urban Imaginary: Fantasy, Affect, Transgression conference, Debrecen: “Urban and Emotional Landscapes in Edward P. Jones’s ‘Spanish in the Morning’”
  30. 2017 May: VI. Interdisciplinary Doctoral Conference, Pécs, Hungary: “Transgression, Shame, and Rebellion: The Politics of Breastfeeding in African American Literature”
  31. 2017 HUSSE conference, Eger, Hungary: “The Abnormal Body in Push by Sapphire”
  32. 2011 Hatvani István Szakkollégium workshop, Debrecen, Hungary: “Állatszimbolika Ralph Ellison A láthatatlan című regényében” (“Animal Symbolism in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man”)
  33. 2011 Hatvani István Szakkollégium Students’ Conference, Debrecen, Hungary: “Állatszimbolika Ralph Ellison A láthatatlan című regényében” (“Animal Symbolism in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man”)

 

Other lectures held/workshops led

  1. 2024 March: Short Story Day at the American Corner, Debrecen
  2. 2022-2023: organizing and co-ordinating the Institute’s Researchers’ Night event; in 2024, representing the Canadian Studies Centre’s event at Researchers’ Night
  3. 2023 April: iTOLC Academy, leading a workshop for ESL teachers on the use of debating in the classroom
  4. 2019 April: Workshop of Comparative Literature and Culture (Komparatisztikai Műhely), Debrecen, Hungary: “Az anyaság lehetetlensége: hiány és tabu az afroamerikai női irodalomban” (“The Impossibility of Motherhood: Lack and Taboo in African American Literature”)
  5. 2018 February: Workshop of Comparative Literature and Culture (Komparatisztikai Műhely), Debrecen, Hungary: “A fekete női test ábrázolásának problémái a freak show-tól Beyoncé-ig” (“Representing the Black Female Body from Freak Shows to Beyoncé: Some Problems”)
Last update: 2025. 03. 14. 08:04