Interdisciplinary eJournal of Gender Studies

Book Review | Kovács, Ágnes Zsófia: The Memory of Architecture in Edith Wharton’s Travel Writings (New York: Routledge, 2025)

2025-03-06T09:09:32+01:00

Kovács, Ágnes Zsófia. 2025.The Memory of Architecture in Edith Wharton’s Travel Writings. New York: Routledge, 212 pages. ISBN9781003442189

Book Review | Verő-Valló Judit: Egyedül a nagyvárosban. Garzonotthonok és lakóik Budapesten a 19. század derekától az 1940-es évekig (Budapest: Budapest Főváros Levéltára, 2024)

2025-01-07T19:00:32+01:00

Verő-Valló Judit, [Alone in the Big City: Studio apartments and their residents in Budapest from the mid-19th century to the 1940s]. Budapest: Budapest Főváros Levéltára, 2024, 176 pages. ISBN 978-615-5635-27-4.

Book Review | Mihályi Katalin (ed.): Magyar nők és hősnők – Amikor a fakanál is kard. (Szabadka: Szekeres László Alapítvány, 2024)

2025-01-06T00:03:42+01:00

Mihályi Katalin (ed). 2024. [Hungarian Women and Heroines: When a Wooden Spoon is a Sword.] Subotica: Szekeres László Foundation. 239 pages. ISBN 978-86-81896-09-9.

Book Review | Nagy M. Boldizsár (ed.): These Roma are Queer? Roma LMBTQ+ antológia (Budapest: Leányvállalat, 2024)

2025-01-08T09:15:49+01:00

Nagy M. Boldizsár (ed.) 2024. These Roma are Queer? Roma LMBTQ+ Anthology. 146 pages. ISBN 978-615-82374-5-1

The First Diary of Anne Frank as Performative Bricolage

2025-01-13T18:24:51+01:00

The Diary of Anne Frank is the best-selling book in the world, next to the Bible. Surprising for a work written in Dutch, but not so surprising in the transnational context of the Holocaust. The Diary of Anne Frank was one of the earliest testimonies published, in 1947. It has been translated into practically every language in the world. It is less well known that there are several versions of the diary: first Anne herself rewrote part of her diary, then after her death her father Otto Frank edited it for publication in book form, and then these different versions are combined and published by publishers to this day.

In my study, I deal with the first version of the diary book with the plaid cover, version A, which runs from 12 June 1942 to 5 December 1942. This part of the diary, digitalized in 2021, is full of different scripts, pasted notes, inserts, photographs, commentaries, and attempts at self-interpretation. After studying these, I have come to the conclusion that the chequered diary is invaluable not only for its content, but also for the visual form it reveals. It is my contention that this part of the diary can be interpreted as an art object, a collage. From her own memories, letters, family documents, and variations in writing style, Anne makes a bricolage of the historical, social, gender and ethnic references of her life. The diary also visually depicts the psychosocial development of an adolescent girl forced into an extreme historical situation. The result is a performative portrayal of the German Jewish refugee who, after the war, wants to become a Dutch citizen and a writer, the adolescent girl's sexuality and awareness of her femininity, hiding as a form of internal and external resistance, the relationship to trauma, nature, politics, family members and other hiding people, and the space that makes hiding possible. All these processes are in constant flux, interplay with each other and together point towards transgression, rebellion and freedom.

Network Development: The Publication History of Erzsébet Kádár Karr's Autobiographical Novel "Beautiful Autumn" and its Connections to Women's History and Genre Poetry

2025-03-09T11:39:17+01:00

The manuscript of Erzsébet Kádár Karr's novel Alles ist umgekehrt (Everything is the other way around), which depicts the youth organizations of Budapest during the First World War, won the Heine Prize for young authors working in exile in Paris in 1938. The novel, which has not yet been published in German and was first published in Hungarian in 1958 under the title Gyönyörű ösz, has not yet received attention despite the rediscovery of Erzsébet Kádár Karr's lyrics. The study, outlining the possible reasons for the partial successes and failures, seeks to answer, on the one hand, what role aspects related to women's history played in the novel's reception history. In interpreting the autobiographical novel, we examine the extent to which the character development that was sharply criticized by the reviewers in the history of the Hungarian manuscript, as considered lacking, can be rethought in terms of novel approaches to the functional logic of autobiography, the female Bildungsroman, and autosociobiography.

A Contemporary Reading of the Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila in "I Die for I Die Not: the Double Life of Teresa", Drama by Paco Bezerra

2024-11-03T12:10:13+01:00

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), also called Saint Teresa of Jesus a Spanish nun and founder of the Discalced Carmelite Order of the Holy Cross was the first female religious teacher in the Roman Catholic Church. Saint Teresa's books can be read as a kind of autobiography, although it was only her first, written at the age of 47, that was given the title Autobiography by posterity, a revealing and introspective text. Teresa's literary works have inspired numerous artists from the 16^th century to the present day. This includes the Spanish playwright Paco Bezerra (1978), who reimagines the nun in the present era in his play Me muero porque no me muero: la vida doble de Teresa (2022, I Die for I Die Not: the Double Life of Teresa). In order to reconstruct the figure of the saint in dramatic form, the author has drawn the Autobiography of 1565 and transposed it into a work of fiction. After a brief review of the definition of the autobiographical form and some examples from world literature, and then of women's autobiographies in Spanish literature, this paper will examine the work of Saint Teresa of Ávila, its enduring influence, and the possibilities and characteristics of adapting the Autobiography across genres and periods.

The role of running as a form of identity in women's autobiographies

2025-01-15T14:59:16+01:00

Based on autobiographical volumes, blog posts, and social media profiles, I examine the identity formation strategies of women runners: how middle-aged women become runners, how they build themselves up on the running track, and how their runner-identity fits into their narrative of their own lives. Women who are not runners take up running to regain control over their bodies, to reclaim or even to finally create their own lives. Women run with strollers, hire babysitters in order to have a free hour to run, or wait until the kids can be left alone and then just put on running shoes. Women who are not writers write a book about how running becomes an integral part of their identity. Women build a running profile on social media, while constantly articulating specific female experiences, female existential experiences. They run in female bodies, menstruating, pregnant, post-partum, with breast cancer, or with panic disorder. Szilvia Lubics, Zsuzsanna Sallai, Ildikó Száz and Rita Tamás have all published a volume about their lives in which running plays a central role. The books have been published by small publishers, or even privately, and the characters often speak from the margins, often with a trauma narrative. Who writes these texts and for whom? For what purpose? Who talks who runs, who raises the child meanwhile? I look for the answer to the question of how these women find a voice to speak, whose voice they speak in, what kind of (perceived or real) external expectations the runner-women's texts respond to.

"When my goat-herd self meets my astronaut self." Self-portraits of Eszter Ágnes Szabó

2025-01-15T10:17:24+01:00

In the visual arts, the equivalent of a writer's autobiography is the self-portrait.

Although their properties make them hard to compare, their two functions – the construction and representation of the self – bring them together. Painters and sculptors, women and men, have been making self-portraits since the mature Renaissance, traditionally only a few, sometimes only one, which until the 20th century typically depicted the self-conscious (male) artist. Today, however, in an age of prolific self-representation – whether written, spoken or pictorial – many artists are the sole figures in their own art. Eszter Ágnes Szabó (1966-2024) was not one of them. Even though she did paint self-portraits, and her likeness does occasionally appear on her objects (ceramics, wall hangings), she was the kind of artist who was always concerned with others. A socially engaged artist, working against the artist-ego. She was interested in everything non-personal, although she involved herself in all her activities with her whole persona. She was always fully present in whatever she was doing at the moment – this was particularly evident in her performances, her live projects.

"Every housewife is a DJ", she declared, and we may remember her standing at a mixing console, mixing music and food at her 'eat art' events, or setting up a random sewing shop in public spaces. Not only did she make being a housewife her theme, she was motivated to help others through her activities; she embedded her local actions (e.g. recycling) in global considerations (e.g. climate change). In the following, I will attempt to reveal Eszter Ágnes Szabó's peculiar 'self-portrait' in her highly communal oeuvre, which emerges against the background of the space created on the border between the personal and the social.

Autobiography and Decolonization: Multiple marginalisation in Mara Oláh Omara's autobiography and paintings

2025-01-19T22:11:03+01:00

Known for her socio-critical paintings, autobiographical works dealing with personal traumas and subversive actions, Oláh Mara OMARA (1945-2020) is an internationally acknowledged Hungarian artist of Roma origin. As a self-taught artist who started painting at the age of 43, In her self-published autobiography O. Mara, Painter (1997), illustrated with photographs, she gives voice to the physical and psychological humiliations and insults she faced as a Roma woman and mother while coping with multiple illnesses and living with a disability. Omara portrays Roma women as a group that faces multiple discrimination, who are not only victims of social prejudice but also suffer symbolic and physical violence from those in positions of power (doctors, police, teachers). This paper explores the intersections of gender, ethnicity, social status, age, motherhood, and disability in the case of a self-taught Roma woman artist. Additionally, the essay will examine the manifestations of decolonization in her autobiography and paintings.

Romani women's autobiographies and the Devotion to Mary on Textiles: Romani Design

2025-01-15T21:31:02+01:00

Fashion is a cultural discourse developing a specific epistemological position. Fashion transforms dressing as a functional (non-meaning-creating) human activity (the protection of the naked human body from external influences) into an activity saturated with specific meanings, forms, and messages. In this discursive elevation, fashion brands play a decisive role with a power to shape identity. Romani Design is the world's first Roma fashion house, founded in 2010 by two Roma siblings. In the fashion industry and in their community-building activities (Berhida project), they have been operating a coherent Roma image-sign-system for more than a decade, which has both broken into the Hungarian world of high fashion and addressed the Hungarian community of Roma origin. It has formed a specific cultural identity that is not accepted by all. Romani Design designers incorporate traditional references into contemporary design to raise the social prestige of the Roma and provide an insight into Roma culture through fashion. Their 2021 ready-to-wear collection features a montage of images of the Virgin Mary, sacred objects and their own family photos on clothes and accessories. They have created their own ‘Romani Madonna’, which for them represents the Roma woman in the highest position, elevated among the saints. In place of the Virgin Mary’s face, they place their mother's or their own photos, thus promoting women’s emancipation. In my study, I examine how Roma identity and autobiography are incorporated into modern fashion design.

Body Fragments. On the Early Works of Mária Berhidi

2025-01-16T00:32:49+01:00

The work of Mária Berhidi can be considered a forerunner of feminist art in the Hungarian art of the 1970s and 1980s. My study focuses on her early creative years and the works she produced as a result of her experiences at the Academy of Fine Arts, which reflect her difficult relationship to the patriarchal art establishment. She dealt with her negative experiences during her studies in her diploma work, Modell, which was considered by her contemporaries as a work of institutional critique. Her work reflected the subordinate role of women artists in male-centric artistic discourse and reflected on the social position of women artists without explicitly working with feminist theories. Berhidi's sculptural attitude already in the 1980s was radically different from the classical, heroic male sculptural tradition. Works based on organic, delicate forms and respect for the material, such as stone sculptures and body fragments, were aimed at redefining the role of the female creator. In doing so, she provided an artistic response to the subversion of patriarchal artistic norms and to the question of female art and the presence of the female body. Berhidi thus established an artistic practice before the formation of the women's art discourse that anticipated the emerging theories of feminist art and female self-representation in Hungary and facilitated the emergence of later feminist art discourses.

"I will enter, like Jesus, this city Jericho." Self-mitisation in Beton.Hofi's album trilogy

2025-01-16T00:00:19+01:00

The lyrics of rap songs often combine the biographical experiences of the artist with themes such as poverty or wealth, individual success or group identity. Considered to be a fundamentally masculine genre, rap often has themes of sexual debauchery, conquest, musical success, and the talent of a rapper breaking out of poverty and becoming rich. In the case of the Hungarian rap scene, we can also see the construction of the performer's persona, the alterego. In my article I analyse Beton.Hofi's trilogy of mixtapes and show how the topos of rap and autobiographical elements are interconnected in the artist's works, how he creates the performer's persona. I will discuss how the sin motif of the albums comic sins (2021), PLAYBáNIA (2022) and 0 (2024) is linked to capitalism, the biblical Adam, the Adam Schwarz who created under the name Beton.Hofi or Jesus. Beton.Hofi's lyrics are defined by a mixture of the sacred and the profane and by intertextual references: he touches on literary, historical, pop-cultural and religious themes, and also makes connections with his own works. The trilogy of albums offers the possibility of approaching the rapper's work not only through the notion of autobiography or autofiction, but also through the notion of biomythography.

"I had no choice but to turn fearless.” Feminine roles in Kim Gordon’s memoir A Girl In A Band (2015)

2025-01-15T18:41:42+01:00

Kim Gordon (born 1953) is an American no-wave/punk musician, singer, and songwriter, best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of Sonic Youth. Her memoir, Girl in a Band (2015), is based on Gordon's experience of alienation, presented from a female perspective, in a musical environment based on masculine hegemony, and in her personal life during the active years of Sonic Youth. In addition to writing the subjective history of the band Sonic Youth, she reflects in detail from a feminist perspective on the double standards stemming from social expectations as a girl living in the shadow of her brother, on the relationship between femininity and being a musician, on the hierarchies within male-dominated genres, musical and artistic environments, and homosocial relations. The memoir simultaneously aims to heal its author and expose the mechanisms of the music industry: with a sociological intention, it discusses the dynamics of human relationships in the case of a slowly disintegrating family and band, the music industry, and the New York art scene as a machine driven by material interests, and presents the dark sides of the roles offered by them through the general and personalized destruction of the rock star myth. In the title of her memoir, Gordon reflects on how, as the only woman in the band, she came to be the object of attention and the male gaze, as a person marked only by her gender and deprived of her name (“girl”), and also on how the girl makes the musical product marketable. The study also analyzes the history of the appearance of the female gaze on stage through the songs of Sonic Youth.

O

Preface

2025-07-25T09:31:11+02:00