Voices and visions of Canadian culture in Hungary

Professor Katalin Kürtösi, a visiting Scholar from the University of Szeged, will be giving a talk on Canadian culture in Hungary at the University of British Columbia (Buchanan Tower, room 599), on Friday, September 26th from 4:00 – 5:00pm.  Admission is free.
Entitled “Voices and Visions of Canadian Culture in Hungary after the Political Changes,”  the paper will examine how a European “small nation’s” cultural life is responding to a “less-known” culture. The research project is a follow-up of a systematization of the Hungarian translations of Canadian literature between 1920 and 1985.

This time the main areas of interest are:

• How the changes in cultural policy (publishing) influenced what kind of books have been translated and published.
• Translatability, personal experiences as translator of Canadian works both from English and from French.
• The role of anthologies.
• Canada on Hungarian stages (Canadian companies visiting – very few Canadian plays staged in Hungarian).
• Canadian Voice: songs by L. Cohen in Hungarian.
• Visions of Canada: exhibitions (sculpture, photos, painting) – active participation in Hungarian cultural festivals.

 
The paper will use a theoretical framework and offer a table of Canadian literature in Hungarian translation.
 
Katalin Kürtösi is associate professor at the Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged, Hungary. She studied Canadian literature at Carleton University, Ottawa (1983-84) and was a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Comparative Literature, Université de Montréal (1993). Her specialization is theatre and drama in Canada (in English, in French and by ethnic playwrights) – her monograph entitled Reality or Illusion? Metadramatic Elements in North American Plays (in Hungarian) was published in November 2007. She has been editor-in-chief of the Central European Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes en Europe Centrale since 2001.

 New Hungarian Voice