About us

Critical and interdisciplinary in approach, the Concentration Gender through Literatures and Cultures in English in the Bologna MA Program was launched in September 2009. It seeks to address many of the current social, cultural and professional issues from the perspective of gender and sexuality. It is run by a multidisciplinary Faculty with a profile of teaching and research that covers literary criticism, popular cultural studies, media studies, discourse analysis and lavender linguistics. Our courses explore the experiences of women and men and probe the explanatory power of concepts of gender and sexuality as developed within various feminist approaches. The programme provides students with essential knowledge of the intersection of cultural representations and social structures and political power in the US, UK and Irish contexts. We also seek knowledge of post state socialist gender and sexuality relations in Hungary, probing the limits and potentials of traveling concepts in the transnational flows of feminist knowledge production. Our students will understand how beliefs and assumptions about women and men, about sex and sexualities shape social institutions and activities and vice versa as well as how they are necessarily inflected with other dimensions of our daily existence, such as race, class or ability. They can also have the opportunity and continue their gender studies research in the two PhD programmes in the Institute of English and American Studies in the field of literature and cultural studies or in English applied linguistics. We also hope to prepare our graduates for careers and jobs offered by various government institutions of equal opportunity on local and regional level, by local and transnational civil organizations such as NANE or Amnesty International, or jobs in the media and electronic journalism, museums and art galleries that support alternative cultural performances and enterprises.

Why don’t you come and join us?

Whether you are a current or prospective student, or one of our previous students, or an interested visitor, we appreciate your curiosity and interest and invite you to visit our website.

Best regards,

Erzsébet Barát
Convener of the Programme

History of Gender Studies in Szeged

Teaching Gender Studies on its own right in the English Studies Department started with the introduction of some elective courses in the academic year of 1989/1990. The results and the emerging directions of the potentials of a more organized curriculum were brought together in a conference, A Classroom of One’s Own we organized in 1993 financed by a TEMPUS Joint European project. In the second half of the 1990s in addition to classes on feminist literary criticism and women’s writing we introduced courses in the field of social linguistics and cultural studies as well. Then in 1998 as part of the general refashioning of the traditional philology type of curriculum in the department into a critical theory and cultural studies type of programme, we could concentrate our efforts in teaching gender studies and designed a specialization block that is comprised of ten courses. It was GLASS, the Gender in Language and Literature Specialization Stream that came to a successful end in 2010 when the old type of five-year MA programme ran out. GLASS is the foundation of our new MA degree programme, Gender through Literatures and Cultures in English (GLCE). In the new Bologna-type of MA programme in English Studies students must choose one of three Tracks. The Concentration in Gender Studies, Gender through Literature and Culture in English, is one of them. It’s launch in September 2009 marked the opening of the new, fourth period in our history.

If you are interested in our reflections on the history of teaching Gender Studies in the Institute please turn to our contribution “Is There a space for Teaching gender studies in Hungarian Higher education?” In Pető, Andrea (ed.) Teaching Gender Studies in Hungary, edited by Pető Andrea, 13-21 (Budapest: Ministry of Youth, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunity, 2006). The two authors, Sarolta Marinovich, the founding convener of the GLASS specialization program and Ezsébet Barát, the convener of the new MA programme discuss the four periods in the context of the changes in the Hungarian higher education policy after the system change in 1989.

Contact

For further information, direction, or feedback, please, contact the convener of the Programme, Erzsébet Barát via the following telephone/fax number or email address:

Phone: +36 62 544 526
Fax:    +36 62 544 259
e-mail: zsazsa at lit.u-szeged.hu