General Introduction
The most important feature of our newly founded Department is interdisciplinarity, connecting two fields of inquiry and education. Our research projects and teaching activities equally focus on cinema and the more general questions of visual phenomena on the one hand, and on literature and the questions of language on the other. We rely on the poststructuralist methodology of critical theories, but our researches, publications, forums and educational platforms utilize multimedial and multicultural methods of inquiry into visuality and cultural studies as well.
Our seminars and programs address the phenomena of popular culture as well as the visual arts, feminist theories and the anthropology of images, the practical problems of writing film criticism, rethorics, aesthetics and more recent critical practices such as digital aesthetics, theories of the body, or museum politics. We organize national and international conferences, and we have academic connections with a number of scientific workshops in the country. Our colleagues edit one of the most important periodicals for the theories of the moving image and the visual arts in Hungary. A research group has also developed around the periodical, called Apertura Film Theory Workshop, the programs of which are open to students as well.
By the middle of the 90’s it has become a generally held notion in the theoretical circles of Hungary that among the Humanities Departments of the Universities in the country it was the research groups and publications of the University of Szeged that responded most promptly to the so called „linguistic turn” in the Humanities. The foundation of our Department gives Szeged the opportunity to become the centre of the reception and educational dissemination of yet another significant turn in critical thinking, generally referred to as „the visual turn.” This opportunity is an important challenge and a great opportunity for us, especially since we have significant achievements in the fields of interdisciplinarity, cultural studies and visual studies.
The educational programs of our Department:
Theory and Interpretation PhD Subprogram
MA in Visual Culture
MA in Media Studies and the Culture of the Moving Image (teacher training)
Literary Theory MA specialization
Film Theory and Film History specialization (Free Humanities major)
Film Theory and History Minor
Literary Theory BA specialization
Department Research Programs
Literary Theory
In the centre of our researches in the field of Literary Theory we have the intermedial interconnections of literature, movie, theatre, visual arts and digital media after 1945. We aim at exploring decisive rhetoric, narrative and media archeology patterns beyond the range of certain theoretical models of intermediality, based on the discipline of binary oppositions. The goal of research notwithstanding is not simply displaying medial patterns but revealing their narrative functions, their interconnection with the cultural and technological changes of the past few years and their reference to, and effect on the theory of interpretation.
The exploration of medial patterns and the analysis of the dialectic interdependence of media branches demand the mapping of the past methods of studying media and intermedial relations in theoretical and historical frameworks. We put emphasis on the various and historically changing explanations of medial differences, and the aspects of competition and rivalry between media branches. The sign structuring of verbal and visual, static and moving, acoustic and graphic, analogue and digital media are studied not as homogenous constructions conceptualized on the basis of a presumed common feature of textuality or linguistic nature, but through admitting their heterogeneity (due to their perceptional preconditioning and their special features emphasized by the scientific literature). Thus, it is their differences that we focus on, together with their cooperation and competition and the plasticity of meaning that develops in this process.
The study of intermediality demands the operation of an interdisciplinary viewpoint. Therefore in our researches we rely on the insights of general semiotics, language, image, representation and media theories, film, media and cultural studies, narratology, new rethorics, critical iconology and visual anthropology.
Another path of the studies in our Department examines the medial and genre conditions of the creation, interpretation and narration of stories. Narrative understanding is one of the major methods of the acquisition and division of information. Even structuralist narratology called attention to the fact that the function of narrativity is much more diverse, than it had been previously thought. First, it connects nations of different language and culture, second, it cannot be reduced to the field of verbal signs, the less to that of literature. Narrative approach gains more and more authority in history, psychology, legal science and journalism. We are confronted with narratives every day, not only while responding to works of art. Therefore it is vital to understand the ways of operation of narrative texts; it is not only a scientific goal but also a task of education. The researches in our Department aim at systematically surveying the functions and categories of narrativity.
Film Theory
The periodical Apertura is the net surface of the publications of the Film Theory Workshop in Szeged (www.apertura.hu). It was founded in 2005 to initiate a dialogue between workshops that contribute to the renewal of the Hungarian discourses on film criticism, film analysis, critical theory and film history. Among others, the periodical includes several translations of internationally acclaimed experts as well as the writings of several well-known Hungarian critics. Since 2009 the focus of the periodical has widened and it has incorporated the study of visual culture in its wider context as well. There is a research group which has developed around activities of the periodical, and the programs of the group are open to students as well.
We have several reasons to believe that film theory has arrived at a point when the axioms and the approaches to the field of research have to be revisioned. The appearance of the new digital media, the changes in the practices of readers, users and disseminators as well as in the new concepts about the cognitive activity of the viewer all necessitate the revision of the foundations of critical film analysis that were laid down in the 1970’s.
The main fields of study of the workshop
1) the question of mediality/intermediality
2) cinematic spectatorship
3) the basic patterns of film narratives
4) early film theory
Erasmus scholarship
General Information
ERASMUS (EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) is a European Union founded scholarship program facilitating students’ and teachers’ mobility among European universities. Students can spend 3-6 months in foreign institutions and teachers can visit and teach 1-6 weeks at foreign academic institution (according to a pre-agreed curriculum). ERASMUS candidate can be any student and teacher who fulfills the ERASMUS program requirements and who is selected by the home institution to teach and study at a foreign ERASMUS partner university. The ERASMUS scholarship program covers all European Union member states. Norway, Island, Lichtenstein, Turkey and Croatia also participate in the program.
The ERASMUS exchange program is based on the bilateral exchange agreements between the individual university departments. These agreements should be approved by both universities. Technically, actualizing an agreement is quite simple; the process only requires signatures from the institutions and departments coordinators.
The bilateral exchange agreement can be downloaded from the following homepage:
vizkult.hu/bilateral exchange agreement
Szeged university and departmental ERASMUS program
ERASMUS students who wish to study at our department are allowed to choose any ERASMUS course announced by the University of Szeged. For the ERASMUS courses at the University of Szeged visit the following homepage:
http://www.u-szeged.hu/erasmus/kurzusok/
Our department – beside personal consultation – offers theater and multicultural studies classes for ERASMUS students as a part of our visual culture major program:
- Interculturalism and Multiculturalism in Literature (by Katalin Kürtösi)
- Theatre in Hungary (by Katalin Kürtösi)
Useful links for Erasmus students
Erasmus Coordinator: Miklós Sághy
Courses recommended for Erasmus students
The Erasmus homepage of the University of Szeged
Other useful links:
University homepage English version
Szeged Super 8 English version
