Dr. Kata Gyuris

Biography:

I started a BA in English in 2007 and a BA in French in 2008 at ELTE. Between 2007 and 2014, I was a member of the Anglo-American Studies Workshop and the French Studies Workshop of Eötvös Collegium. I eventually obtained a BA degree in French, and MA and PhD degrees in English. I wrote my dissertation on contemporary Anglophone and Francophone African fiction and I spent the last year of my PhD studies at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Thanks to a grant from the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), I was a visiting researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. I also spent three weeks researching at the Institute for African Studies at Columbia University with the support of the New National Excellence Program. In 2014, we founded the Narratives of Culture and Identity Research Group with Eszter Szép, within the Modern English Literature and Culture Doctoral Program. I am a member of the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (HUSSE), the Postcolonial Studies Association and the Challenging Precarity – A Global Network research group. Besides research and teaching, I often write reviews about African literature published in Hungarian.

Research:

In my research, I primarily focus on representations of violence in contemporary and 20th-century Anglophone and Francophone fiction. I am especially interested in the postcolonial city, cultural representations of war and genocide and questions of identity within broader postcolonial and diaspora literature. I also work on the reception of African fiction, particularly in light of literary prizes.

Selected publications:

• “Az elkövető alakja az apartheidben: Mítosz, szembesítés és megbocsátás Antjie Krog és Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela műveiben [The Figure of the Perpetrator in Apartheid: Myth, Confrontation and Reconciliation in the Works of Antjie Krog and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela].” Helikon Irodalomtudományi Szemle 65.1 (2019): 69–74.
• ““A Different Kind of Freedom”: Female Bildung in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and Calixthe Beyala's La négresse rousse.” Turning the Page: Gendered Identities in Contemporary Literary and Visual Cultures, eds. Judit Friedrich, Kata Gyuris, Eszter Szép, Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2018, 129–141.
• “A megismerés módozatai: J. M. Coetzee: Elizabeth Costello [Modes of Perception: J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello].” Filológiai Közlöny 62.3 (2016): 154–167.
• ““Cette connaissance charnelle” – L’Afrique infinie et féroce de J. M. G. Le Clézio [“This carnal knowledge” – J. M. G. Le Clézio’s Infinite and Ferocious Africa].” Contempler l’infini, eds. Anikó Ádám, Enikő Sepsi, Stéphane Kalla, Paris-Torino: L’Harmattan, 2015, 220−228.
• “The Image of Africa in Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing and J. M. G. Le Clézio's The African.” Discourses of Space, eds. Judit Pieldner, Zsuzanna Ajtony, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, 89–100.

Selected conferences

Teaching

Supervision

Further information