For the first time in East-Central Europe, the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) convenes its 2022 (10th) international conference in Budapest, Hungary, to focus on the following theme: Periodicals beyond Hierarchies: Challenging Geopolitical and Social “Centres” and “Peripheries” through the Press.

Date: 7–9 September 2022

Venue: Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) – Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest and online (Zoom)

Conference programme and abstracts are available here. 

Registration for offline and online participants is open via this link. 

In conjunction with the conference, a hybrid postgraduate workshop will be held. 

Date: 7 September 2022

Venue: Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) – Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest

Workshop programme and abstracts are available here. 

The hybrid event is co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) – Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest, the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit), and Petőfi Literary Museum (PIM) – Kassák Museum.

This Budapest ESPRit Conference was streamed in real time through our Youtube Channel. Please click here to watch the recordings of the conference presentations.

The third ESPRit online seminar series takes as its general theme ‘sources beyond the periodical text’. It launched on 8 April 2022 with an opening lecture by Filippos Tsiboglou, Director General of the National Library of Greece. The second session, held on 13 May 2022 at 3 PM CET, featured two research presentations: 

Zsuzsa Török, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute for Literary Studies, Budapest, ‘Sources for Anonymous Contributors to Periodicals: The Case of the Hungarian Stephanie Wohl and The Scotsman’

Stephanie Wohl, a Hungarian writer and journalist from Budapest, contributed a series of thirty-two letters between 1875 and 1881 to The Scotsman, Scotland’s iconic Edinburgh-based national newspaper. Wohl reported on Hungarian life and manners and covered a range of topical events usually associated with special correspondents. Her articles followed the tradition of journalistic anonymity and carried the by-line ‛From an Occasional Correspondent’, ‛By an Occasional Correspondent’, ‛From a Hungarian Correspondent’, or ‛From our own Correspondent’. Relying on digital resources and archival research, this paper proposes a transnational approach to periodicals and periodical contributors. It provides a methodological case study using the example of Stephanie Wohl’s contribution to The Scotsman, focusing on the challenge of establishing her authorship. In doing so, it will introduce a research procedure that consists of identifying a corpus of articles supposedly authored by Wohl. This corpus has been delineated relying on Hungarian short news items testifying for Wohl’s engagement with foreign media. Benefitting of the ProQuest’s British Periodicals multidisciplinary database, it was possible to identify this body of texts as publications that came out in The Scotsman. Finally, making use of The Scotsman’s business records preserved in the National Library of Scotland, there is a strong possibility to certify that Wohl had indeed authored these texts. Though the articles have not been signed by Wohl, yet, the archival material contains information pointing to her undeniable authorship. The paper concludes that sources beyond the periodical text are crucial in determining the identity of anonymous periodical contributors. These sources, moreover, may open up new, unexpected avenues for the study of international communication networks, and, in Wohl’s case, of strategic collaboration between émigrés and their homeland contacts.

Levente T. SZABÓ (Ph.D. habil.), Babeș-Bolyai University, ‘Reconstructing the Entangled History of the First International Journal of Comparative Literary Studies’

The multilingual Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (1877-1888) is one of early comparative literature's most fascinating and puzzling phenomena. Founded by two Eastern European polyglots, edited in Kolozsvár/Cluj/Klausenburg and London, the first review specialized in the emerging comparative literary discipline succeeded in attracting around 120 collaborators worldwide. This broad linguistic and cultural appeal made the journal the perfect frame for the most diverse and radical methodological questions, experiments, and opinions.

Despite the high interest for the pioneering journal, its extreme multilingualism and the diversity of its collaborators made it almost impossible to track the wide-ranging history of this crucial little periodical. Based on continued efforts of archival research of more than a decade, my paper attempts to survey the role archival materials could play in reconstructing the entangled visions of comparative literature standing behind this important early institution of comparative literary studies.

The third ESPRit online seminar series takes as its general theme ‘sources beyond the periodical text’. It launches on 8 April 2022 with an opening lecture by Filippos Tsiboglou, Director General of the National Library of Greece, followed by two research presentations (by Zsuzsa Török and Levente T. Szabó) on 13 May. The third session, to be held on 17 June 2022 at 3 PM CET, featured the following contributions: 

Nora Ramtke (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), ‘August Lewalds Europa (1835-1844) and its Supplements: Archiving the Abundance’

The most basic question of what belongs to a periodical when it comes to archiving practices is not always an easy one. Whether periodical scholars work with digitised periodicals or with archived material, we know that we don’t examine them in the state in which they were published originally but bound in a more or less book-like form and then again converted to digital copies. August Lewald’s Europa, a popular magazine published in the 1830s and 1840s, came out with a whole bunch of supplements, fashion plates, lithographs, steel engravings, and music sheets. I will discuss this periodical as a fascinating example in terms of material diversity that reveals traces not only of various archiving practices but of notions of bookishness and periodical formats.

Hannah Connell (King’s College London and British Library), ‘Uncovering the relationships between periodicals through editorial correspondence: Networks of Russian-language emigre periodicals in interwar Paris’

 Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary Notes) is the preeminent Russian-language literary and socio-political journal published between 1920 and 1940 in Paris. Smaller periodicals targeting specific communities appear and disappear with great regularity in the Russian-language publishing landscape of interwar Paris. Sovremennye zapiski’s editors kept a close eye on developing trends in interwar periodical publishing. Their editorial correspondence reveals more than simply the procedures behind a single journal. Significant aspects of SZ’s collaboration and competition with newspapers and magazines are visible through these editorial discussions. In addition, there is relatively little substantial editorial correspondence for other Russian-language émigré periodicals. It is possible, however, to recover certain aspects of the editorial procedures of other periodicals from the editorial archive of SZ. Understanding the relationships between these periodicals reveals how the place of this thick journal in émigré society changed over its publishing life.

We are very pleased to announce that Dr Filippos Tsimpoglou, General Director of the National Library of Greece will launch the Third ESPRit Online Seminar Series, on the general theme ‘Sources Beyond the Periodical Text’. The opening lecture will be held on 8 April, 2022 at 3PM CET via Zoom.

‘Expanding the services of the National Library of Greece to researchers, public, libraries, society and next generations’

In 2014 the National Library of Greece started a transformation process with an annual budget of 240.000€, 47 employees as permanent staff, absolutely the smallest among 38 European National Libraries and a total area of about 9.000 sq.m. in three buildings full of printed material. After a period of three years of preparation, the NBE completed the relocation of most of its services to the new premises of the SNFCC, a building donated to the Hellenic Republic by the SNF and home to three different organisations: NLG, NGO and SNFCC.

In eight years, despite the tight and difficult environment of austerity and cost-cutting measures under the Memorandum, the EBE has managed to secure some of the conditions and develop several of the basic infrastructures that characterize a National Library. Thanks to a donation from the SNF and the steady support of the Greek state, its budget reached the average of the national libraries of the "small" European countries (6.700.000€) and its staff was half the average (80 permanent and 75 seconded teachers) located in four buildings of totally 31.000 sq.m..

The NLG, taking advantage of the new modern legislative framework (Law 4452/2017), has submitted the new Management and Operating Organization and drafted the Strategic Plan 2022-2026 that develops three axes of actions of the NLG: a) the completion of all services that are considered crucial for the fulfillment of the mission of a modern national library at levels corresponding to the high position and value recognized over time in Greek civilisation. b) consolidation of the Hellenic Library as the leading library of the country, through actions and support projects for the development of the Hellenic Library Ecosystem at levels corresponding to the development of contemporary Greek culture. c) promotion of the Hellenic Library as an unrivalled centre of support for Hellenic Studies internationally.

Τhe communication presents the panorama of services and actions that the EBE has carried out.

Chair: Professor Aled Jones, historian and former National Librarian of Wales

The event is free and open to anyone interested to attend. Please register here to receive the Zoom link .