Eastern Europe on the Screen and on the Page

About

Budapest Summer University students might find it interesting and exciting to learn more about the recent history, societies, and political systems of the wider region. In addition, we believe that the format of the Summer University and the generational characteristics of the young people who come here are conducive to a departure from traditional, "textbook-style" university education, and that historical, social, and scientific knowledge may be more easily absorbed in forms that are, in our opinion, just as meaningful

Target group

In line with the above, the central element of the course would be the viewing and joint analysis and discussion of films with outstanding historical, social, and political relevance to the region of Eastern and Central Europe. We would like to supplement this with the reading and analysis of carefully selected literary and academic texts, as well as by involving experts in the relevant fields in classroom discussions.

Films:

The Witness (Péter Bacsó, 1969)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1988)
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)
Katyn (Andrzej Wajda, 2007)
Chernobyl (TV series, Craig Mazin, 2019)
Literary works, essays:

Czeslaw Milosz: The Captive Mind (1953)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Imre Kertész: Fatelessness (1975)
Vaclav Havel: The Power of the Powerless (1979)
Tom Stoppard: Leopoldstadt (2020)

Expert guests:

István Papp (historian/communism researcher)
Milán Pap (historian of ideas/Kádárism)
Andrea Szabó (political scientist/sociologist/youth researcher)
Eszter Zsófia Tóth (historian/women's history)
Tibor Valuch (social historian)

Course aim

The aim of the course is to provide participants with a picture of law that goes beyond the traditional view, as a coordination tool influenced by social and economic factors, in relation to the defining processes of our time

Fee info

tuition fee, course materials, meals (coffee break), opening ceremony and the cost of the leisure time programs, weekend excursions