Socialist and Post-Socialist Popular Culture - BMEGT43XXZZ

By completing the course, students will be able to understand the role of popular culture in shaping memory politics, explore themes of socialism, nostalgia, and post-socialist identity in media, apply cultural studies and media theory frameworks to analyze visual narratives, and critically assess how fiction and popular culture portray state socialism, the transition period and post-socialist social and cultural hierarchies in Hungary and Eastern Europe.

1. Solid knowledge of the important elements and contexts of European, Western cultural development, and related regulation in the EU.
2. Solid knowledge of the most important social science conceptualizations needed to study the communication phenomena
3. Basic knowledge of social institutions (law, language, religion, etc.)

1. Skills of working out proposals and executing projects in her professional fields
2. Reliable use of professional language
3. Ability to make independent decisions in academic activities

1. Sensivity and standing out for solving global conflicts and challenges.
2. Avoidance of being biased, prejudical
3. Acceptance of other cultural traditions

1. Readiness to help one’s social environement to develop from a historical and political coherent world view.
2. Independence
3. Constructiveness and assertiveness in the context of institutional operation

Lectures and class analyses

• Newman, M (2005) Socialism: A Very Short Introduction. Ch 1: Socialist Traditions. Oxford: Oxford UP, 6-42.
• Imre, A (2020) Why Should We Study Socialist Commercials in Journal of European Television History and Culture 2(3): 65-76.
• Imre, A (2016) Why Do We Need to Talk about Socialism and TV in TV Socialism, Durham-London, Duke UP, 1-27.
• Kunicki, M (2020) A Socialist 007: East European Spy Dramas in the Early James Bond Era in The Cultural Life of James Bond, Amsterdam University Press, 41-59.
• Gelencsér, G (2017) The Paradox of Popularity in Ostrowska-Pitas-Varga (ed.) Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe: Film Cultures and Histories, London-NY, Tauris, 198-215.
• Varga, B (2020) Paradoxes of Popularity in Ekrany: Socialist Entertainment, 11-18.

Participation is mandatory, max. 3 missed classes.

Assessment of classworks and papers.

• classwork: 20
• paper: 40
• presentation: 40
• sum: 100

participation

Retake and make-up test options are defined by the valid regulations of the University’s Code on Education and Examination

Consulted with the Faculty Student Representative Committee, approved by the Vice Dean for Education, valid from: 02.06.2024.

The course examines the memory politics of Eastern Europe and Hungary through the lens of socialist and post-socialist popular culture. Focusing on the depiction of socialism, social nostalgia, and the post-socialist period across genres, the course explores how these narratives shape cultural memory and reflect societal transformations. It also pays attention the representation and interpretation of the regime changes of 1989 in Eastern Europe and the collapse of socialism, defining events in global, regional, and local historical consciousness.