Books by Eszter Szép
Eszter Szép’s Comics and the Body is the first book to examine the roles of the body in both draw... more Eszter Szép’s Comics and the Body is the first book to examine the roles of the body in both drawing and reading comics within a single framework. With an explicit emphasis on the ethical dimensions of bodily vulnerability, Szép takes her place at the forefront of scholars examining comics as embodied experiences, pushing this line of inquiry into bold new territory. Focusing on graphic autobiography and reportage, she argues that the bodily performances of creators and readers produce a dialogue that requires both parties to experience and engage with vulnerability, thus presenting a crucial opportunity for ethical encounters between artist and reader. Szép considers visceral representations of bulimia, pregnancy, the effects of STIs, the catastrophic injuries of war, and more in the works of Lynda Barry, Ken Dahl, Katie Green, Miriam Katin, and Joe Sacco. She thus extends comics theory into ethical and psychological territory that finds powerful intersections and resonances with the studies of affect, trauma, gender, and reader response.
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCES, YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT LEGALLY FOR FREE FROM HERE https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/92306
This bilingual book is the catalog of the exhibition at the National Széchényi Library, Budapest ... more This bilingual book is the catalog of the exhibition at the National Széchényi Library, Budapest (Hungary) that I co-curated. As the editor of this catalog, my aim was to explain and illustrate some important chapters from the rich history of comics in Hungary. Particular attention is given to literary adaptation comics during state socialism and contemporary comics used for self expression.
The essays in this volume are all selected papers from the conference Gendered Identities in Cont... more The essays in this volume are all selected papers from the conference Gendered Identities in Contemporary Literary and Visual Cultures, organized in June 2015 in Budapest, Hungary, by the Narratives of Culture and Identity Research Group. The authors deal with a wide array of gender issues in modern and postmodern English literature, contemporary popular culture, and postcolonia and Eastern European studies. The essays are arranged into three larger chapters based on their subject matter: “Dissecting Identities” examines gendered identities in various literary contexts; “Creating Social Identities” looks at the function of society and culture in identity formation; and “Reinventing Gender Roles” deals with subversive uses of gender representation. The collection displays several applications of gender studies as well as the authors’ enthusiastic engagement with the many directions in which gender studies can take us.
Published Articles and Chapters by Eszter Szép
Documenting Trauma: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied Histories & Graphic Reportage in Comics, 2020
The historical trauma of World War II, the personal trauma of survival, and the integrity of the ... more The historical trauma of World War II, the personal trauma of survival, and the integrity of the female body are connected in Miriam Katin's two graphic memoirs: the black and white We Are On Our Own (2006), and the amazingly colourful Letting It Go (2013). Katin's memoirs are very different, both in their topics and in their visual aesthetics: the first is about her childhood as a Jewish girl in 1940s Hungary, and the second is about her bias against modern Germany in the 2000s. In this chapter, I show that while these two comics seemingly follow contradictory approaches to colour, page layout, tone of voice, and comics narration, they are in fact both expressions of the experience of trauma. Whereas the role of the gutter is frequently emphasized in the representation of traumatic events and memories in comics, I identify three other ways in which Katin narrates trauma in her graphic memoirs: page design; problematizing the relationship between the female body and its environment; and the visualization of spoken or written Hungarian, Katin's mother tongue.
The chapter is published here: Travelling Around Cultures. Collected Essays on Literature and Art... more The chapter is published here: Travelling Around Cultures. Collected Essays on Literature and Art, Edited by Zsolt GYŐRI and Gabriella MOISE, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, pp. 259-279.
In this paper I investigate texts where visual elements interrupt the narrative and the reading process, and I look for instances where visual elements appeal to the sense of touch. Touch intervenes in the reading process in ways different to vision (...) Attention to tactility in visually engaged books requires one to conceptualize reading as a bodily process. I will show this by close-reading two works of fiction and a graphic novel: : A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes (1989), The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald (2002) and Letting it Go by Miriam Katin (2013). I explore how tactility called forth by the visual text opens up the works to engage in a discourse of vulnerability, and argue that the interpretative dimension in the narrative brought about by the combination of vision and touch creates a provocative corporeal and ethical connection between reader and the artistic product.
A core term of my analysis is vulnerability, used by Judith Butler in Precarious Life (2004) to describe a universal condition of humanity. (...)
I interpret the touch that is elicited by pictures in printed books as a means to recognize vulnerability, and to create a readerly position and relationship to the narrative that is based on exposure and openness. Reading thus becomes a venture that engages the body, and the above mentioned books provide an occasion to take the risk of exploring one’s own vulnerability as well as to respond to that of others.
This is a chapter from a textbook for BA students called "Film & Culture" (ed. Dorottya Jászay an... more This is a chapter from a textbook for BA students called "Film & Culture" (ed. Dorottya Jászay and Andrea Velich, Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, 2016)
Stunned Into Uncertainty - Essays on Julian Barnes's Fiction, Dec 2014
This paper investigates the various ways in which animals enter the scene in Julian Barnes’s A Hi... more This paper investigates the various ways in which animals enter the scene in Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989), and an equally important point of investigation will concern the ways humans enter the scene of animals in this book. In History, human-animal encounters can be interpreted as shedding light on an unresolved set of questions concerning the nature of the co-existence of man and animal. The three main areas of study I will refer to in this paper are observing animals and being observed by them as raised by John Berger; Descartes and Lacan’s perception of animals as machines and their contrasting animals and humans along the division of lacking a soul and having one; and, finally, the problem of nakedness as discussed by Derrida. Concentrating on three chapters from Barnes’s book, “The Stowaway,” “The Survivor,” and “Shipwreck,” my aim is to show how Barnes’s text reflects on human-animal encounters. Specifically, I show that in the chapters “The Survivor” and “Shipwreck” the animal-human boundary is dubious and the Cartesian idea of the animal-machine receives provocative intertexts; while the final part of my paper examines chapter one, “The Stowaway,” where the narrator is an animal and, therefore, traditionally, it could not say “I am” – yet it does.
International Studies. Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal , Sep 2014
By applying terminology from trauma theory and a methodological approach from comics scholarship,... more By applying terminology from trauma theory and a methodological approach from comics scholarship, this essay discusses three graphic autobiographies of women. These are A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached (trans. Edward Gauvin, 2012), We are on our Own by Miriam Katin (2006), and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (trans. Anjali Singh, 2004). Two issues are at the centre of the investigation: the strategies by which these works engage in the much-debated issues of representing gendered violence, and the representation of the ways traumatized daughters and their mothers deal with the identity crises caused by war.
Studies in Comics 5.1, Apr 2014
This article examines the ways, modes, tools and categories of medium-specific self-reflexivity i... more This article examines the ways, modes, tools and categories of medium-specific self-reflexivity in comics. I approach the genre of metacomics in the light of theories of metafiction, as well as W. J. T. Mitchell’s concept of ‘metapicture’. As several scholars regard comics as a form of literature, I think testing the ideas of metafiction on comics has legitimacy. We can define metafiction with Hutcheon’s words as ‘the new need, first to create fictions, then to admit their fictiveness, and then to examine critically such impulses’. In this article I argue that metacomics is similar, though it features self-reflexive elements not only on the level of plot or (textual) narration, but also in its very form and layout. Mitchell’s approach from the field of iconology, and his typology of metapictures serves as a model for conceptualizing metacomics. According to Mitchell, ‘[m]etapictures are pictures that show themselves in order to know themselves: they stage the “self-knowledge” of pictures’. This article builds on Mitchell’s category of the ‘speaking metapicture’, which is strikingly close to comics. Thus I simultaneously rely on a framework for analysis from literary theory, and another one from iconology, in order to examine the self-reflexive methods bound to the comics medium. Following Hatfield, I approach comics as an art form of four kinds of tension, namely code vs code, single image vs image-in-series, sequence vs surface and text as experience vs text as object. I am interested in the theory and typology of the kinds of reflection on the medium of comics that are made possible by these tensions. I am examining the works of Bill Watterson, and the Hungarian authors Zoltán Koska and Ádám Pádár.
In Hungarian by Eszter Szép
Képregényen innen és túl. Tendenciák a kortárs magyar képregényben és képregénykutatásban I., 2017
Az önreflexió és a világalkotás vizuális eszközeit elemzem az amerikai képregénykutatás fogalomké... more Az önreflexió és a világalkotás vizuális eszközeit elemzem az amerikai képregénykutatás fogalomkészletének meghonosítási szándékával. Oravecz Gergely Blossza című önéletrajzi stripsorozatában a képi testet öltés folyamatára, a kézjegy fogalmára, és a vonalminőség képregényvilágot meghatározó voltára fókuszálok.
Kritika Somogyi György, Dobó István és Tebeli Szabolcs Kittenberger c. képregényéről.
Új Művészet... more Kritika Somogyi György, Dobó István és Tebeli Szabolcs Kittenberger c. képregényéről.
Új Művészet, 2017 március, 44-47.
Filológiai Közlöny, 2016/3, 187-201.
Amongst the Latin source texts identifiable as patterns relied on by the Carthusian Anonym when c... more Amongst the Latin source texts identifiable as patterns relied on by the Carthusian Anonym when constructing his Hungarian sermons, yet another collection of sermons has been identified by the author of the essay. Namely, a collection entitled Sermones de laudibus sanctorum authored by Robertus Caracciolus, a Franciscan friar living in Italy in the 15. century. This is a truly novel finding in the research conducted on the legend of Saint Catherine of Siena. Structure and word level equivalence shows that the Carthusian Anonym no doubt had this precise collection at hand. This knowledge provides us with a further research source, which will probably be useful in locating other source texts for the Érdy Codex sermon collection.
Paper in Hungarian.
Book Reviews by Eszter Szép
The collection, based on a conference held at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense in Nov... more The collection, based on a conference held at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense in November 2014, offers insightful reflections on questions raised by writing at the beginning of the 21st century, and
on contemporary interactions with a wide array of traces: traces made by children and by experienced calligraphers, by hand and by computer, produced intimately and displayed publicly. The introduction defines the human race as a trace-making species, and emphasizes that the study of traces, and more closely the study of writing, is only feasible with contributions by the representatives of many sciences. The volume itself is made extremely interesting, thorough and engaging because its contributors come from many disciplines, and because it does not only focus on theory. Practitioners’ contributions demonstrate and shed new lights on the ideas elaborated in more theoretical papers, and the collection as such emphasizes how fruitful it is when theory and practice are not separated.
published in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 8:3, 299-303, DOI:
10.1080/21504857.2017.1... more published in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 8:3, 299-303, DOI:
10.1080/21504857.2017.1289966
Are there any lessons in democracy to be learned from major twentieth century financial crises? C... more Are there any lessons in democracy to be learned from major twentieth century financial crises? Can any
points of reference be drawn for present and future crisis management and democratic institutions? Francisco
E. González’s recent book, Creative Destruction? Economic Crises and Democracy in Latin America
undertakes no less than to offer answers to these questions. “The aim of this book […] is to elucidate the
chances for democracy during harsh economic crises by observing a small number of cases across time in
greater detail” (5.) And as his investigation shows, due to significant structural changes that happened in the
second part of the twentieth century, such as the establishment of the UN, the IMF, the WB, the Charter of
the American States, and the Inter-American Development Bank, the relative costs of maintaining
democracy are getting lower and lower. As opposed to complete regime changes during the Great
Depression (from authoritarian to democratic, and vice versa), in the twenty-first century deep economic
crises can cause unrest and interrupted presidencies, but electoral democracy is most likely to be preserved.
Conference Presentations by Eszter Szép
Princeton University, 9-10 April 2015
My paper takesas starting point James E. Young’s statement... more Princeton University, 9-10 April 2015
My paper takesas starting point James E. Young’s statement that “Jewish memory in a postmodern age has begun to look less like collective memory and more like collected memory” (“The Arts of Jewish Memory in a Postmodern Age,” 214) and examines the ways in which the female body functions as a site for this “collected memory” in Miriam Katin’sLetting it Go (2013). In Katin’s autobiographicalgraphic narrative memories mingle and compete with fantasies, projections mingle and compete with projects – and they all inscribe themselves into the female body, into its gestures, movements as well as its representations. In this reading Katin’sgraphic memoire is not only about overcoming one’s prejudices while travelling to places (sites) of trauma, it is also aboutoffering one’s body as a site for conflicting memories and ideas to battle.
On the one hand, my paper aims at exploring the ways in which Katinvisually connects thought processes to bodily processes. E.g. the book offers the experience of giving birth as the/a primary source of narrative and trauma, while the historical scale of the trauma is apparent throughout the book. In this section a special emphasis will be given to Katin’s beautiful depiction of spiritual and bodily abjection and purification.
On the other hand, I connect bodily processes and the representation of the female body to the comics form, to the stylistic as well as spatial characteristics of Katin’s graphic narratives. Here a brief comparison ofLetting it Go and We Are on Our Own (2006) is to reveal ways in which the differences in drawing style and attitudes to the comics page contribute toa different, more ironic and also more playful understanding of body, trauma and memory.
Reference:
Young, James E. “The Arts of Jewish Memory in a Postmodern Age” Modernity, Culture, and ‘The Jew’ ed. Cheyette, Bryan and Laura Marcus, Stanford: Stanford UP 1998: 211-225.
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Books by Eszter Szép
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCES, YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT LEGALLY FOR FREE FROM HERE https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/92306
Published Articles and Chapters by Eszter Szép
In this paper I investigate texts where visual elements interrupt the narrative and the reading process, and I look for instances where visual elements appeal to the sense of touch. Touch intervenes in the reading process in ways different to vision (...) Attention to tactility in visually engaged books requires one to conceptualize reading as a bodily process. I will show this by close-reading two works of fiction and a graphic novel: : A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes (1989), The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald (2002) and Letting it Go by Miriam Katin (2013). I explore how tactility called forth by the visual text opens up the works to engage in a discourse of vulnerability, and argue that the interpretative dimension in the narrative brought about by the combination of vision and touch creates a provocative corporeal and ethical connection between reader and the artistic product.
A core term of my analysis is vulnerability, used by Judith Butler in Precarious Life (2004) to describe a universal condition of humanity. (...)
I interpret the touch that is elicited by pictures in printed books as a means to recognize vulnerability, and to create a readerly position and relationship to the narrative that is based on exposure and openness. Reading thus becomes a venture that engages the body, and the above mentioned books provide an occasion to take the risk of exploring one’s own vulnerability as well as to respond to that of others.
In Hungarian by Eszter Szép
Új Művészet, 2017 március, 44-47.
Paper in Hungarian.
Book Reviews by Eszter Szép
on contemporary interactions with a wide array of traces: traces made by children and by experienced calligraphers, by hand and by computer, produced intimately and displayed publicly. The introduction defines the human race as a trace-making species, and emphasizes that the study of traces, and more closely the study of writing, is only feasible with contributions by the representatives of many sciences. The volume itself is made extremely interesting, thorough and engaging because its contributors come from many disciplines, and because it does not only focus on theory. Practitioners’ contributions demonstrate and shed new lights on the ideas elaborated in more theoretical papers, and the collection as such emphasizes how fruitful it is when theory and practice are not separated.
10.1080/21504857.2017.1289966
points of reference be drawn for present and future crisis management and democratic institutions? Francisco
E. González’s recent book, Creative Destruction? Economic Crises and Democracy in Latin America
undertakes no less than to offer answers to these questions. “The aim of this book […] is to elucidate the
chances for democracy during harsh economic crises by observing a small number of cases across time in
greater detail” (5.) And as his investigation shows, due to significant structural changes that happened in the
second part of the twentieth century, such as the establishment of the UN, the IMF, the WB, the Charter of
the American States, and the Inter-American Development Bank, the relative costs of maintaining
democracy are getting lower and lower. As opposed to complete regime changes during the Great
Depression (from authoritarian to democratic, and vice versa), in the twenty-first century deep economic
crises can cause unrest and interrupted presidencies, but electoral democracy is most likely to be preserved.
Conference Presentations by Eszter Szép
My paper takesas starting point James E. Young’s statement that “Jewish memory in a postmodern age has begun to look less like collective memory and more like collected memory” (“The Arts of Jewish Memory in a Postmodern Age,” 214) and examines the ways in which the female body functions as a site for this “collected memory” in Miriam Katin’sLetting it Go (2013). In Katin’s autobiographicalgraphic narrative memories mingle and compete with fantasies, projections mingle and compete with projects – and they all inscribe themselves into the female body, into its gestures, movements as well as its representations. In this reading Katin’sgraphic memoire is not only about overcoming one’s prejudices while travelling to places (sites) of trauma, it is also aboutoffering one’s body as a site for conflicting memories and ideas to battle.
On the one hand, my paper aims at exploring the ways in which Katinvisually connects thought processes to bodily processes. E.g. the book offers the experience of giving birth as the/a primary source of narrative and trauma, while the historical scale of the trauma is apparent throughout the book. In this section a special emphasis will be given to Katin’s beautiful depiction of spiritual and bodily abjection and purification.
On the other hand, I connect bodily processes and the representation of the female body to the comics form, to the stylistic as well as spatial characteristics of Katin’s graphic narratives. Here a brief comparison ofLetting it Go and We Are on Our Own (2006) is to reveal ways in which the differences in drawing style and attitudes to the comics page contribute toa different, more ironic and also more playful understanding of body, trauma and memory.
Reference:
Young, James E. “The Arts of Jewish Memory in a Postmodern Age” Modernity, Culture, and ‘The Jew’ ed. Cheyette, Bryan and Laura Marcus, Stanford: Stanford UP 1998: 211-225.
THE BOOK IS OPEN ACCES, YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT LEGALLY FOR FREE FROM HERE https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/92306
In this paper I investigate texts where visual elements interrupt the narrative and the reading process, and I look for instances where visual elements appeal to the sense of touch. Touch intervenes in the reading process in ways different to vision (...) Attention to tactility in visually engaged books requires one to conceptualize reading as a bodily process. I will show this by close-reading two works of fiction and a graphic novel: : A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes (1989), The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald (2002) and Letting it Go by Miriam Katin (2013). I explore how tactility called forth by the visual text opens up the works to engage in a discourse of vulnerability, and argue that the interpretative dimension in the narrative brought about by the combination of vision and touch creates a provocative corporeal and ethical connection between reader and the artistic product.
A core term of my analysis is vulnerability, used by Judith Butler in Precarious Life (2004) to describe a universal condition of humanity. (...)
I interpret the touch that is elicited by pictures in printed books as a means to recognize vulnerability, and to create a readerly position and relationship to the narrative that is based on exposure and openness. Reading thus becomes a venture that engages the body, and the above mentioned books provide an occasion to take the risk of exploring one’s own vulnerability as well as to respond to that of others.
Új Művészet, 2017 március, 44-47.
Paper in Hungarian.
on contemporary interactions with a wide array of traces: traces made by children and by experienced calligraphers, by hand and by computer, produced intimately and displayed publicly. The introduction defines the human race as a trace-making species, and emphasizes that the study of traces, and more closely the study of writing, is only feasible with contributions by the representatives of many sciences. The volume itself is made extremely interesting, thorough and engaging because its contributors come from many disciplines, and because it does not only focus on theory. Practitioners’ contributions demonstrate and shed new lights on the ideas elaborated in more theoretical papers, and the collection as such emphasizes how fruitful it is when theory and practice are not separated.
10.1080/21504857.2017.1289966
points of reference be drawn for present and future crisis management and democratic institutions? Francisco
E. González’s recent book, Creative Destruction? Economic Crises and Democracy in Latin America
undertakes no less than to offer answers to these questions. “The aim of this book […] is to elucidate the
chances for democracy during harsh economic crises by observing a small number of cases across time in
greater detail” (5.) And as his investigation shows, due to significant structural changes that happened in the
second part of the twentieth century, such as the establishment of the UN, the IMF, the WB, the Charter of
the American States, and the Inter-American Development Bank, the relative costs of maintaining
democracy are getting lower and lower. As opposed to complete regime changes during the Great
Depression (from authoritarian to democratic, and vice versa), in the twenty-first century deep economic
crises can cause unrest and interrupted presidencies, but electoral democracy is most likely to be preserved.
My paper takesas starting point James E. Young’s statement that “Jewish memory in a postmodern age has begun to look less like collective memory and more like collected memory” (“The Arts of Jewish Memory in a Postmodern Age,” 214) and examines the ways in which the female body functions as a site for this “collected memory” in Miriam Katin’sLetting it Go (2013). In Katin’s autobiographicalgraphic narrative memories mingle and compete with fantasies, projections mingle and compete with projects – and they all inscribe themselves into the female body, into its gestures, movements as well as its representations. In this reading Katin’sgraphic memoire is not only about overcoming one’s prejudices while travelling to places (sites) of trauma, it is also aboutoffering one’s body as a site for conflicting memories and ideas to battle.
On the one hand, my paper aims at exploring the ways in which Katinvisually connects thought processes to bodily processes. E.g. the book offers the experience of giving birth as the/a primary source of narrative and trauma, while the historical scale of the trauma is apparent throughout the book. In this section a special emphasis will be given to Katin’s beautiful depiction of spiritual and bodily abjection and purification.
On the other hand, I connect bodily processes and the representation of the female body to the comics form, to the stylistic as well as spatial characteristics of Katin’s graphic narratives. Here a brief comparison ofLetting it Go and We Are on Our Own (2006) is to reveal ways in which the differences in drawing style and attitudes to the comics page contribute toa different, more ironic and also more playful understanding of body, trauma and memory.
Reference:
Young, James E. “The Arts of Jewish Memory in a Postmodern Age” Modernity, Culture, and ‘The Jew’ ed. Cheyette, Bryan and Laura Marcus, Stanford: Stanford UP 1998: 211-225.
The presentation investigates ways in which color can contribute to the meaning of comics and the associations the use or neglect of color carries. Being aware that the American graphic novel scene is absolutely different from the French-Belgian tradition, all my arguments refer to the former one. Thus I argue that though graphic narratives can now afford, both in the sense of cultural prestige and costs of production, to be more colorful, color remains a loaded means of expression. Color is frequently used as a way of transgression, a way of drawing the reader in or a way of emphasizing the comics’ materiality (Lynda Barry, Debbie Drechsler). These gestures presuppose a black and white norm still prevailing today, which I trace back to the overwhelming influence of Maus. In this light, using unshaded colors the way Rutu Modan or Marisa Acocella Marchetto does goes directly against readerly expectations and traditions of realistic representations of relations of light and depth.
In the second part of my paper, I wish to prove that there exists a hierarchy among various coloring techniques, with paint being the most accepted and most easily attached to the legitimizing mechanisms of high art, and color pencil being the most culturally neglected tool, associated with childishness and non-art (Miriam Katin).
My paper’s theoretical points of departure are provided by David Batchelor’s Chromophobia (2000), a survey of the neglect of color in art history, Jan Baetens’s studies of color, and the associations of colorful comics with infantilism, as elaborated by Scott Bukatman (Hellboy’s World, forthcoming in 2016).
I examine works by graphic journalists Joe Sacco, and Sarah Glidden, graphic novelists Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Miriam Katin, and Dave McKean, and the collaboration of photojournalist Didier Lefèvre and graphic novelist Emmanuel Guibert in The Photographer. The works of Hans Belting, Noah Berlatsky, James Elkins, Charles Hatfield, Silke Horstkotte and W. J. T. Mitchell serve as theoretical background to my analysis.