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Alexander Vari

Marywood University, Social Sciences, Faculty Member

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I am a professor of modern European history at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with research interests in urban, social, and cultural history, popular culture in France and Austria-Hungary, the history of nationalism, the history of travel and tourism, and everyday life under socialism.

I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated with a B.A. in History and Philosophy from Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. A former holder of Fulbright, American Councils Southeast European Scholars Program and Social Science Research Council fellowships, prior to coming to Marywood I taught at Furman University in Greenville, SC and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and I also was an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I have co-edited two books, Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment: Experiences from Northern, East-Central and Southern Europe, 1870s-1930s (Routledge, 2023) and Socialist Escapes: Breaks from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 (Berghahn, 2013), and since 2008 I serve as book review editor for H-Urban. I have also published articles in Budapesti Könyvszemle, Journeys, Austrian History Yearbook, Journal of Contemporary History and Urban History, and book chapters in Turizm: The Russian and Eastern European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism (Cornell University Press, 2006), Impermanence: Cultures In/Out of Time (Penn State University Press, 2008), Touring beyond the Nation: A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History (Ashgate, 2011), Tourism, Travel and Art (Ashgate, 2013), Zwischen Exotik und Vertrautem – Zum Tourismus in der Habsburgermonarchie und ihren Nachfolgestaaten (Transcript Verlag, 2014) and Interwar Salzburg: Austrian Culture Beyond Vienna (London: Bloomsbury, 2024).

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Books by Alexander Vari

Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment: Experiences from Northern, East-Central and Southern Europe, 1870s-1930s, co-edited with Antje Dietze (Routledge, 2023)

by Alexander Vari and Antje Dietze

Book, 2023

Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, co-edited with Cathleen M. Giustino and Catherine J. Plum (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, hardcover 2013, paperback 2015).

Book Chapters by Alexander Vari

“Hungarian Salzburgs: The Salzburg Idea as Inspiration for Mozart Concerts, Urban Tourism Development and Festivals in Interwar Hungary,” in Robert von Dassanowsky and Katherine Arens, eds., Interwar Salzburg: Austrian Culture Beyond Vienna (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 299-330.

“From Ambivalence to the Diseuse Craze: French-Hungarian Cultural Transfers through Chanson, 1870s-1930s" in Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment: Experiences from Northern, East-Central and Southern Europe, 1870s-1930s, edited by Antje Dietze and Alexander Vari, Routledge, 2023, 137-66

“Die Nation im Schaukasten. Binnentourismus und Nationswerdung auf der Budapester Milleniums- Ausstellung 1896,” in Zwischen Exotik und Vertrautem - Zum Tourismus in der Habsburgermonarchie und ihren Nachfolgestaaten, ed. by M. Thomsen and Peter Stachel (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014), 123-34.

“Branding Montmartre: Tourism, Popular Culture, and the Artistic Bohemia” in Tourism, Travel and Art, edited by Tijana Rakic and Jo-Anne Lester (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 219-34.

“Escaping the Monotony of Everyday Life under Socialism,” in Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, edited by Cathleen M. Giustino, Catherine J. Plum and Alexander Vari (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), 1-23.

“Nocturnal Entertainments, Five Star Hotels, and Youth Counterculture: Reinventing Budapest’s Nightlife under Socialism,” in Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, ed. by C. M. Giustino, C. J. Plum and A. Vari (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 187-209

“From ‘Paris of the East’ to ‘Queen of Danube’: Transnational Models in the Promotion of Budapest Tourism, 1885-1940,” in Touring Beyond the Nation: A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History, edited by Eric G. E. Zuelow (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 103-25.

“A Disappearing Montmartre: Anchoring the Memory of A Neighborhood in Interwar Paris” in Im/permanence: Cultures in/out of time, edited by Judith Schachter and Stephen Brockmann, (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008), 73-87.

"From Friends of Nature to Tourist-Soldiers: Nation Building and Tourism in Hungary, 1873-1914" in Turizm: The Russian and Eastern European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, edited by Anne Gorsuch and Diane Koenker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 64-81.

Journal Articles by Alexander Vari

“Bullfights Redux: Business, Politics and the Failure of Transnational Cultural Transfer in 1920s Budapest,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 51, May 2020, 292-313.

Austrian History Yearbook, 2020

“The Nation in the City: Ceremonial (Re) Burials and Patriotic Mythmaking in turn-of-the-century Budapest,” Urban History, 40, 2 (May 2013): 202-25.

The funerals and reburials of prominent Hungarian leaders (Count Lajos Batthyány, Ferenc Deák, La... more The funerals and reburials of prominent Hungarian leaders (Count Lajos Batthyány, Ferenc Deák, Lajos Kossuth and Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II) over the course of the Dualist decades (1867–1918) – a time period when Hungary was integrated into a federal structure with Austria – were important moments in the imagining of Hungarian national identity. The article argues that turn-of-the-century Budapest served not just as stage for patriotic mythmaking on the occasion of these funeral ceremonies but was both affected by and shaped the former's content and significance.(Online publication February 15 2013)

“Re-territorializing the ‘Guilty City’: Nationalist and Right-Wing Attempts to Nationalize Budapest during the Interwar Period,” Journal of Contemporary History, 47, 4 (October 2012): 709-33

“Bullfights in Budapest: City Marketing, Moral Panics, and Nationalism in Turn-of-the-Century Hungary,” Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010): 143-69

Austrian History Yearbook, Jan 1, 2010

At the beginning of June 1904, the Hungarian capital was in a state of frenzy. The bullfights, st... more

“Exile, Urban Tourism and Identity: Hungarian Travelers in Paris, 1918-1940,” Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing 7 (1) (2006): 81-109

Journeys, Jan 1, 2006

“A Case of Female Hysteria in Hungary in the 1880s,” Budapest Review of Books (Winter 1999): 179-87.

'A női hisztéria Budapesten az 1880-as években,' Budapesti Könyvszemle, 1999 nyár, 174-183.

Review Articles by Alexander Vari

Identity Construction and Placemaking through Literature and Festivalization in Secondary Cities

Journal of Urban History, 2023

“Operetta, Cabaret Songs and Coffeehouse Gypsy Music between Elite and Popular Culture” forthcoming in Hungarian Studies Review, 2024

Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment: Experiences from Northern, East-Central and Southern Europe, 1870s-1930s, co-edited with Antje Dietze (Routledge, 2023)

by Alexander Vari and Antje Dietze

Book, 2023

Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, co-edited with Cathleen M. Giustino and Catherine J. Plum (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, hardcover 2013, paperback 2015).

“Hungarian Salzburgs: The Salzburg Idea as Inspiration for Mozart Concerts, Urban Tourism Development and Festivals in Interwar Hungary,” in Robert von Dassanowsky and Katherine Arens, eds., Interwar Salzburg: Austrian Culture Beyond Vienna (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 299-330.

“From Ambivalence to the Diseuse Craze: French-Hungarian Cultural Transfers through Chanson, 1870s-1930s" in Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment: Experiences from Northern, East-Central and Southern Europe, 1870s-1930s, edited by Antje Dietze and Alexander Vari, Routledge, 2023, 137-66

“Die Nation im Schaukasten. Binnentourismus und Nationswerdung auf der Budapester Milleniums- Ausstellung 1896,” in Zwischen Exotik und Vertrautem - Zum Tourismus in der Habsburgermonarchie und ihren Nachfolgestaaten, ed. by M. Thomsen and Peter Stachel (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014), 123-34.

“Branding Montmartre: Tourism, Popular Culture, and the Artistic Bohemia” in Tourism, Travel and Art, edited by Tijana Rakic and Jo-Anne Lester (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 219-34.

“Escaping the Monotony of Everyday Life under Socialism,” in Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, edited by Cathleen M. Giustino, Catherine J. Plum and Alexander Vari (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), 1-23.

“Nocturnal Entertainments, Five Star Hotels, and Youth Counterculture: Reinventing Budapest’s Nightlife under Socialism,” in Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, ed. by C. M. Giustino, C. J. Plum and A. Vari (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 187-209

“From ‘Paris of the East’ to ‘Queen of Danube’: Transnational Models in the Promotion of Budapest Tourism, 1885-1940,” in Touring Beyond the Nation: A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History, edited by Eric G. E. Zuelow (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 103-25.

“A Disappearing Montmartre: Anchoring the Memory of A Neighborhood in Interwar Paris” in Im/permanence: Cultures in/out of time, edited by Judith Schachter and Stephen Brockmann, (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008), 73-87.

"From Friends of Nature to Tourist-Soldiers: Nation Building and Tourism in Hungary, 1873-1914" in Turizm: The Russian and Eastern European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, edited by Anne Gorsuch and Diane Koenker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 64-81.

“Bullfights Redux: Business, Politics and the Failure of Transnational Cultural Transfer in 1920s Budapest,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 51, May 2020, 292-313.

Austrian History Yearbook, 2020

“The Nation in the City: Ceremonial (Re) Burials and Patriotic Mythmaking in turn-of-the-century Budapest,” Urban History, 40, 2 (May 2013): 202-25.

The funerals and reburials of prominent Hungarian leaders (Count Lajos Batthyány, Ferenc Deák, La... more The funerals and reburials of prominent Hungarian leaders (Count Lajos Batthyány, Ferenc Deák, Lajos Kossuth and Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II) over the course of the Dualist decades (1867–1918) – a time period when Hungary was integrated into a federal structure with Austria – were important moments in the imagining of Hungarian national identity. The article argues that turn-of-the-century Budapest served not just as stage for patriotic mythmaking on the occasion of these funeral ceremonies but was both affected by and shaped the former's content and significance.(Online publication February 15 2013)

“Re-territorializing the ‘Guilty City’: Nationalist and Right-Wing Attempts to Nationalize Budapest during the Interwar Period,” Journal of Contemporary History, 47, 4 (October 2012): 709-33

“Bullfights in Budapest: City Marketing, Moral Panics, and Nationalism in Turn-of-the-Century Hungary,” Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010): 143-69

Austrian History Yearbook, Jan 1, 2010

At the beginning of June 1904, the Hungarian capital was in a state of frenzy. The bullfights, st... more

“Exile, Urban Tourism and Identity: Hungarian Travelers in Paris, 1918-1940,” Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing 7 (1) (2006): 81-109

Journeys, Jan 1, 2006

“A Case of Female Hysteria in Hungary in the 1880s,” Budapest Review of Books (Winter 1999): 179-87.

'A női hisztéria Budapesten az 1880-as években,' Budapesti Könyvszemle, 1999 nyár, 174-183.

Identity Construction and Placemaking through Literature and Festivalization in Secondary Cities

Journal of Urban History, 2023

“Operetta, Cabaret Songs and Coffeehouse Gypsy Music between Elite and Popular Culture” forthcoming in Hungarian Studies Review, 2024

• “Identity Construction and Place Making through Literature and Festivalization in Secondary Cities,” Journal of Urban History, 41, 1 (January 2023), 233-39

“Humorous Magazines and Jewish/non-Jewish Interactions in the Making of Viennese Popular Culture,” HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews. November 2020

“Popular Culture through Global and Transnational Lenses,” Cultural History, nr. 2, October 2020, 265-72.

“Musical Theatres and Cafés: Cultural Interactions and Transfers between European Cities,” in History: Reviews of New Books, 44 (2016) 4: 94-97.

“Satisfying Material Desires: The Politics and Experience of Consumerism in the Eastern Bloc,” Europe-Asia Studies, 66 (January 2014) 1:135-43

“Economic Development, State Patriotism and Ethnic Conflict: Recent Works on Habsburg History” History: Reviews of New Books, 36 (2007) 1: 13-18

History: Reviews Of New Books, Jan 1, 2007

... our understanding of the economic dynamics between the so-called peripheries and the ... Palg... more

“Bécsről - amerikai szemmel (a review of Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna. Politics and Culture (transl. in Hungarian by Miklós Győrffi),” Budapesti Könyvszemle (Winter 2000): 324-34

Carl E. Schorskénak az amerikai és a nemzetközi történész szakma körében igen nagyra tartott köny... more Carl E. Schorskénak az amerikai és a nemzetközi történész szakma körében igen nagyra tartott könyve a bécsi századfordulóról 1998-ban végre a hazai olvasóközönség számára is elérhetővé vált. Hosszú ideje tartó mulasztást tett ezzel jóvá a Helikon Kiadó. A mű először 1980-ban jelent meg az Egyesült Államokban, azóta már számos nyelven kiadták (németül 1982-ben, franciául 1983-ban, és például románul is 1995-ben). A könyv igencsak késve kerül tehát a magyar olvasók kezébe, bár igaz, hogy szűk szakmai berkekben már jó ideje sokan ismerik, és építenek is eredményeire. Hanák Péter, a magyar századfordulót élénk színekkel megrajzoló, Bécs és Budapest fejlődésének és intellektuális világának a párhuzamait és ellentéteit taglaló tanulmányai révén, 1 Schorske főbb tételei nem sokkal a könyv megjelenése után ismertté váltak Magyarországon is. Sajnálatos ugyanakkor, hogy az amerikai történész szövege akkor kerül már csak a magyar olvasók kezébe, amikor az 1980-as években éppen a mű által keltett nemzetközi szakmai érdeklődés és vita lezárulni látszik. Szemléltetően bizonyítja ezt már az is, hogy amíg az 1980-as években a bécsi szecessziót ünneplő képzőművészeti megakiállítások Európa-szerte és az Egyesült Államokban évről évre százezreket vonzottak, 2 sőt a posztmodern irodalmárok és filozófusok Bécs századfordulón keletkezett irodalmi és tudományos műveiben vélték megtalálni a posztmodern gyökereit, 3 az 1990-es évek végére, részben a téma kommercializálódása (lásd Klimt festményeinek poszterként vagy illatszerdoboz borítójaként való forgalmazását), részben pedig napjaink tömegkultúrájába való beépülése miatt (bár e tömegkultúra folyton tagadja múltbeli forrásait) ez a fajta élénk érdeklődés már a múlté, illetve átalakult formában hat, és nem őrzi többé korábbi jelentését.

Review of The Fin-de-Siècle World, edited by Michael Saler (London and New York: Routledge, 2015) in World History Connected, October 2016

Review of Races to Modernity: Metropolitan Aspirations in Eastern Europe, 1890-1940, edited by Jan C. Behrends and Martin Kohlrausch (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2014), European History Quarterly, 45, 4 (October 2015), 747-48

Review of Paula Sutter Fichtner, The Habsburgs: Dynasty, Culture and Politics (London: Reaktion Books, 2014), The History Teacher, 48 (August 2015) 4: 778-780.

Review of Julian Brigstocke, The Life of the City: Space, Humour, and the Experience of Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Montmartre, Studies in Historical Geography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), Urban History, vol. 42, nr. 3 (2015), pp. 531-33

Review of Gwen Jones, Chicago of the Balkans: Budapest in Hungarian Literature, 1900-1939 (Oxford: Legenda, 2013), Slavonic and East European Review, 93 (April 2015) 2: 352-355.

Review of Friedrich Lenger, European Cities in the Modern Era, 1850-1914 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), Urban History, 41 (May 2014) 2: 359-61.

Review of Ethnicity, Nationalism and the European Cold War, edited by Robert Knight (London and New York: Continuum, 2012), European History Quarterly, 44 (January 2014) 1: 156-58.

Review of Mark Pittaway, The Worker’s State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944-1958. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), Slavic Review, 72 (Winter 2013) 4: 874-75.

Review of Post Festum. Szabadtéri játékok a két világháború között Salzburgban, Szegeden és Pécsett, edited by Amália Kerekes, Melinda Kindl, and Judit Szabó, Budapest: Gondolat, 2009 in Hungarian Cultural Studies, the e-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators’Association (AHEA), 2013

Review of William Kelleher Storey, The First World War: A Concise Global History (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), in World History Connected, 10, nr. 3, October 2013

Review of Andrew Hammond, British Literature and the Balkans: Themes and Contexts, Studia Imagologica: Amsterdam Studies on Cultural Identity, 16. (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010), Slavonic & East European Review, 91, 3 (2013): 609-11.

Review of Free Access to the Past: Romanticism, Cultural Heritage and the Nation, edited by Lotte Jensen, Joep Leerssen, and Marita Mathijsen (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010) in Nations and Nationalism, 19, 2 (2013): 398-400

Review of Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe, 1848-1914, edited by William Whyte and Oliver Zimmer (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) in European History Quarterly, 43, 1 (2013): 197-98

Review of D. Bartlett, Fashion East: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010) and D. Crowley and Susan E. Reid, eds., Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 2010) in Europe-Asia Studies, 64, 5 (2012): 969-72

Review of Post-Communist Nostalgia, edited by Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010) in Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 40, 6 (2012): 969-72

Review of Agata Anna Lisiak, Urban Cultures in (Post)Colonial Central Europe (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2010) in Hungarian Cultural Studies, the e-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators’Association (AHEA), vol. 5 (2012)

Review of Balkan Departures: Travel Writing from Southeastern Europe, edited by Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009) in Slavonic & East European Review, 90, 3 (July 2012): 493-95.

Review of Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side: A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s-1980s), edited by Hannes Grandits and Karin Taylor (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2010), in Journal of Tourism History, 4, 1 (2012): 109-11

Review of Sebastian Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) in Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire, 46, 3 (2011): 755-57

Review of Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, edited by György Péteri, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), in The History Teacher, 44, 4 (2011): 620-22

CALL FOR CHAPTERS: “Paris of the Periphery: The Parisian Image and the Making of Urban Modernity in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1850-1930”

We invite submissions (in the form of a 1000-word abstract) for consideration as chapters in an e... more We invite submissions (in the form of a 1000-word abstract) for consideration as chapters in an edited volume exploring the many connections between Paris and the modernizing cities of Eastern Europe and Latin America in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (1850-1930). Our objective is to reopen and reinvigorate the comparison of the borderlands of modern Western urbanity by bringing together the histories of cities on the continental and transatlantic periphery that were fashioned or imagined as regional Parises in miniature (“Paris of the East,” “Paris of South America,” “Paris of the Balkans,” “Paris of the Andes,” “Little Paris,” etc.) or that interpreted significant elements of their urban environment, experience, or culture through the prism of Paris. We are particularly interested in going beyond the focus on urban planning alone in the consideration of this relationship.

For more see the attached PDF

Call for papers (EAUH '14): "Paris of the ...": Negotiating the Parisian Urban Model in Eastern European and Latin American Cities, 1850-1930 (deadline extended to November 15)

Lived Experience and Inherited Meanings In the Case of a Romanian Black-Marketeer

CALL FOR PAPERS Session SS28. Global Trends in the Popular Culture and Nighttime Entertainment of European Cities, 1880s–1930s

by Alexander Vari and Antje Dietze

The role that dance halls, cabarets and variety theatres, and cultural imports like the cakewalk,... more The role that dance halls, cabarets and variety theatres, and cultural imports like the cakewalk, tango and jazz played in the rise of a pan-European and global commercial popular culture, has been addressed either from the perspective of a single city or a comparison between Western and North American metropolises. Thus while London, Berlin, and Paris and their connections especially to New York have attracted scholarly attention, less is known about how other European cities like Lisbon, Stockholm, to mention just a few, have included both original genres and sources, and have been connected through their emerging nighttime entertainment industry to global trends within the sphere of urban popular culture. With this in mind, this session aims to explore several sets of questions: What was the local impact of turn-of-the-century and interwar global popular cultural trends? Why were some popular culture genres that circulated from one geographic locale to another, more successful than others? Who were the agents of these cultural transfers, how were specific nighttime entertainment institutions connected to these global networks, and how, in return, did these agents and institutions influence global trends in urban popular culture? In addition to considering Western and Central European cities, this session aims to include analyses of the emergence of such global connections in urban centres located in Europe's southern, northern and eastern regions. With the intention to complicate the analysis of the various late nineteenth and early twentieth century waves of cultural globalization affecting nighttime entertainment networks in Europe, the session also pays attention to local and interregional interactions within Europe as well as, in addition to the much-researched cultural exchanges with North America, to Latin American, Middle Eastern and Asian influences. Please note that to submit a paper proposal, registration is required. Paper proposals and full texts can only be submitted online, via the website of the European Association for Urban History

Fashion East: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism and Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc

Europe-Asia Studies, 2012