Zsolt Czigányik is Associate Professor in the English Department at ELTE, Budapest, and the leader of the research group Democracy in East Central European utopianism funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation at Central European University. He is the secretary of the Utopian Studies Society. His research focus is modern utopian and dystopian literature.

Zsolt Czigányik about his talk: Utopia is situated in no-man’s land between literature, social philosophy and the social sciences, where literary and socio-political factors interact. Historian Péter Hanák has argued that Central Europe is a region where reality and utopia have always mingled. In my presentation I reflect on both concepts: how utopian literary works reflect the social and political reality, and how this genre that stemmed from Western Europe was received and developed in our region. I intend to outline briefly how I understand the concept of utopia and the changing concept of Central Europe in its liminal position between East and West. Based on my studies in English and Hungarian utopian literature, I present our ongoing project as the leader of the Democracy in East Central European utopianism research group that aims to outline the specific features of Central European utopias, such as their national character.

See the video of Zsolt Czigányik´s lecture in English HERE.