Zsuszanna Varga

My PhD project addresses the ways modern urban phenomena, such as the penny press and the Millennium Exhibition of 1896 fixed visions of colonial racial and gender hierarchies in Hungary. The consumption of the non-Western was interpreted as a sign of cosmopolitan status, at the same time global taxonomies and representations were utilized to re-articulate national and ethnic identities. Among other things, Hungarian scholars saw connections between the Russian Empire, Asia and Hungary, and through theories of ethnic origin defined particular Eastern European selves.