The members of the research project attended the international conference “Creative Writing and Creative Reading: Rethinking Multiculturalism” at the University of London, Birkbeck College, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (18 March 2018). The conference brought together academics, teachers, as well as students, who discussed the latest knowledge and insights into creative ways of teaching and studying literature, and focused on issues such as audiovisual approaches to English literature, novel to film adaptations, as well as analyses of English and American travel literatures. In our section we presented the research at Partium Christian University (Oradea, Romania) regarding English and American travel accounts on Hungary and Transylvania during the nineteenth century. We provided a deep analysis of the travelogues written by John Paget, Charles Loring Brace, Andrew A. Paton, and John A. Patterson. On the one hand, we used the term travel writing deliberately to refer to a literary genre, to a form of creative nonfiction that is, in many cases, a very subjective and personal account of places, people, and events, combined with more or less accurate historical and social data. On the other hand, we discussed how and to what extent these texts could serve as socio-political commentaries of the age as well as well-documented informative texts that draw the attention of Western societies, especially of the English and American (political) elite, to the “Hungarian case.”
After the conference presentations the research group from PCU, Oradea, had the possibility to visit the greatest landmarks of London, such as: the Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, the Westminster Abbey, as well as the National and the Tate Britain Galleries.
Research group members:
Borbála Bökös (teacher)
Adrienn Nyári (2nd year student)
Krisztina Szenderszki (2nd year student)
Henrietta Hőgye (2nd year student)
Orsolya Nagy (2nd year student)
See conference programme and detailed research topics below: