Central Europe and the English-Speaking World

No university department is seriously recognized in academia unless its name is connected to some scholarly activity such as fruitful research projects and national or international conferences. This expectation was to be met by the Department of English, Partium Christian University, Oradea, Romania, when we decided to organize the first international conference on “Central Europe and the English-Speaking World” between 13-14 April 2007 at PCU.

The event attracted more than forty participants from the USA, Canada, Poland, Slovakia, the Ukraine, White Russia, Hungary and Romania. The clear and explicit intention of the organizers was to establish a tradition which will provide a regular forum for those scholars and students who are involved in researching the very important field of interrelationships between the Central European region and the English-Speaking World including the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand as well as many countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

It was a great honour for the organizers—including every staff member of our Department—that Bishop László Tőkés accepted the role of the chief patron of the conference and that we had the full support of the university. Other sponsors included the Irish Embassy in Bucharest, the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen, Hungary as well as Péter Posta, a second-year student at our department.

The academic program of the conference started with the opening address of Professor Donald E. Morse from Debrecen who provided an excellent framework for the presentations which discussed such diverse issues as diplomatic, political, cultural, literary and linguistic influences, correlations and cooperations between Central European and English-Speaking countries. Papers of the conference will be published later this year.

Non-academic programs of the conference included an outstanding and highly successful theatre production (Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s St. Nicholas) by Professor Dick St George from SUNY Brockport, USA on Friday night which was followed by a reception hosted by László Tőkés. One of the highlights of the conference was a panel discussion about the personal and educational experiences of four academics: two from Central Europe (Professors Zsolt Virágos from Hungary and Peter Odrakiewicz from Poland) and two from the US (Professors Donald E. Morse and Dick St George). The last social event was the closing banquet which also included a short theatre piece written and performed by students of English at PCU. It must be noted here that quite a number of our students had an enormous role in making the first international conference very successful.

Finally, let me take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, our staff and our students for making this wonderful event happen…

Péter Szaffkó

forrás: deptenglish.partium.ro