Lucy Jeffery

Lucy Jeffery (UK)

Lecturer, University of Reading

Program:

Visegrad Scholarship at OSA

Attendance Period:

Apr/2024 - May/2024

Research Title:

Circumventing Censorship during the Kádár Era: A Case Study of the Demszky Circle

Research Description:

The project Circumventing Censorship asks what lessons can be learned from those who evaded censorship laws to publish prohibited literature and journalism during the Kádár era, notably Gábor Demszky and his then wife Róza Hodosán (the Demszkys). By amplifying these silenced voices through the dissemination and discussion of findings from the Blinken OSA Archivum, this research can inform and inspire a plurality of views concerning censorship regulation today. To do so, I read Gergely Péterfy and Évá Péterfy-Novák’s (the Péterfys) acts of dissident publishing in dialogue with the samizdat activities led by the Demszkys during the 1970s and 1980s.

Bio:

Lucy Jeffery is Co-Founder of the Replaying Communism research project which received AHRC funding from in 2023. She has published widely on 20th-century literature, theater, and culture. Her monograph, Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process was published in 2021 and she co-edited the "A New Poetics of Space" special issue of Green Letters in 2022. After first visiting Budapest in April 2019, and countless more trips since, she haspublished research on the political context faced by authors like Magda Szabó. She is currently co-editing the forthcoming edited collection ReplayingCommunism: Memories of Soviet Occupation in European Media and Culture.