Institute of Hungarian Language and Literature
Faculty of Arts, University of Miskolc
I. EDUCATION
The Faculty of Arts at the University of Miskolc provides training programmes at each level of the three cycles of the Bologna-type higher education: having completed the three-year BA Programme in Hungarian Studies, the students can proceed to our five semester-long MA Programme in Education as well as the four semester-long disciplinary MA Programme in Hungarian Studies. After the MA Programmes, our most talented students have a chance to advance further in our Doctoral (PhD) Programme.
Students graduating from our BA and MA programmes can find employment in various fields: beside the traditional pedagogical or scholarly positions, and occupations directly related to the degree, our students can flexibly enter civil service; work for the institutions of the European Union, or business companies requiring language, communication and analyzing skills; for the media; for the institutions of the state, the local government, and the civil cultural sphere; they can act as project managers, and carry out general organizing tasks.
The aim of the training programme in literary studies is to provide the students with reliable knowledge about the development of world literature as well as Hungarian literature. The students get to know the historically changing social conditions and institutions of literature as well as the mode of being of literary works of art. They acquire the basic philological, rhetorical, prosodic, poetical, and hermeneutic knowledge required to interpret literary phenomena. They are trained to regard national and world literature in a double focus.
The training programme in linguistics focuses on the nature and the historical specificities of the Hungarian language. Having acquired a stable theoretical knowledge in linguistics, the students learn about the methods of linguistic research, the grammar of the Hungarian language, the laws of linguistic structures, the historically and sociologically specific forms of language use, and the different approaches to linguistic phenomena. They achieve a good knowledge of linguistic skills in order to express themselves elaborately in speaking as well as in writing. Our students receive such knowledge and skills that enable them to become teachers in various types of schools.
The Hungarian training programme is organized by the Institute of Hungarian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Miskolc. The institute includes the following departments, which also act as workshops of their specific fields:
· Department of Hungarian Literary History
· Comparative Literature and Culture Department
· Hungarian Linguistics Department
1. BA Programme in Hungarian Studies
Throughout the three years of the BA Programme the students need to complete 180 credits worth of courses. Completing these credits can be done in various combinations according to the individual interest of the students.
The BA Programme in Hungarian Studies includes 120 credits, which can be fulfilled by completing the syllabus containing roughly the same number of courses in literary studies and linguistics, familiarizing students with the significant periods of Hungarian and world literature as well as with the schools and methods of descriptive and historical linguistics.
Further credits can be acquired in the following training modules:
a) Those students who would like to continue their studies in the Master Programme in Education, are recommended to complete the minor (50 credit) version of another BA Programme, because in the fields of arts, the teacher training always includes double majors, which requires the completion of two BA Programmes, one worth 120 credits and another worth 50 credits. The Faculty of Arts at the University of Miskolc offers the combinations of the BA Programme in Hungarian Studies with the History, English Studies, German Studies minors, enabling students to take part in Hungarian–History, Hungarian–English or Hungarian–German MA Programmes in Education.
b) Those students who do not want to proceed to the MA Programme in Education, or who would like to conclude their studies at the end of the BA level, can select 50 credits worth of specialization modules within the training programme.
· The Language Assistant specialization provides students with theoretical and practical knowledge that helps them master their communication skills in their mother tongue. With this degree, students can find work at cultural and administrative institutions, economic companies, televisions, radios, and newspapers. The students take lectures and seminars about descriptive linguistics and grammar. By deepening their knowledge of their mother tongue, they become masters of written and oral communication. The specialization also gives students considerable technical knowledge about computer programs and communication devices. The specialization also requires the completion of professional practice, which can be done at cultural and administrative organizations as well as in different fields of the media. At their future workplace, these language assistants can fulfill a key role in leading negotiations, preparing presentations and interviews as well as compiling written documents.
· The Literature and Culture specialization offers, on the one hand, a comparative study of the relationship between literature and creative art, film, photography, theatre, music, etc., on the other hand, it devotes more time for the comparative study of Hungarian literary history and texts taken from European (especially Central European) and world literature.
· The Intellectual History and Rhetoric (Systematic Literary History) specialization provides a wide range of information about the significant periods of Hungarian literature, examines its institutional grounds, deals with the most important questions of intellectual history, genres and rhetoric, keeping in close view the parallels from world literature. The lectures are connected to seminars in order to deepen students’ knowledge of the field as well as introducing them to the basic methods of scientific research.
Our intention with the latter two specializations is to lay the foundations for the disciplinary MA Programmes and transmitting such knowledge which will become crucial in working at cultural fields.
After completing the BA Programme in Hungarian Studies, students can continue their studies in the 5 semester long MA Programme in Education, which includes 150 credits worth of coursework. We also provide options for students with earlier or Bologna System degrees which did not include a Hungarian major.
After the completion of the BA Programme in Arts, students can go on to gain a teacher’s degree in two subjects. The studies comprise of four semesters of coursework (120 credits) with a fifth semester devoted to school teaching practice (professional practice, 30 credits).
The division of the 120 credits of coursework is the following:
· 40 credits worth of courses in Hungarian Studies.
· 40 credits worth of courses in another chosen field (at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Miskolc, these fields can include the teaching of Philosophy, History, English and German; for more information about these, please visit their home institutes).
· 40 credits worth of pedagogical and psychological studies (for more information about these, please visit the Teacher Training Institute at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Miskolc).
The MA Programme in Hungarian Education can be taken by students who,
· completed their studies in the BA Programme in Hungarian Studies (120 credits), or who
· completed a Hungarian minor or specialization during their BA studies (50 credits).
3. Disciplinary MA Programme in Hungarian Studies
We recommend this MA Programme to those students who would like to deepen their knowledge of certain fields in literature or linguistics, and who, after completing this level, aim to advance to the third level of the Bologna higher education, the Doctoral (PhD) Programme.
The disciplinary MA Programme includes four semesters of coursework during which students need to complete 120 credits worth of courses. Most of the credits are obtained in the specialized way: from the second semester on, students complete most of their classes in their chosen field to facilitate their professional growth.
The following specialized training programmes can be selected:
· Old Hungarian Literature
· Classic Hungarian Literature
· Modern Hungarian Literature
· Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies
· Descriptive Linguistics
· Language, Society, Culture
· Textology and Stylistics
· Historical Linguistics
This list makes it obvious that there are no fields in literary studies or linguistics, in which we cannot offer a specialization programme for our students.
By default, the disciplinary MA Programme does not allow students to automatically become teachers. However, parallel with the disciplinary MA Programme, the students can enroll into an MA Programme in Education, where, after completing 60 credits, students can gain a teacher’s degree. This programme yields a single major teacher’s degree, though which, compared to the MA Programme in Education, provides the students with a considerably deeper knowledge of Hungarian Studies.
The Faculty of Arts at the University of Miskolc hosts a Doctoral School of Literary Studies, which provides a text analysis–textology-centered post-graduate education. A doctoral programme on textology is available only at the University of Miskolc in Hungary, with a staff of outstanding experts in the field.
There are three Doctoral Programmes available in the Doctoral School:
· Classic Textology, headed by Prof. Dr. Gábor Kecskeméti
· Modern Literature, headed by Prof. Dr. Lóránt Kabdebó
· Semantics and Hermeneutics, headed by Prof. Dr. Tibor Schwendtner
II. Scientific Research
1. The Theory and Practice of Textology
Ever since literary and historical studies came into being, special emphasis has been put on the text, which serves as both the most important tool and object of research. In accordance with this, both disciplines have been focusing on exploring and publishing texts as sources from the very beginning, while also exploring and solving textological problems related to texts and their academic publishing.
Soon after the establishment of the Faculty of Arts in Miskolc, there arose a need for a central doctoral school devoted to textology, which would cooperate with Hungarian and international enterprises in textology and serve as a practical training centre for experts who accomplish practical work based on theory.
Defining and teaching the norms of text analysis, textology, and philology, the valid forms of reflected text definitions, developing and applying text graphic principles, the stemmatic graphic issues of text generation together with the core text apparatus, notes and commentaries of critical text editing, source publications, genetic and electronic (digital) editions mean the basic issues of Hungarian human sciences and pre-conditions for co-operating with international institutions of textology and workshops of philology. Publishing the lifeworks of classics of Hungarian literature with authentic texts on a high academic level together with the thematic and chronologic chrestomathies and corpora of Hungarian literary texts form an essential part of fostering and conserving Hungarian cultural heritage. Training a new generation of professional experts to implement the task of editing and publishing is of great importance.
The Doctoral School of Literary Studies at the University of Miskolc is an especially suitable institution for text analysis–textology-centered post-graduate education. The doctoral programme on textology – dating back more than 15 years – is available only at the University of Miskolc, with a staff of outstanding experts in the field.
· The doctoral programme in Textology (today called Classic Textology) was set up by Prof. Dr. Péter Kulcsár in as early as 1996, and has been headed by Prof. Dr. Gábor Kecskeméti since 2004, who also acts as the head of the Committee on Textology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS). The students taking part in this programme primarily study texts from the early modern period and the 18th–19th centuries.
· The programme on the 20th century was set up and has been headed by Prof. Dr. Lóránt Kabdebó to date, and in the course of the programme, he and the students under his guidance have published an authentic edition of the complete works of the Miskolc-born author Lőrinc Szabó, a great number of his other writings together with his translations, notes and memoranda, letters, the documents related to him, and the reference books necessary to study all these (bibliographies, library catalogue).
· The third programme, under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Tibor Schwendtner, focuses on the semiotic, semantic, hermeneutic and linguistic philosophical issues of textology, supplementing an orthodox textological approach with up-to-date theories of semantics, phenomenology, and hermeneutics.
The three programmes together make up a research centre of post-graduate studies focusing on textology which covers texts from the 16th–20th centuries, analyzed from a historical point of view, and also based on linguistic and textological theories.
2. Issues of Generic- and Intellectual History in Hungarian Literary History
Our literary historian colleagues deal with many significant generic- and intellectual historical questions of the early modern age. Prof. Dr. János Heltai organized for the first time in Hungary the critical analysis of denominational debates as well as compiling, with the help of his students, a database for theological debates. Prof. Dr. Gábor Kecskeméti and Dr. Réka Tasi are researching the history of sermons. Three decades ago Prof. Dr. István Kilián initiated the research of the history of the theatre and drama, and he established a workshop for the publishing and the analysis of 18th century school dramas. All of the researchers above also focus on the studies of young Hungarians in foreign universities in the early modern age, and investigate the history not only of literature, but of literary thinking.
Dr. László Gyapay, Dr. Tibor Porkoláb, and Dr. Réka Tasi published or cooperated in the publication of critical editions of the collected works of classic Hungarian authors (Gábor Dayka, Benedek Virág, Ferenc Kölcsey, József Lévay) from the long literary historical period lasting from the Enlightenment of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century.
3. Step Together Project for the Integration of Migrant Children
The children of the families from abroad who arrive to Hungary as migrants face serious difficulties during their school studies. They do not speak Hungarian well enough, yet they must integrate within a Hungarian speaking school community in order to acquire the social and scientific knowledge and competences appropriate to their age.
Our linguistic research group, which has a wide range of experience in the sociolinguistic analysis of limited code, disadvantaged social groups, is looking for opportunities to ease these difficulties. Our research has been funded by the EU European Integration Fund, with the help of which we could fulfill an enterprise with significant social benefits: a series of school books and methodological teaching aids tailored especially for the needs of primary school children coming from migrant backgrounds and studying with Hungarian school children. The applied linguistic programme titled Step Together won the merits of the European Language Label in 2011.
