This paper is based on two arguments: First, “grim storytelling” only gives access to part of the story and therefore needs to be supplemented with “better stories” — stories that generate an understanding of human potentiality, creativity, resilience, interconnectedness and shared “vulnerability”. Second, the tendency towards “grim storytelling” in critical social sciences constitutes a major limitation for the possibilities of imagining and enacting the very transformations that Europe most urgently needs in order to enhance the European project.
By
Andrea Petö
June 20, 2023
In 2016, commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution brought new conflicts in memory politics. This article analyzes the reasons for women’s absence from the historiography of the 1956 Revolution and discusses how the polypore state is using the populist turn to introduce hegemonic narratives and to include women in the narrative of “national feminism”.
By
Andrea Petö
March 8, 2018
The founders of CEU, politicians, including PM Orban, had a common dream back then. That dream was that we would build a free and successful country where not party apparatchiks, but academics decide who can study at a university, and what institution can call itself a university.
By
Andrea Petö
June 13, 2017
The author argues that the history of the Holocaust is the history of Europe; "as Europeans, we all continue to live it".
"It is not wise to appropriate to ourselves the story of suffering, because even in the short term such a course will lead to isolation and a rise in anti-Semitism."
By
Andrea Petö
October 18, 2014
Adopting and Remembering Soviet Reality: Life Stories of Lithuanian Women 1945—1970, Edited and adapted by Dalia Leinarte, Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi 2010, 234 pages
By
Andrea Petö
October 3, 2011
In Hungary, there were several active women fascists. In the People’s Tribunals after World War II, however, few of the women were convicted. There was an unwillingness to think of women as capable of such evil deeds.
Essay by
Andrea Petö
February 16, 2010