lecture

[Peto Andrea]

FRIDAY, JULY 23, 7:00-8:30 pm
Location: CEU Nador u. 9. Bldg, Auditorium
A public reading presented by the Program on Gender & Culture:
Susan Rubin Suleiman (Harvard Unversity)
"Can You Go Home Again?"
   Reflections on Displacement and Return
Can you forget the place you once called home?  What does it take to
make you remember it? Professor Susan Suleiman will discuss and read
from her new memoir, "Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook," an
account of her returns to her native city before and after the fall of
communism. Suleiman left Budapest in 1949 with her parents, shortly
after her tenth birthday. Thirty-five years later, she returned with
her two sons for a brief vacation, and in 1993 she spent six months
there as a Fellow of the newly founded Collegium Budapest Institute
for Advanced Study.  Suleiman's relation to her birthplace is like
that of many others who have had to leave their country of origin at
an early age: she speaks the language "like a native," but with an
accent. She will discuss her search for personal and family history,
against the backdrop of the history of Jews in Hungary and the stories
of present-day Hungarians struggling to make sense of "the Change" in
their lives after 1989.

SUSAN RUBIN SULEIMAN is C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the
Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature at
Harvard University. She was also one of the architects of Harvard's
Women's Studies program. Prof. Suleiman is the author of more than 50
articles on modern literature and the author or editor of half a dozen
books including "Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art
and Literature," "Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the
Avant-Garde," "Authoritarian  Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a
Literary Genre" and the edited volume "The Female Body in Western
Culture: Contemporary Perspectives." For further information about
this reading, please contact the Program on Gender & Culture: tel.
327-3034; e-mail: gender at ceu.hu