Department of Hungarian Language and Literature

History of the Department

The Department of Hungarian Language and Literature is the organic part of the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava. It is the oldest academic institution that has been teaching Hungarian language, literature and culture and the only one that hosts Finnish lectorate. Our Department provides only accredited programmes at Bachelor’s, Master’s and doctorate levels, too.

Hungarian language and literature teaching has been present at the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University since 1923. At the beginning, Hungarian studies were held within the frames of the Hungarian and Slavic Seminar and later the Department of Classical languages. In 1956 the Department of Hungarian and Semitic Philology was founded, later, in 1959 the independent Hungarian department started its existence with Andor Sas as its Head. Since its existence the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature has been the workplace of many excellent Hungarian linguists and literary scholars in Slovakia. The first generation of the students was instructed by Lajos Turczel, Ferenc Sima, Jaroslava Pašiaková and Lajos Garaj, soon  Sándor Csanda, István Jakab, László Zeman and Zoltán Fónod, later Zsigmond Zalabai, Árpád Tőzsér and Lajos Grendel also became the members of the Department. Rudolf Chmel hungarologist and Gizella Szabómihály linguist were also among the staff of the Department for a period of time and it has also hosted some well-regarded lecturers from Hungary, such as László Deme, Miklós Kázmér, István Käfer, Sándor Mokány, József Szabó and Ottó Vörös and many others.

At present the department offers four study programmes:

1. Hungarian Language and Literature – Training of Teachers with Acadamic Subject       Specialisation

2. Hungarian Language and Culture –  Translation Studies and Interpretation

3. Finnish Language and Culture – Translation Studies and Interpretation

4. Editing and Publishing

 

The members of the Department today:

prof. PhDr. István Lanstyák, PhD; doc. Mgr. Zoltán Csehy, PhD; doc. Mgr. Katarína Misadová, PhD; doc. Mgr. Anikó Polgár, PhD; PhDr. Anikó Dusíková, PhD; Mgr. Zuzana Drábeková, PhD; Mgr. Szilárd Sebők, PhD; Mgr. art. Pavol Száz, PhD. Two foreign lectors of the department: doc. Orsolya Nádor, PhD. (Hungary) and Mgr. Timo Laine (Finnland).   

Within the frames of ERASMUS and CEEPUS exchange programmes our Department maintains scholarly relationship with many European universities – mainly with Hungarian, Finnish, Austiran and Iltalian universities. Our most talented undergraduates can spend several semesters on foreing universities and the Department can also host foreign lecturers thanks to such exchange programmes. 

Since 2011, our Department has also been publishing its annual journal, titled Nova Posoniensia. It includes scholarly articles by the staff of the Department.

At present the Head of the Department is doc. Mgr. Katarína Misadová, PhD. and it academic coordinator is doc. Mgr. Anikó Polgár, PhD.