Steve Jobbitt

Lakehead University, History, Faculty Member

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Book by Steve Jobbitt

Fodor Ferenc Önéletírásai (2016)

Co-edited with Róbert Győri, this collection of four previously unpublished autobiographical docu... more Co-edited with Róbert Győri, this collection of four previously unpublished autobiographical documents by the Hungarian geographer Ferenc Fodor (1887-1962) sheds important light on the life and work of a scholar and public intellectual whose career as a researcher began in the late Austro-Hungarian period and ended in the early communist era with the publication of his final book in 1957. Accompanied by a substantial introduction (in both English and Hungarian), this collection makes a significant contribution to the history of Hungarian geography, and opens up critical and ultimately timely perspectives on a Hungarian intellectual whose work has seen a revival in the context of Hungary's post-communist shift to the right.

Articles by Steve Jobbitt

"Hungarian Martyrs, Refugees, and the Politics of Anticommunism in Salazar’s Portugal, 1956–1957" (2016)

This article summarizes the findings of my early research into the experiences of Hungarian migra... more This article summarizes the findings of my early research into the experiences of Hungarian migrants in Portugal after World War II, and the way in which the Hungarian Revolution and its suppression in 1956 was politicized by Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo [‘New State’]. Recognizing the propagandistic value of the 1956 Revolution and the refugee crisis that it created, the Salazar government celebrated Hungary’s freedom fighters as martyrs while simultaneously painting an idealized and simplistic picture of an honorable Christian nation locked in a fundamentally moral struggle against the civilizational threat posed by Soviet barbarism and communist terror. However, in attempting to align its own political and ideological message with the actions of Hungary’s revolutionaries and the suffering of its refugees, the Salazar regime ran the very real risk of highlighting the numerous contradictions, shortcomings, and injustices that defined the Estado Novo. Ultimately the Salazar regime’s propagandistic support of the Revolution betrayed the hypocrisy of an authoritarian, clerico-fascist state, one that was not only unwilling to accept Hungarian refugees on a long-term basis, but also guilty of suppressing its own people and its non-European colonial subjects.

"Fodor’s Field Diary and the Writing of the Hungarian Imperial Self during World War I" (2015)

In his article "Fodor's Field Diary and the Writing of the Hungarian Imperial Self during World W... more In his article "Fodor's Field Diary and the Writing of the Hungarian Imperial Self during World War I" Steven A.E. Jobbitt analyses a field diary written by the Hungarian geographer and bota- nist, Ferenc Fodor, who took part in a two-week geobotanical expedition to Bosnia-Hercegovina in the summer of 1917. Sponsored by the Hungarian Academy of Science, the expedition was part of a much broader Austro-Hungarian imperialist project in the Balkans during World War I. Close scrutiny of Fodor's field diary as a particular form of life writing provides important insight into the masculine- imperialist fantasies that informed Hungary's mapping of the Balkans as both a geopolitical and civili- zational space, and in so doing points to the conceptual tensions and existential anxieties that lay at the center of Fodor's own conception and negotiation of self. Jobbitt's analysis suggests that although not obvious, Fodor's field diary written during World War I represents "trauma" in its both personal and extended perspectives. (http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2719)

"Regime Change and the Attempted Rehabilitation of Self: Ferenc Fodor and the Production of Communist Geography, 1948-1962" (2015)

The communist takeover in Hungary after World War II presented obvious challenges, hardships, and... more The communist takeover in Hungary after World War II presented obvious challenges, hardships, and even dangers for the conservative-nationalist scholars who were part of the intellectual elite of the interwar period. Marginalized within the new socio-political order that emerged after the communist consolidation of power in 1948-49, conservative-nationalist intellectuals who were not completely silenced by the communists either retreated from public life entirely, or else found themselves having to struggle to remain relevant within the state-socialist system then under construction. Though limited in what they could publish, and relegated to minor and often precarious positions within the scholarly community, former conservative-nationalist scholars were nevertheless granted limited spaces within which they could produce relevant and even important scholarship, and in so doing could also “reinvent” themselves—if in many cases only partially and perhaps opportunistically—as public intellectuals. Focusing on the life and work of Ferenc Fodor between 1948 and his death in 1962, this article explores the concrete ways that a once-prominent geographer of the interwar period continued to contribute to geographical knowledge production under communism, and how he used this scholarly work as leverage in his attempts to partially rehabilitate himself in the early communist period. Contributing to a growing body of critical work on Hungarian geography under communism (see articles by Márton Czirfusz and Róbert Győri in the 2015 issue of Hungarian Cultural Studies, for example), this study helps to lay the groundwork for future research on the relationship between the politics of scholarly production and the spatial re-imagining of postwar Hungary. (http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/ahea.2015.223)

An earlier version of this article was published as "Scholarly Production in Desperate Times: Ferenc Fodor and the Question of Academic Relevancy in Communist Hungary, 1948-1962," in Földrajz- és földtudomány az Eötvös Collegiumban [Geography and Earth Sciences at the Eötvös Collegium], ed. Róbert Győri (Budapest: Eötvös Collegium, 2014): 195-214 (http://real.mtak.hu/28675/1/Foldrajz_es_foldtudomany_az_Eotvos_Collegiumban_teljes_kotet.pdf)

"Introduction: Questions of Space and Place in Scholarship on Modern Hungary" (2014)

Abstract: Reflecting on both the personal and intellectual factors that influenced this thematic ... more Abstract: Reflecting on both the personal and intellectual factors that influenced this thematic cluster on space, place, and the making of modern Hungary, the authors situate themselves within the history of the post-socialist revival of geography in Hungary, outlining in particular emergent fields of study and new schools of thought that have transformed geographical research and teaching over the last decade. Having drawn together historians and geographers working in Hungary, Canada, and the United States, Part I of this two-part cluster represents an effort to bring different disciplinary streams and academic cultures into contact with one another, and has provided the authors with an opportunity to better survey the state of a very broad and dynamic field of study, and to identify and begin to address lacunae in their collaborative work.

"Emlék Szatmárról – Emlék Fodor Ferencről: Az emlékezés és az identitás földrajza Fodor Ferenc: „Szatmár földje, Szatmár népe, Szatmár élete” című művében" (2013)

This paper employs postmodern theory to examine the complex existential relationship between memo... more This paper employs postmodern theory to examine the complex existential relationship between memory and the negotiation of identity during the early communist period in Hungary. Suggesting that Ferenc Fodor’s unpublished 1952 manuscript “Szatmár földje, Szatmár népe, Szatmár élete” can be read in two ways, the article begins with an analysis of his “underground” study as a geographical retreat into conservative-nationalist memory. It concludes by suggesting that his work on Szatmár can be seen as an integral component of a much larger autobiographical project, one which may have been fuelled in part by fears that he would be seen as accommodating the new regime by publishing a handful of geographical studies during the 1950s. Though Fodor was no doubt sincere in his efforts to preserve the memory of a city that had been lost to Hungary as a result of the nation’s defeat in World War I and then again in World War II, a close reading of his published socialist-era scholarship and his unpublished private papers suggests that, in his attempts to remember Szatmár, he was also attempting to construct, and ultimately preserve, a proper memory of himself as a sincere Hungarian nationalist whose values and identity had by no means been compromised by his attempts to remain academically relevant under the new regime.

Translated by Róbert Győri (ELTE)

An earlier English-language version of this article was published in the journal Hungarian Studies: “Remembering Szatmár, Remembering Himself: The Geography of Memory and Identity in Ferenc Fodor’s ‘Szatmár Földje, Szatmár Népe, Szatmár Élete,’” Hungarian Studies Review XXXVI, Nos. 1-2 (2009): 15-38 (http://hungarianstudies.org/HSR2009.pdf)

"Playing the Part: Hungarian Boy Scouts and the Performance of Trauma in Interwar Hungary" (2011)

Abstract: In 1920, the historic Kingdom of Hungary was dismembered according to the dictates of t... more Abstract: In 1920, the historic Kingdom of Hungary was dismembered according to the dictates of the Treaty of Trianon. Resulting in the loss of two-thirds of the nation’s pre- World War I territory, and one-third of its prewar population, Trianon has long stood as a symbol for Hungarian suffering and trauma in the twentieth century. Historians of modern Hungary have given much consideration to Trianon, with serious attention being paid to what some have called the Trianon syndrome, or the Trianon trauma. Arguing that interwar Hungarian culture and politics need to be understood in light of the menacing psychological shadow cast by Trianon, a number of historians have suggested that the people of Hungary were traumatized spontaneously and universally by the dismemberment of the nation and the suffering that followed. This paper argues that, though this may indeed have been the case on a raw emotional level, careful consideration needs to be given to the overlapping political and pedagogical functions of the Trianon trauma, especially as this trauma found expression in repeated public “performances” of the Trianon tragedy. Focusing on the revisionist performances of Hungarian boy scouts between the wars, and in particular on the personal papers of the Hungarian geographer and boy scout leader Ferenc Fodor, this paper draws a direct link between trauma and performance in the interwar period, and argues that, though trauma was indeed central to Hungarian cultural politics, it functioned as much as a pedagogical strategy as it did a psychological reality.
Link to publication: http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/ahea.2011.29

“Remembering Szatmár, Remembering Himself: The Geography of Memory and Identity in Ferenc Fodor’s ‘Szatmár Földje, Szatmár Népe, Szatmár Élete'” (2009)

A slightly expanded Hungarian language version of this article was published in Földrajzi Közlemé... more

Articles in Books by Steve Jobbitt

"Scholarly Production in Desperate Times: Ferenc Fodor and the Question of Academic Relevancy in Communist Hungary, 1948-1962" (2014)

The full article is available in the pdf of the book: http://real.mtak.hu/28675/1/Foldrajz_es_fol... more

“Memory and Modernity in Fodor’s Geographical Work on Hungary” (2011)

In "Memory and Modernity in Fodor's Geographical Work on Hungary," Steven Jobbitt argues that the... more In "Memory and Modernity in Fodor's Geographical Work on Hungary," Steven Jobbitt argues that the existential anxiety which compelled the nationalist geographer Ferenc Fodor to develop a distinctly psychological approach to post-World War II Hungarian geography was the product of longstanding modernist frustrations with the nationalist project. Having worked throughout his career to shape the otherwise disparate geographical, historical, and psychological elements of the nation into a meaningful organic totality, Fodor was forced time and again to confront not only the immense empirical scope of his nationalist project, but also the possibility that the nation itself was an arbitrary construct, one which, if it did exist, only did so as a figment of the nationalist imagination. Jobbitt's study suggests that Fodor's solipsistic realization is an important one to consider, not just for what it tells us about the underlying anxiety which informed the geographer's nationalist geographies throughout his career, but also for what it reveals about the interconnected questions of memory and modernity within the context of nationalist thinking.