On the Verge of History: Life Stories of Rural Women from Serbia, Romania, and Hungary, 1920-2020

Rural women have not had a formative role in the public histories of Central Eastern Europe. Izabella Agárdi aims to correct that by concentrating on their life stories and their connections to general histories. She investigates how Hungarian-speaking, ordinary women in rural contexts born in the 1920s and 1930s remember and talk about the twentieth century they have experienced, and how, through their stories, they articulate historical change and construct themselves as historical subjects.


In her analysis, Izabella Agárdi traces the interactions between micro- and macro- narratives as well as the specific tools women of this generation appropriate to talk about personal memories of their often traumatic past. From these stories, a particular mnemonic community emerges, one that speaks from a highly precarious position ‘on the verge of history’. It is up to future generations whether these women’s experiences will be remembered or forgotten.

The author:

Dr Izabella Agárdi studied English and American Philology, Literary Theory, History, and Gender Relations in Szeged, Budapest, and Utrecht. Since 2015, she is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (iASK) and Lecturer at the University of Pannonia Kőszeg Campus, Hungary. Previously, Agárdi was a junior researcher at Utrecht University and member of Athena, Cliohres, and ATGender. She is the author of Making Sense, Crafting Histories: Practices of History Writing (Pisa UP 2010). Her papers on the material culture and political rhetoric of former socialist countries as well as on the legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have appeared in Hungarian Cultural Studies, Múltunk, Kaleidoscope, Hungarian Historical Review, and several volumes published by Pisa University Press.



The author of the foreword:

Dr. Andrea Pető is Professor of Gender Studies at the Central European University at Vienna.