The CEU Jewish Studies program is excited to announce and celebrate that two of this year’s MA graduates of the Specialization – Dania Lemmer and Hannah Szabó – won prestigious prices for their MA thesis in the field of Jewish Studies.
Hannah Szabó won the Hanak Award for the best thesis of the one-year MA program in the Department of Historical Studies for her thesis “Constructed Internationalisms: Mobilizing Esperanto in Late- and Post-Habsburg East Central Europe.”
Praise for Hannah’s thesis:
“The thesis by Hannah is an extremely well-researched and well-written piece. It uses a very complex comparative framework focusing on Czech and Hungarian Esperantists. It also places this into a variety of different frames of interpretation, that of Jewish cultural projects of the fin-de-siècle, interwar internationalisms, and the question of artificial languages. By taking this seemingly marginal episode, it manages to offer a meta-reflection on the complexity of nation-building dynamic in the region. It also successfully bridges the periods before and after the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, which is commonly studied from different perspectives. Its use of primary materials is highly original, and its engagement with different interpretative models, such as Joseph G. Feinberg’s work, is compelling. The author has mastered an impressive array of languages, including Esperanto, which has allowed for a multifaceted analysis on this attempt to transcend national or nation-based projects. This is definitely one of the strongest MA theses we have read, and certain chapters could easily be turned into peer-review articles.”
Dania Lemmer won the Mária M. Kovács Outstanding Thesis Award in Nationalism Studies by the Nationalism Studies Program for her MA thesis “Why Defend Israel? Memory, Identity, and Combat Motivation in the Self-Narrativization of German-Jewish IDF Soldiers.” The committee notes:
“Dania’s thesis is an outstanding piece of research. She conducted interviews with soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces who either grew up in Germany or are closely linked to Germany, asking what informed and motivated their decisions to enlist. She analyses how they narrate themselves and their decisions, how they made sense of their lives, and how they integrate their military service into a coherent personal self-narration. What emerges through the thesis are complex stories of identity and memory, responses to discrimination, alienation, and search for community and belonging. Dania shows how the narrative of an existential struggle for survival, especially in the wake of the attacks of October 7, 2023, is integrated into a larger history of persecution, and how it informed soldiers’ relations to their community, to Germany, and to Israel, and how it shaped their reactions and decisions to enlist. The thesis therefore not only contributes substantially to a better understanding of German-Jewish experiences in recent years but is key for an understanding of the wider phenomenon of transnational volunteer soldiers that has (re-)emerged in recent years in armed conflicts around the world. Dania’s methodological approach and careful analysis of the interviews is exceptional and the thesis is not only publishable but should also be seen as the cornerstone for future pathbreaking research.”