Assistant Professor of History Anita Kurimay Wins Reginald Zelnik Book Prize
Assistant Professor of History Anita Kurimay has been named the winner of the prestigious Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History for her monograph , published in September 2020.
The Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History is one of several prizes awarded by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), one of the premier organizations dedicated to the advancement of Slavic Studies. A complete list of the 2021 ASEEES prize winners can be found on .
Kurimay specializes in modern European history, and her main research interests are the history of sexuality and gender, conservatism, and the far right. Queer Budapest explores the history of non-normative sexualities as they were understood and experienced in Hungary between the birth of the capital as a unified metropolis in 1873 and the decriminalization of male homosexuality in 1961. Budapest has historically been a famously cosmopolitan city, a crossroads between the East and the West and a center of artistic innovation. Kurimay argues that despite the modern assumption that 鈥渜ueerness and LGBT people arrived only on the wings of western democracy," there has been a long coexistence between queer sexuality and Hungary鈥檚 historically illiberal regimes.
Professor Kurimay will be honored with the other prize winners at the ASEEES convention award ceremony in New Orleans on Nov. 20.