Prof. Dr. Béla Bodó

Béla Bodó's current research revolves around the issue of the dependency of Jews on the state and the political and social elites in Hungary and East-Central Europe after 1848 to achieve full emancipation and defeat antisemitism. His publications have dealt with the following topics:

• The cooperation between the Jewish social and cultural elite and the Hungarian nobility and the Austro-Hungarian state to liberate the Jews after 1848.
• The successes and failures of Jewish emancipation after 1867 and the changing perceptions and roles of the aristocracy and the gentry in the emancipation process after the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial of 1883.
• The withdrawal of the protection of the state and the political elite from Jews and the end of the Jewish-Hungarian condominium in the final phase and the immediate aftermath of World War I.
• Defensive strategies ranging from cooperation with the aristocracy, the Catholic and Protstant churches to military resistance to encounter violent antisemitism during the White Terror between 1919 and 1922.
• Anti-discrimination campaigns led in the press to restore normalcy and diffuse tension created by the rise of new and more insidious antisemitic images, such as Jews as Communists, traitors and shirkers of their military duties.
• Jewish humor as a defensive mechanism to counter "fake news", understand the post-war world, defeat antisemitism, and restore sanity and self-respect after 1918.
• The widening emotional and political gaps between Jews, who remained dependant on the state for survival, and the political and social elites, who controlled the state, in the interwar period. The end of the cooperation and dependency of the traditional elite after the Nazi occupation of the country in March 1944 as a prelude to the genocide.

Published 2 books (2 more in preparations) and more than a dozen articles on these topics

1998                   
Ph.D., York University, Toronto, Canada

1992                   
M.A., York University, Toronto, Canada

1990                   
H.B.A., University of Toronta, Canada

1988                   
B.A., Kossuth Lajos University, Debrecen, Hungary

since 2015     
Associate Professor for Eastern European History, University of Bonn, Germany

2013–2014         
Imre Kertész Kolleg Fellowship, University of Jena, Germany

2011–2015         
Tenured Associate Professor, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, USA

2008–2010         
Assistant Professor, Tenure Track, Missouri State University, Sprinfield, MO, USA

2007–2008         
Visiting Assistant Professor, California State University, Stanislaus, CA, USA

2004–2006       
Visiting Assistant Professor, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, USA

2002–2004       
Visiting Assistant Professor, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

2000–2002         
Lecturer, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

1998–2000       
Lecturer, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada