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Dagnostaw Demski and Ildik6 Sz. Kristóf
Introduction
This book is a result of the second in a series of conferences that examined the
subject of how the Other has been represented in central and eastern Europe.
The conferences were organized by various research institutes in various coun¬
tries in the area, and supported financially by the Visegrad Fund. The first of
these conferences—/mages of the Other in Ethnic Caricatures of Central and East¬
ern Europe—was organized by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the
Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and held February 18-20, 2010 (Demski
and Baraniecka-Olszewska 2010). The second conference—Visual Encounters with
Alterity: Representing East-Central and Southeastern Europeans in the Nineteenth
Century and the First Half of the Twentieth Century—was held at the Institute of
Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
in Budapest, May, 24-26, 2012.
The differences between the first and the second volumes have resulted from the
slightly different purposes of and visions for the two projects. In the case of the first
conference and volume, we had a rather general intention to gather popular images
of the Other from all over central and eastern Europe in order to create a forum
within which it would later be possible to scientifically collect and study such visual
material from certain time periods. The first conference and its product thus pro¬
vided us with a means for longer-term comparative research and analysis. Having
accomplished this, however, we had not yet focused on cultural comparisons, but
planned to do so as a continuation of the project.
The current, second conference volume is generally devoted to the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, just as the first one was. While more general issues
were targeted in the first volume, such as identifying important relations between
images and politics, images and ethnicity, images and identity, images and humor,
and so forth, we also hoped to point out mutually formed imageries (e.g., by the
Poles and the Lithuanians or the Austrians and the Hungarians about each other)
and identify specific subjects of representation (e.g., the Russian Bear or the Ortho¬
dox Jew). Our primary purpose, however, was to publish the related visual mate¬
rial—especially newspaper caricatures from the above-mentioned time period. The
authors of the second volume, partly overlapping with those of the first, could pose
more precise/exact and also (perhaps) methodologically more advanced questions.
While more attention was devoted to the humorous aspect of representing the Other
in the first volume, the second has widened the scope of investigation and attempted
to consider the issue of meeting the Other in its entire strangeness. Thus, we have
gained insight into the multifarious process of the transformation of the Other in
central and eastern Europe during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.