In this lecture we will track several interweaving trails in the shifting affective trajectory of queer belonging and politics in late socialist and postsocialist Hungary: from moments of fear and emotional connection under late socialism to dreams of imminent personal and political normality in the early 1990s, through growing disillusionment and shame at national and queer backwardness in the early 2000s, and grief, anger, and despair at the Orban regime's brutal heteronational politics, to new hopes and cynicisms following Orban's recent fall.

Rather than drawing on Queer Affect Theory, the lecture brings together sociological and anthropological approaches to emotions and their politics with queer thinking on affective history and the politics of disidentification, exploring how concrete and specific historical sedimentations of queer feelings produce interwoven affective architectures supporting complex, and sometimes competing, queer perspectives, relationships, and politics.

Hadley Z. Renkin received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, which relocated from Budapest to Vienna. His research focuses on Hungarian sexual politics, Hungary's LGBTQ movement, and the complexities of the relationship between sexuality and transnational and national belongings in the postsocialist context. He has written on postsocialist homophobias, Eastern European histories of sexual science, and the intersections of sexuality and geotemporality in the changing orientational politics of Europe's East. He is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe (2025).

Der Vortrag ist Teil der Vortragsreihe Prague Histories Forum, die gemeinsam von den Prager Außernstellen des DHI Warschau, des Collegium Carolinum und des GWZO Leipzig organisiert wird. In diesem Wintersemester 2026/27 widmen wir uns dem Thema „Gender & Queer in East Central Europe".

Alle Vorträge der Reihe finden Dienstags von 15:50–17:20 Uhr in der Kunstfakultät der Prager Karlsuniversität statt.

Venue: Špork Palace, Hybernská 3, Prague 1 | Room 303, attic floor

All of the “Prague Histories Forum” lectures will be accessible online via Zoom. Please register here:
https://maxweberstiftung.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/yq0DKEQFRjS4TW3N2dNDeA

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