Registration is required only for the second day of the event:
https://ludevent.uni-nke.hu/event/6439/
DAY ONE | JUNE 10, 2026
Jewish Theological Seminary – University of Jewish Studies (OR-ZSE)
Budapest, Scheiber Sándor u. 2.
9:30–10:00 Opening remarks
10:00–10:50 — Section 1: Chosen People: The Jewish Traditions
- Gábor BALÁZS: Election, Covenant, and Identity in Jewish Intellectual History
- Zoltán BÖDÖR: Divine Choice and Individual Accountability – The Doctrine of Election in the Hebrew Bible
- Q&A
10:50–11:15 Coffee break
11:15–12:30 — Section 2: Chosen State: Israeli Traditions
- Zsolt CSEPREGI: Survival of the Chosen: Geopolitical Foundations of Israelite Exceptionalism
- Attila NOVÁK: From the Chosen People to the Chosen State – the Jewish Journey Towards Israel
- András ZIMA and Norbert GLÄSSER: The Eternal “Jewish Question” – Heroic Cult and Modern Cultural Mission in Jewish Press Propaganda During World War I
- Q&A
12:30–13:30 Lunch break
13:30–15:10 — Section 3: Mission and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe
- Zoltán ERDŐS: Elected Nationhood and Transylvanism in the 17th Century – The Sermons of József Nagyari
- András BALOGH F.: The Concept of the Chosen Nation in the Literature of the Germans of Transylvania and Hungary
- Endre SASHALMI: Missions of the State in the Context of the Russian Idea in Putin’s Rhetoric (1999–2013): Echoes of the Past in the Present
- Ondrej HOLUB: The Burden of the Myth: Czechoslovak Reform Communism and the Transformation of the Czech Civilizing Mission
- Q&A
15:10–15:30 Coffee Break
15:30–16:45 — Section 4: Imperial Vocation and Civilizing Missions
- Antonios CHIOTELLIS: British Imperial Exceptionalism in South Africa 1880–1902
- Eric W. HAARMANN : Catholic Germans as God’s Chosen Unifiers of Europe: The Jesuit Friedrich Muckermann’s Reich Ideology between the World Wars
- Szilveszter CSERNUS-LUKÁCS: “We shall either forge an empire or perish” – From an Agonizing Nation to the Hungarian Empire Concept
- Q&A
DAY TWO | JUNE 11, 2026
NKE – Ludovika University of Public Service, Ludovika Campus
Please note: registration for the second day of the conference is required via THIS link.
10:00–10:15 Opening remarks
10:15–11:30 — Keynote
- Christina LITTLEFIELD (Associate Professor of Communication and Religion, Pepperdine University)
11:30–11:45 Coffee Break
11:45–13:00 — Section 5: Religion, Nation, and Chosenness in Southeastern Europe
- Boyan STEFANOV: Chosen Community, Sacred History, and National Awakening: Religion and Nation in the Bulgarian 18–19th Century Context
- Damir JOSIPOVIČ: The Embeddedness of Chosenness in the Ethnic Yugoslav Context: The Ethnic Versus Religious Nation-Building in Slovenes, Croats and Serbs
- Bálint HILBERT: A Failed Civilizing Mission? Austro-Hungarian Imperial Vocation and Settlement Policy in Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Q&A
13:00–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:15 — Section 6: Western Messianism and Its Discontents
- Balázs PETŐ: Martyrdom and Chosenness: The Duality of French National Consciousness During the Revolution, as Interpreted by Joseph de Maistre
- Sára LAFFERTON: Lamenting the Republic: Decolonization, Decadence, and the Myth of French Exceptionalism
- Judit HAMMERSTEIN: Messianism and Left-Wing Radicalism: The Political Engagements of Arthur Holitscher and Arthur Koestler in the 1920s and 1930s
- Q&A
15:15–15:30 Coffee break
15:30–17:10 — Section 7: Myth, Magic, and Collective Identity
- Attila Károly MOLNÁR: Chosen People: Revolutionary Rendering of the Apparent Contingency of the World
- Márk SIMA: Nationalism as Magic: Mythic Thinking and the Construction of Nations
- Zsuzsanna AGORA: Between Victim and Perpetrator: The Historical Dynamics of Collective Narcissism
- Henrik HŐNICH: Prehistory and Exceptionalism: Prehistoric Research and Origin Myths in Hungary at the Turn of the 18–19th Centuries
- Q&A
17:10–17:30 Closing remarks
