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I study how people use stories, archives, media, and technologies to understand who they are, how they remember, and how they belong to others.
I study how people use stories, archives, media, and technologies to understand who they are, how they remember, and how they belong to others.
I am a Full Professor at Saint Mary’s College of California, with a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Originally from Hungary, I have lived and studied in several countries, and my multilingual background shapes my interest in memory, media, and narratives. My research focuses on DNA and algorithmic storytelling, critical media studies, theories of narrative, subjectivity, community and memory, phenomenological hermeneutics, and world literature. I am currently working on a new book about the moral economy of DNA, genetic selves, digital kinship, and big data.
Contact: hl4@stmarys-ca.edu
Where My Work Has Traveled
Current Project
Family Secrets and Platformed Kinship in the Genetic Age
This project examines how genetic genealogy platforms, public media, and family history practices reshape our understandings of identity, kinship, biology, and autobiographical truth.
Featured Books
Life Writing as World Literature
Co-edited with Ioana Luca
Bloomsbury Academic, 2025
A collection that brings life writing and world literature into dialogue, examining how personal narratives circulate across languages, media, regions, and global contexts.
🏷️ life writing · world literature · transnational studies
Story Revolutions: Collective Narratives from the Enlightenment to the Digital Age
University of Virginia Press, 2022
A study of collective personal storytelling from the Enlightenment to digital platforms, and of how shared life narratives shape democratic culture.
🏷️ collective narrative · life writing · digital culture
Un/Bound
Co-edited with Megan Brown
Routledge, 2024
A collection on mobility, borders, constraint, and the ethical dimensions of cross-border life writing and storytelling.
🏷️ life writing · borders · mobility
Lénárd Sándor: Világok vándora [Alexander Lenard: Wanderer of Worlds]
Co-authored with Zsuzsanna Vajdovics
L’Harmattan, 2016
An intellectual biography of the writer Alexander Lenard, tracing his writing, languages, migrations, and remarkable life across Europe and Brazil.
🏷️ Alexander Lenard · biography · multilingual life writing
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