In Memoriam: Susan Glanz (1949–2022)

The academics of the Hungarian studies community were saddened to learn that their highly valued member, Susan Glanz, née Muth, died on August 24, 2022, following a courageous year-long battle with cancer. Susan was born in Hungary on July 2, 1949, and received part of her English-language primary education in New Delhi, India, where her father was a foreign-trade representative for Hungary. Upon the family’s return to Budapest, her secondary education took place at one of the best high schools in the capital. Among her schoolmates was Tibor Frank (February 3, 1948–September 15, 2022), who became a noted historian and academician.Susan’s higher education took place at the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences, now Corvinus University of Budapest, where she was a business major and received her doctoral degree in 1974. Following her marriage in August 1974 to Leslie Glanz, a Hungarian-born American citizen living in Brooklyn, she emigrated to the United States.Her academic career began in the fall of 1981, when she accepted a one-year appointment in the economics department of Montclair State College. In 1984 she joined the faculty of Saint John’s University as an assistant professor on a tenure line, teaching economics and basic finance courses. Upon receiving tenure, she was promoted to associate professor and later to professor of administration and economics. She retired from teaching in June 2022 due to illness.As an educator, she was very interested in educational innovation, and during the beginning of the 2010s she was among the first at the university to offer online and hybrid economics and business courses. A student in her survey economics class in 2015 offered the following comment about her superior teaching qualities at ratemyprofessors.com: “Professor is great! She’s clear, realistic, rational and at the same time understanding, devoted to helping students really grasp the lessons, and interested in learning about the students themselves. She promptly responds to emails and has a good sense of humor, which lights up the course. So far, it is the best online class I’ve taken! (I’ve had 4 till now).”Her interest in innovative teaching shined through the paper she presented at the annual conference of the Global Awareness Society, which took place in Rome, Italy, in May 2013. In her presentation, she reported on her use of the lyrics of specific popular songs to familiarize her students in the introductory economics courses with economic practices and principles. She concluded, “I found that at least temporarily I managed to show students the relevance and fun of economics.” In the same paper, the seriousness of her economics education philosophy is evident when she noted that her goal was “to provide the students with the basics of economic literacy, which is important for a democratic society that relies heavily on the informed citizenry and personal economic decision-making.”During her career, Susan attended numerous international and national conferences where she presented papers that she expanded into articles later published in edited books or journals. The subject of most of these articles was business history, indicating that Susan was not only an economist but also a historian. Her first publication in the United States bore the title “The Hungarian Stock Market during the Liberal Democratic Revolution, 1918–1919,” which appeared in a book published in 1988. Her last article was published in 2017 in the conference proceedings of the Global Business Research Symposium that took place in Cork, Ireland from July 26 to 28, 2017. Susan’s presentation was entitled “Students’ Views of the Market System and the Role of the Federal Government in the Economy.”1Susan published five articles in Hungarian Studies Review between 1995 and 2016, all with Hungarian themes. The last one bore the provocative title “Nicholas L. Deak, the Hungarian ‘James Bond of the World of Money.’”2 Two of her articles dealt with Hungary and the European Union. The “Synchronization of Business Cycles: EU and Hungary” was published in 2006 in East European Quarterly,3 and the following year “Some of the Social Costs of Accession to the European Union for Hungary” appeared in Canadian American Slavic Studies.4 Susan followed with interest Viktor Orbán’s clashes with the EU, but her illness prevented her from committing her thoughts to writing.Susan is remembered fondly not only as an educator and scholar but also as the heart and soul of academic organizations dealing with Hungarian studies. During the mid-1980s she joined the board of directors of Atlantic Research and Publications, a not-for-profit firm that was publishing books on Hungarian topics. She was appointed secretary, taking the minutes of the business meetings. When the firm moved to Budapest in 1998, she joined its American successor, the Center for Hungarian Studies and Publications, as its treasurer.Susan was also in the leadership of the American Hungarian Educators Association and was its president between 2004 and 2008. She contributed greatly to the work of the program committee that was evaluating submitted proposals and scheduled presentations for the annual conference.During the early eighties, Susan became the secretary-treasurer of the American Association for the Study of Hungarian History (AASHH), which was set up in 1971 and was affiliated with the American Historical Association (AHA) and later American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS; subsequently Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies [ASEEES]). She edited the association’s newsletter, which brimmed with important news items about the profession, such as research opportunities, conference dates, new publications of the members, and more. She arranged the business meetings, first at the AHA conferences and later at the AAASS, renamed ASEEES. In 2005 the AASHH broadened its appeal to scholars of the various social sciences and literature, and the group was renamed Hungarian Studies Association. Until the mid-2010s Susan remained its secretary-treasurer. As the “gray eminence,” she helped the organization grow and responded promptly and positively with solutions to various issues raised by the members. She encouraged her colleagues to present papers at the Slavic conferences and was always solicitous and helpful with regard to their accommodations, comfort, and well-being. Everyone appreciated her caring nature.Susan loved and was proud of her family, husband, son, and daughter-in-law. In 2018 Leslie suffered a serious nephrological illness. Susan donated one of her two kidneys to save her husband’s life.Professor Susan Glanz will be remembered as a role model for us all.

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