VIth Session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

Biopolitics, Space and Bureaucratic Knowledge in the Twentieth Century: Perspectives from East Central Europe

When: Wednesday 8th December 2021, 4:30 pm
Where: At CEFRES and online (to register please contact claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English
Hosts:
Nikola Ludlová, Vojtěch Pojar
both PhD candidates at CEU and fellow at CEFRES

Our session consists of two presentations on biopolitics in East Central Europe. We focus on scientific knowledge and the agency of experts and bureaucracies in producing and circulating it. On the face of it, our presentations may seem disparate, as they focus on different scientific disciplines – demography and eugenics, respectively – and on different parts of the twentieth century. Our presentations, however, rest on three shared assumptions informed by the history of science. We would like to spell them out here.

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Vth Session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

Visual Sources in the Historian’s Studio. Solidarność through Films and Photographs

When: Wednesday 1st December 2021, 4:30 pm
Where: At CEFRES and online (to register please contact claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English
Host:

Ania Szczepanska, Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne University (lab. HICSA),  documentary filmmaker

Having been exploring the Polish archives of the communist era, Ania Szczepanska published a book on cinema as a critical response to the regime in Poland in the 1970s. Her first documentary, Nous filmons le peuple ! [We Film the People!] (Abacaris, Les films de l’Air, Ciné +), is dedicated to the conflicts between the communist power and artists, more precisely around the filmmaker Andrzej Wajda. This documentary film was selected in competition in 2013 at the International History Film Festival (Festival international du film d’Histoire) and was awarded an Étoile (star) by the Scam (Civil Society of Multimedia authors). Moreover, she also directed Solidarność, la chute du mur commence en Pologne [Sollidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe] (Looksfilm, 2019) which was broadcasted on Arte on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

As author of numerous articles, she has also cowritten, together with Sylvie Lindeperg, a book devoted to audiovisual archives A qui appartiennent les images ? [To Whom Do the Images Belong?] (Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme, 2017). Her latest book, entitled Une histoire visuelle de Solidarność [A Visual History of Solidarność]  (Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme, 2021), addresses the history of the Solidarność movement through elaborate visual traces on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

4th session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

Digital Games as Representations of the Past: The Central European Context

Hosted by:
Jan Kremer, Phd-fellow at CEFRES and at the Faculty of Education, Charles University

When: November 10th, 2021 at 4:30 pm
Where: CEFRES and online (to register please mail to claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English

Jan Kremer will present historical game studies as a part of a broader field of public history. The paper will deal with historical games as a fluid research subject, it will introduce main analytical methods and strategies. Jan Kremer as a medievalist writing his PhD thesis on digital medievalism will further examine ludic representations of the Middle Ages focusing on Central European digital games production in the context of regional historical culture.

3rd session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

What Did the Typewriter Do to Banking?
Bureaucratic Practices, Materiality, and the Logic of Capitalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

Hosted by:
Mátyás Erdélyi, post-doctoral fellow at CEFRES and Charles University

When: November 3rd, 2021 at 4:30 pm
Where: CEFRES and online (to register please mail to claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English

Abstract
In this talk, I present my current research project that focuses on bureaucratic practices in banking at the turn of the century from the perspective of the materiality of office work. The project reconstructs the emergence of the modern bureau by relating the “grubby details” of office work to the multi-faceted identity of functionaires. Based on the case study of several savings banks in the Dual Monarchy, it studies how the logic of capitalism materialized and was embodied in different forms, how bureaucratic practices were implanted in the body and hands of clerks, and what exactly clerks did and they did it with what?

2nd session of CEFRES Seminar 2021–2022

Nation(s) in the Middle Ages? Discussing a Controversial Concept through a Sample of the Oldest Czech Historical Sources

Date: Wednesday 13 October 2021 at 4:30 pm
Location: CEFRES Library and online (to register, please write to the address: claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English
Hosted by:
Arthur Pérodeau (PhD candidate at EHESS, Paris, and Charles University, Prague, associated at CEFRES)

International academic conference

Location: Faculty of Humanities University of Primorska, Koper/Capodistria
Date: Monday, October 11th 2021
Language: English
Organizers: Katja Hrobat Virloget, Aleksej Kalc, and Michèle Baussant
The conference is the result of two joint research projects, the Slovenian-French bilateral Proteus project entitled “Pasts without history and displaced histories of people without traces” (Baussant, Hrobat Virloget) and the Slovenian SRA project “Migrations and social changes in a comparative perspective: the case of Western Slovenia after WW II” (Kalc) from University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities, Koper-Capodistria, ZRC SAZU, Slovenian Migration Institute, Ljubljana and CNRS, CEFRES, Prague

You can download the program and the abstracts of the conference here.

Program

09:00 ‒ 10:50

Opening and welcome addresses

MIRJAM MILHARČIČ HLADNIK (ZRC SAZU, Slovenian Migration Institute, Ljubljana): The new town Nova Gorica on the new border and the old routes of migration – Memories of defection and the imaginings of “new” life.

ALEKSEJ KALC (ZRC SAZU, Slovenian Migration Institute, Ljubljana, University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities, Koper-Capodistria): Society and immigration in Slovenian coastal towns in the 1950s. Some reflections on research approaches.

KATJA HROBAT VIRLOGET (University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities, Koper-Capodistria): The discourse of urban vs. rural, social relations and heritage in Istrian urban society before and after »exodus«.

Discussion

11:10 ‒ 12.50

MICHÈLE BAUSSANT (CNRS, CEFRES, Prague, ICM Fellow): A place that changes its place: Alexandria, between place and milieu of memory

ŠPELA LEDINEK LOZEJ (ZRC SAZU, Institute of Slovenian Ethnology, Nova Gorica): Under the Campanilles of Saint Marco vs. Town withou Bell Towers.

MARIA KOKKINOU (CEFRES, Charles University, Prague, postdoctoral fellow): Persistent memories of transformed spaces.

Discussion

14:30 ‒ 16:00

JANJA SEDLAČEK: The role of the Port of Koper in economic and social transformations of the city of Koper after the second world war.

NEŽA ČEBRON LIPOVEC (University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities, Koper-Capodistria, postdoctoral fellow): The bathtub quest: The living standard and ideological discourses in the modernisation process of housing in post-war Koper/Capodistria

Discussion / Conclusions