Claire Madl – CV & research

 Deputy director and librarian at CEFRES  at the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES), Prague

Research administration
From 2018 – coordination, with the director, of the Center’s scientific activities and development of a platform for French-Czech scientific cooperation: “CEFRES Platform”.

Edition and communication
From 2006 – Editorial manager: Managing paper and digital scientific publications (series and monographs, HAL SHS series, web site, online videos and blog). Communication: manager of CEFRES’s accounts on social networks; publishing on institutional trilingual website

Librarianship and scientific information management
From 1994 – Chief Librarian: Supervising scientific information inputs of all types (books, journals, on-line resources), scientific information monitoring, public events around book reviews.

RESEARCH

Claire Madl’s research focuses on the history of the book and on the practices of the written word in the Habsburg monarchy in the 18th and 19th century, a pivotal moment when historiography observed a paradigm shift between the Enlightenment and the national affirmation.
 
Her work on the history of reading seeks primarily to reconstruct reading as a social practice which enables to express membership of social groups, to impose an integration activity on a population but also to assert an autonomous way of thinking and a distance from shared or dominant corpuses and practices. By combining the archival sources and the sources from castle libraries, she has worked on the collections of the nobility and on readers, whom she has endeavoured not to reduce to their social affiliation.
 
Her work on the international book market enables her to place Bohemia on the map of European bookshop networks and to examine the place of political and commercial centres such as Vienna and Leipzig. Her work on local publishing in Bohemia and its clientele allows her to examine the crucial period between 1780 and 1830 which marked the transition from the book market dominated by imports to establishment of a more autonomous publishing market.
 
Lately, she has been examining the introduction of compulsory school attendance in the Habsburg monarchy (1774, 1777) as the founding moment in the affirmation of reading as a “total social fact” and the spread of “reading for all”. This significant reform of the Enlightenment was exceptional in its extent and it was supported by a highly ambitious policy of producing and ditributing official school textbooks.
 

RESEARCH PROJECTS

  • Since 2022 – „De-centering the history of reading. The perspective of the Czech Lands 1750–2021“; a project supported by the Czech Science Foundation (No GA22-14665S) at the Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences. PI: Michael Wögerbauer.
  • 2018–2021 – „Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool“ (READ IT) in the frame of H2020 project « JPI Cultural Heritage ». Leader Investigator: Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, University of Le Mans ; PI for the Czech Republic: Michael Wögerbauer, Institute of Czech Literature ; Czech Academy of Sciences.
  • 2018-2022 – „Krásný Dvůr in the context of European early landscape parks“, a project supported by the Czech Science Foundation (No 18-07366S 2018-2020) at the Institute Silva Taroucy for Landscape and Gardens (PI Markéta Šantrůčková); member of the teatm for the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.

LAST PUBLICATIONS

Monographs

  • Buchwesen in Böhmen 1749-1848. Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der Drucker, Buchhändler, Buchbinder, Kupfer- und Steindrucker. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz (Buchforschung 11), 2019. with Petr Píša et Michael Wögerbauer.
  • Na cestě k výborně zřízenému knihkupectví. Protagonisté, podniky a sítě knižního trhu v Čechách (1749-1848). [Toward a « well functionning book market ». Networks, firms and protagonists in the Bohemian book market. 1749-1848]. Prague, Academia-Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, v.v.i., 2019. with Petr Píša & Michael Wögerbauer.
    Chapters by C. Madl:
    –„Úvod“ [Introduction; co-author] p. 9-23
    –„Ekonomické a sociální podmínky knižní kultury“ [Les métiers du livres. Conditions économiques et sociales], p. 69-102
    –„Zahraniční souvislosti knižního trhu v Čechách“ [Les réseaux internationaux du marché du livre de la Bohême], p.  103-126
    –„Topografická a funkční diferenciace knižního trhu“ [La construction d’un réseau de professionels du livre au service de la Bohême] p. 127-142
    –„Tiskárna normální školy v Praze. Vládní nástroj osvícenského despotismu i impuls ke vzniku občanské společnosti“ [L’imprimerie des écoles normales. Un instrument du despotisme éclairé comme préalable à une société de citoyens] p. 179-217
    –„Jak rozšířit a diverzifikovat čtenářskou obec. Reklamní strategie nakladatelů a knihkupců“ [Élargir et différencier le lectorat. Les stratégies publicitaires des éditeurs-libraires] p. 279-300
    –„Čtenářské kabinety, půjčovny knih a proměny způsobů čtení“ [Cabinets de lecture et bibliothèques de prêt. La transformation des pratiques de lecture]. p. 301-320.
  • « Tous les goûts à la fois ». Les engagements d’un aristocrate éclairé de Bohême, Genève, Droz, 2013, 467 p. ISBN 978-2-600-01357-4

Articles & Chapters

  • « Voltaire produit de librairie dans la monarchie des Habsbourg », Revue Voltaire, n° 21, 2022, p. 283-299.
  • „Ještě jednou k Voltairovu ‘dílu’ v Čechách, anebo proč jeho četbu Dobrovský odložil“ [Once more on Voltaire’s oeuvre in Bohemia, or Why did Dobrovsky postpone its reading], in : (ed. Taťána Petrasová a Pavla Machalíková) Dílo a proměna myšlení v české kultuře 19. století [The “oeuvre” and the transformation thought in 19C Czech culture]. Prague, Academia, 2023, p. 25-41.
  • “Dva pražští nakladatelé a knihkupci mezi evropským obchodem, habsburským státem a lokálním angažmá” [Two publishers and booksellers in Prague: the European market, Habsburgs’ state and local committment]s, in (ed. Kateřina Bobková-Valentová, Jiří M. Havlík, Zdeně Hojda) Amicitiae Vinculum Potens et Praevalidum. Vějíř pohledů do náboženského a kulturního života barokní společnosti k poctě Ivany Čornejové a Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, Praha, Karolinum, 2022, p. 421-436.
  • « Knihovna a četba Jana Rudolfa Černína » [J. R. Czernin’s libary and readings] in (Markéta Šantrůčková, Zdeněk Hojda, Martin Krummholz et al.) Jan Rudolf Černín a jeho Krásný Dvůr, Praha, NLN, 2023, p. 73-103.
  • « Le Saint-Empire », in (dir. Éric Suire) Le monde de l’imprimé en Europe occidentale (vers 1480-vers 1680), Paris, Armand Colin (Horizon), 2020, p. 276-294.
  • « L’imprimé, vecteur de diffusion du jardin paysager vers l’est de l’Europe. Modèles, traductions, médiatisations », Revue française d’histoire du livre n° 141, 2020, p. 113-136.

Book reviews & other publications

  • Christoph Schmitt-Maaß (dir.) : Der Jansenismus im deutsch-sprachigen Raum, 1670-1789. Bücher, Bilder, Bibliotheken. Berlin – Boston, Walter de Gruyter, 2023, (Frühe Neuzeit), 233 p. Dix-Septième siècle (à paraître)
  • “L’édition française en sciences humaines et sociales consacrée à l’Europe centrale”, Forum Recherche du CEFRES, 22/10/2021, https://cefres.hypotheses.org/1873.

Translations

  • Avec Zdeněk Hojda et al. “Cestovní deník J. R. Černína z let 1779-1780” [partie française du Journal de voyage de J. R. Czernin] & “Anonymní cestopis do Anglie (1776-1778)” [Guide anonyme pour voyager en Angleterre 1776-1778], in : (coll.) Jan Rudolf Černín a jeho Krásný Dvůr. Krajinářský park v Čechách v ohnisku vlivů a cestovních inspirací 1770-1830 [J. R. Czernin et son Krásný Dvůr. Le jardin paysager en Bohême et ses sources d’inspiration européennes]. Prague, NLN, 2023, p. 296-311, 340-349.
  • Klara Benešovská, « Disparition, réouverture et clôture du chantier cathédral de Prague (1419-1933) », in : Le Chantier cathédral en Europe. Diffusion et sauvegarde des savoirs, savoir-faire et matériaux du Moyen Age à nos jours. (dir. Isabelle Chave, Etienne Faisant, Dany Sandron), Paris-New York, Le Passage, 2020, p. 125-135.
  • Daniel Špelda, « Les soleils et leurs observateurs au XVIIe siècle » Revue des Questions Scientifiques, 2018, 189 (4), p. 531-577.

Complete CV and list of publications here.