Eastern Bohemia in the First Globalization (1870s-1940s)

Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies.

Contact: s.plyer@cefres.cz

My research focuses on Eastern Bohemia from the 1870s to the 1940s. Despite its fringe position at the Silesian border, between the Elbe and Moravia, this territory developed the most modern textile industry within the Double Monarchy and fully integrated the circuits of global exchanges of the end of 19th century. At the same time, Eastern Bohemia’s society experienced violent clashes between its Czech- and German-speaking populations. The expulsions of Germans in 1945-1946 put an end to a period tainted with globalization, democratization and nationalist drifts.

According to the available sources, the local society was organized within networks of information, business and sociabilities (as evidenced by the matrimonial alliances contracted between textile business families,  the pendular migrations of workers down to Silesia, and the circulation of local papers). These networks more or less fit the same regional geographical borders.

My aim is to study how such networks – and through them, local actors – would make use of the various spatial scales as ressources or as ways to escape in time of crisis. The efforts undertaken by some to impose a mainstream action – in order to integrate parochial conflicts into larger national politics for instance, or as they assimilated the national goals for their own local purposes, or as they chose to emigrate overseas – shall be scrutinized as they met growing nationalist discourses. Such analysis should provide a better understanding of how multiculturality was managed in a regional frame in the context of this first globalization.

CV

Current Situation

Since 2010, assistant professor at the Strasbourg University.

Education and professional career

2007: PhD at the Sorbonne Panthéon (Paris I) University, under the supervision of Robert Frank and Étienne François, cum summa laude.
Dissertation title: Germans from Sudeten and from Germany: Group Identity Mutations (The Case of Braunau/Broumov in Bohemia).

1995: received at “agrégation” national competitive examination in history (national recruitment examination for high-school/university professors).

Teaching

Since 2010: courses preparing to the national recruitment examination for high-school/university professors; courses in BA and MA; seminars for PhD students, at the Strasbourg University.

2014-2015: co-organization of two trinational summer schools “Gathered within Diversity?” with the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Bonn, Paris-Sorbonne University, Warsaw and Wrocław University, Bonn 2014, Strasbourg 2015. Course given in 2015: “Cities”. Courses given in 2014: “Informationsgesellschaft” and “Migration und Grenzen”.

2002-2008: high-school teacher within the Versailles academy.

Affiliations

• Member of the research center EA 3400 (Faculty of history, Strabourg University).
• Member of the CNRS research group no. 3607  « Connaissance de l’Europe médiane ».
• Member of the peer-review committe of Revue d’Allemagne.
• Partner researcher of the UMR SIRICE-Sorbonne research center “European Identities,  International Relations and Civilizations”.

Last Publications

• « Récits de vie et expulsion : l’exemple des Allemands des Sudètes », in Dominique Herbet et Caroline Hähnel-Mesnard (dir.), Fuite et expulsion des Allemands : transnationalité et représentations, XXe-XXIe siècle, Lille, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2015, p. 367-388.
• « Restaurer la sensibilité au paysage. Deux mouvements de patrimonialisation aux confins de la Bohême pendant la seconde moitié du XXe siècle », Revue d’Allemagne, t. 47, n° 2, 2015, p. 151-168.
• « Expulsion, grands récits nationaux et petits récits européens. Mémoires individuelles et construction des communautés en Europe centrale depuis 1945 », Source(s). Cahiers de l’équipe de recherche ARCHE, n°4, juin 2014.
• Notices : “Charte 77”, “Luxembourg (Rosa)”, “Spartakisme”, “Mur de Berlin”, “Rideau de fer”, “Contraception (et avortement)”, “Féminisme et mouvements féministes”, “J’écris ton nom Liberté”, dans : Georges Bischoff et Nicolas Bourguinat (dir.), Dictionnaire historique de la liberté, Nouveau monde éditions, 2015.

You can see Ségolène Plyer’s full list of publications here.

Animal Matters: Challenging the Anthropological Difference and Literary Norms

Research Area 2: Norms & Transgressions

Contact: chiara.mengozzi@cefres.cz

The general goal of the project is to investigate the political, ethical and aesthetic questions that arise, when 20^th and 21st-century literature try to represent non-human animals and to address them by adopting an approach that is both comparative (I will analyse selected works from French, English, Italian and Czech literature) and interdisciplinary (it will be necessary to draw from the recent debates about the Animal question in different fields of study, ranging from philosophy to bioethics, from law studies to sociology, from cultural anthropology to ethology).

I do not intend to compile an additional contemporary bestiary, i.e. to appraise the animal symbolism in various authors’ poetics, but rather to address a different issue: how literature (the realm of discourse, of narratives, of words) questions itself when it faces animals, their silence and their irreducible and uncanny alterity? More precisely, I will inquire how the irruption of animals into the writing subverts or undermines: a) the norms of discourse (how to represent their peculiar being-in-the-world?); b) the ethics of writing (how to speak on behalf of someone who cannot?); c) the idea of human (where to draw the line between human and non-human?).

CV

EDUCATION

2011 (April 21): PhD in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature/ Doctoral School in Humanities / University of Trieste/ Prof. Sergia Adamo (supervisor)/ Starting date:  January 2008. Title: Narrazioni contese. Pratiche e dispositivi di (auto)rappresentazione nelle scritture italiane della migrazione.

 2009 (September 22): Diploma in Archive Research, Paleography and Diplomatics at the State Archives of Trieste (Italy). Two years school. Final grade: 150/150.

2005 (October 25): Master’s degree in Modern Literature/ Faculty of Arts and Philosophy/ University of Trieste. Title: Animalità e scrittura. Animali non-umani e figure dell’alterità. Final grade: summa cum laude.

CURRENT POSITION(S)

2017-: researcher and teacher at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (French section)/ Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.

 2019-: Co-president of the international network OFFRES (Organisation Francophone pour la Formation et la Recherche en Sciences Sociales) https://offres.hypotheses.org.

2017-: Associate researcher at CEFRES in Prague (Centre Français de Recherche en Sciences Sociales)/ CNRS

PREVIOUS POSITIONS

2014-2016: assistant professor of French literature at the Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

LANGUAGES

Italian: mother tongue
French: perfect knowledge (C2)
English: proficient (C1)
Czech: proficient (C1)
Latin: professional knowledge

FELLOWSHIPS/VISITING PROFESSORSHIPS/AWARDS

2016-2017: two years fellowship at CEFRES in Prague. Title of the project: “Animal Matters: Challenging the Anthropological Difference and Literary Norms.”

2015: (April-May): Visiting Professor at Hosei University-Tokyo, Japan/ Program “Europhilosophie”–Erasmus Mundus.

2007: one year fellowship at Lumière University Lyon 2 to participate in the CICLIM’s activities and LIMAG project (database on the literature of the Maghreb), under the direction of Prof. Charles Bonn.

2006: Degree award/ best graduate of Trieste’s Faculty of Arts (all exams passed with honors).

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

2013-2015: Co-director with prof. Ondřej Švec of interdisciplinary seminars at the OFFRES’ summer schools at the Universities of Trnava (July 2013) on “The struggle for recognition between literature and philosophy,” Brussels (July 2014) on “the narrative of the sick body between objectification and metaphor,” and Warsaw (September 2015) on “Antigone’s posthumous life.”

2014-2016: “Modern and Contemporary French Literature” at the University of Hradec Králové, Department of Education (courses in French).

2017-: Director of the PhD seminar “Literary Theory and Research Methodology,” at Charles University, Department of Romance languages and literatures (course in English and Czech, see above).

2017-2019: “Inverted Canons. Italian Literature in the Era of Transnational Migrations” at Charles University (course in Italian)

2017-2019: “Introduction to Postcolonial Theories and Literatures,” Charles University (course in French, held with a PhD student, Vojtěch Šarše).

2018-2020: course “Literary Theory and Textual Analysis” (course in Italian)

2020-: course “New Approaches to Literary Theory and Comparative Literature” (course in French)

REVIEWING ACTIVITIES

2020/2019/2018: Review panel member/ PhD and post-doc entrance examination at CEFRES

2020/2019: Scientific Evaluation /PhD entrance examination at Charles University

2021-: Advisory Board of Romanica olomucensia (Olomouc, CZ)

2017-: Editorial Board of Meta. Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy (Romania)

2015-: Reviewing Board of Études romanes de Brno (Masaryk University, Brno)

2011-: Copyeditor of Between. Journal of the Italian Association for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature(COMPALIT-Italy)

Occasional reviewer for the following journals: Narrativa. Nuova serie (Paris X-Nanterre), Quaderns d’Italià (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Écho des études romanes (University of South Boemia), Socio. La nouvelle revue des sciences sociales (Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris), Scritture migranti (University of Bologna), MediAzioni. Rivista online Rivista online di studi interdisciplinari su lingue e culture (University of Bologna), Griselda online (literary blog, Italy), Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland).

CAREER BREAKS

2012-2014 (January-September)
January 2012: moving for personal reasons to the Czech Republic and starting of intensive Czech language course, 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, at UJOP, Institute of Czech for Foreigners, Charles University in Prague. End of the course: July 2013. Diploma C1.
September 2013-July 2014: lecturer in French at the high school “Božena Němcová” in Hradec Králové (Comenius teaching fellow)

2016 (August-January): maternity leave

Publications

Monographs

• Ch. Mengozzi, Narrazioni contese. Vent’anni di scritture italiane della migrazione, Roma, Carocci, 2013, 214 pp.

(http://www.carocci.it/index.php?option=com_carocci&task=schedalibro&Itemid=72&isbn=9788843069323)

• Ch. Mengozzi, Raccontare la Grande Guerra. Lettura di un epistolario di San Vito al Torre, vol. XIII, Mariano del Friuli, 2007, 243 pp.

Articles in peer-reviewed journals 

Under review 

• Mengozzi, C., “Metabiography, or the evasive character of real life: from modernism to post-truth” (under review: Modern Fiction Studies).
• Mengozzi, C. – Wacquez, J. “Re-searching Fiction. Interspecies Assemblages between Science and Fiction in the Anthropocene”  (under review: Critical Inquiry).

Published

• Mengozzi, C. – Wacquez, J. “La défamiliarisation du monde. Trois exemples de fiction climatique française,” Modern Language Notes, vol. 135, n. 4, 2020, pp. 936-965.
• Mengozzi, C. “Le diable est dans les périphéries (du texte). Karel Čapek et la destitution du centre”, Revue de Littérature comparée, n. 1, janvier-mars 2020, pp. 17-37.
• Mengozzi, C. “La letteratura italiana all’epoca del riscaldamento climatico”, Narrativa. Nuova serie, 41 (2019), pp. 23-39.
• Ch. Mengozzi, “La guerra di Flaiano, o l’etica della farsa”, Italia Studies, 74.1 (2018), pp. 57-70
•  Ch. Mengozzi, “Aux frontières de l’humanité: (in)efficaticé de l’empathie et de l’expérience esthétique”, Romanistika Pragensia, n. 1, vol. XXII, 2018, pp. 165-78
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Les marges de l’homme en jeu aux limbes du Pacifique”, Revue romane. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures, 52.2 (2017), pp. 260-281

• Ch. Mengozzi, “Le leggi del mercato e le preferenze dei lettori. Ipotesi sulla circolazione e il successo della narrative italiana ultra-contemporanea in Repubblica ceca”, Narrativa. Nuova serie, Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 38 (2017), pp. 101-113
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Pinocchio, ragazzo di strada. Il teatro di Baliani nelle bidonville di Nairobi, Arabeschi, 10 (2017), Online journal: http://www.arabeschi.it/42-pinocchio-ragazzo-di-strada-il-teatro-baliani-nelle-bidonville-nairobi/

• Ch. Mengozzi, “Lo sguardo e la colpa: Tempo di uccidere di Ennio Flaiano e la dialettica servo-signore alla prova del colonialismo”, Modern Language Notes – Italian issue – John Hopkins University Press, 31.1 (2016), pp. 175-195
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Pinocchio migrant et postcolonial. Parcours de subjectivation entre Europe centrale, Italie et Afrique”, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 8.2 (2016), pp. 36-61
• Ch. Mengozzi, “De L’utilité et de l’inconvénient du concept de World Literature”, Revue de littérature comparée, 3 (2016), pp. 335-349
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Scrivere la storia significa incasinare la geografia: mappe postcoloniali”, Etudes romanes de Brno, 37. 2 (2016), pp. 31-44
• Ch. Mengozzi, “What little I know of the world I assume. Cornici nazionali e mondiali per le scritture migranti e postcoloniali“, Modernità letteraria, 8 (2015), pp. 27-42

• Ch. Mengozzi, “Minor is beautiful. Il concetto di letteratura minore come strategia di (auto)legittimazione per le scritture migrant”, Studi culturali, IX.1 (2012), pp. 28-48
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Scena interlocutoria e paradigma giudiziario nelle scritture italiane della migrazione”, Between, II.3 (2012), online journal http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/376/364
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Strategie e forme di rappresentazione di sé nella “letteratura italiana della migrazione”, Italies. Littérature. Civilisation. Société, 14 (2010), pp. 381-399
• Ch. Mengozzi – E. Pizzinat, “Mito infranto. Il miraggio italiano e la prospettiva coloniale nel romanzo di una scrittrice etiopica”, Zapruder. Storie in movimento, 23 (2010), pp. 116-123.
• Ch. Mengozzi – R. Kirchmayr, “Sartre e le retoriche dell’oppressione. Dall’Orfeo Negro alla Prefazione ai Dannati della terra di Fanon”, aut aut, 339 (2008), pp. 104-120
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Se focaliser sur les animaux. Une lecture de En attendant les barbares de J. M. Coetzee”, Le bateau fantôme, 7 (2008), pp. 69-91

Book chapters

• Mengozzi, C. “Au seuil d’un autre monde. Réchauffement climatique et formes littéraires,” dans Humain, Posthumain, sous la dir. de Cristina Alvares, Ana Lucia Curado, Sergio Guimaraes de Sousa, éditions Le Manuscrit Savoirs, Exotopies, 2020, pp. 51-78.
• Mengozzi, C. “On Recognition, Iterability and Self-Creativity in Colonial Contexts”. In Perspectives on the Self. Reflexivity in the Humanities, eds. Vojtěch Kolman and Tereza Matějčková, Berlin, De Gruyter (forthcoming – 2021).
• Mengozzi, C. “Ways out of the Anthropological Machine, or How and Why Venturing into (De)familiarization,” Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies, London-New York, Routledge, 2020, pp. 1-23.
• Mengozzi, C. “The Blind Spot of the Plot. Thinking Beyond Human with Karel Čapek,” Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies, London-New York, Routledge, 2020, pp.  114-128.
• Mengozzi, C. “Il romanzo degli altri. Trent’anni di narrativa italiana postcoloniale e della migranza”, Storia del romanzo in Italia, eds. G. Alfano, F. De Cristofaro, Roma, Carocci, vol. IV, 2018, pp. 435-47.
• Mengozzi, C. “Griot Fulêr. L’émigration/immigration à l’épreuve d’une (im)possible traduction”, Récits de migration. En quête de nouveaux regards, J. Ghidina, N. Violle (eds.), Clermont-Ferrand, Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2014, pp.257-272.
• Mengozzi, C. “Archivio, mercato e strategie del vissuto. Su alcune scritture collaborative degli anni Duemila”, Transkurturelle italophone Literatur / Letteratura italofona transculturale, M. Kleinhans – R. Schwaderer (eds.), Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2013, pp. 37-55.
• Mengozzi, C. “Paris est un livre toujours ouvert. Les Nuits de Paris di Rétif de la Bretonne: flâneries e narrazioni”, Metropolis, A. Masecchia, (ed.),  Quaderni di Synapsis, vol. IX, Firenze, Le Monnier, 2010, pp. 75-87.
• Mengozzi, C. “Città e modernità. Nuovi scenari urbani nell’immaginario della “letteratura italiana della migrazione“, Moderno e modernità: la letteratura italiana, C. Gurreri et al. (eds.),  Roma, 2008, online http://www.italianisti.it/FileServices/Mengozzi%20Chiara.pdf.

Editorial works

• Mengozzi, C. – Comberiati, D. Non solo letteratura migrante. Nuovi percorsi di analisi e approfondimento sulle migrazioni nel panorama culturale italiano, Roma, Carocci, 2021.
• Mengozzi, C.  (ed.), Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies, London-New York, Routledge, 2020.
• Mengozzi, P. Vurm (eds.), (E)migrations, transferts : métissages et dynamiques de la ville / Dinamiche urbane : migrazioni, dislocazioni, creolizzazioni”, special issue Études romanes de Brno, vol. 37, n° 2, 2016.
• Mengozzi, G. Zanfabro (eds.) “Davanti alla legge. Tra letteratura e diritto”, special issue Between, II. 3 (2012).

Translations of my articles

• Ch. Mengozzi, “A World Literature fogalmának hasznáról és káráról az irodalomtudományban”, Helikon: Transnational Perspectives in Literary Studies, n. 2, 2015, pp. 157-173 (translated from French to Hungarian by Berkovits Balázs)
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Le roman des autres: trente ans de littérature italienne de la migration”, Du Colonial au mondial. Anthologie théorique transculturelle, Silvia Contarini – Claire Joubert – Jean-Marc Moura (eds.), Mimesis France, 2019 (translated from Italian to French by Ramona Onnis – being published)

Reviews

• Ch. Mengozzi, “Paolo Vignola, La lingua animale. Deleuze attraverso la letteratura”, Between, I, 2, 2011, http://www.between-journal.it.
• Ch. Mengozzi, Review of “Scuola e Laboratorio di Cultura delle Donne” (Duino, 25 giugno-1 luglio 2011), Archivi dei sentimenti e culture pubbliche. Un percorso di lettura, http://www.interculturadigenere.org/
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Riccardo Bonavita, Spettri dell’altro. Letteratura e razzismo nell’Italia contemporanea”, Between, I, 1, 2011, http://www.between-journal.it.
• Ch. Mengozzi, “Franca Sinopoli, Silvia Tatti (eds.), I confini della scrittura. Il dispatrio nei testi letterari”, Semicerchio. Rivista di poesia comparata, 40 (2009), http://semicerchio.bytenet.it/articolo.asp?id=158

The Spatial Control of Central European Concierges

Research Area 3: Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces.

Contact: istvan.adam@cefres.cz

István has been awarded the degree of PhD at the University of Bristol. His doctoral project examines the role of an understudied group of everyday Hungarians during and before the Holocaust: the Budapest building managers, concierges, or in Hungarian: the házmester. He analysed the building managers’ wartime acts in the light of their decades-long struggle for a higher salary, social appreciation and their aspiration to authority.

As he was working on his doctoral dissertation, gradually István has started to realize that it was not only the Hungarian context where building managers could play a critical role in the Jewish citizens’ survival. This is why his postdoctoral project investigates the similarities and differences among ordinary professionals working as concierges in different Central European territories in the 20th century: in Hungary, in the Czech Lands, in Slovakia and in Poland, and finally in a Western European country: France.

The comparative nature of Istvan’s postdoctoral project is useful in drawing up a European pattern of behaviour of those who belonged to the concierge profession. This could help to better understand the motivation of the general population, who witnessed the persecution of the European Jewry and who welcomed back the survivors in a transitional period. Instead of focusing on the wartime actions (or inactions) of the entire population of a specific country, or instead of drawing up righteous and less righteous realms, Istvan’s research shows that is makes more sense to choose certain groups with similar social and professional problems from various countries, and compare their long time acts and agencies.

CV

Education

2010-2015: PhD in Historical Studies, University of Bristol. Dissertation Title: “Bystanders” to Genocide?: The Role of Building Managers in the Hungarian Holocaust, written under the supervision of Tim Cole and Josie McLellan.

2008-2009: MA in History, Central European University, Budapest. Thesis Title: Post-Holocaust Pogroms in Poland and Hungary.

1998-2003: BA in Law, University of Szeged. Thesis Title: The History of Refugee Legislation.

1994-1998: BA in History, József Attila University, Szeged. Thesis Title: Polish Refugees in Hungary during World War II.

Grants and Fellowships

• Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies, 2013–2015.
• EHRI/European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Fellow at the Prague Jewish Museum, November 2014.
• Junior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, March 2014 – August 2014.
• Tziporah Wiesel Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, December 2012 – May 2013.
• EHRI/European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Fellowship at Yad Vashem, October-November, 2012
• J. & O. Winter Fund Grant, 2011.
• University of Bristol, Faculty of Arts Scholarship For Postgraduates, 2010.

Selected Publications

Monography

• Budapest Building Managers and the Holocaust in Hungary. London, Palgrave, 2017.

Articles

• Review on Barna-Pető, Political Justice in Budapest after WWII, Hungarian Historical Review 3 (2015), p. 790-795.
• “Tipping the Rescuer? The Financial Aspects of the Budapest Building Managers’ Helping Activity during the Last Phase of the Second World War”, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods, Documentation 2 (2015) 1, p. 4-14.
• “Das verletzte Selbstwertgefühl des Herrn Professor” in S.I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods, Documentation 1 (2014), p. 22-27.
• “A házmesterek szerepe a magyar holokausztban” [The Role of Building Managers in the Hungarian Holocaust], in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), Tanulmányok a holokausztról VI [Studies on the Holocaust, vol. VI], Budapest, Múlt és jövő, 2014, p. 103-137.