Research Projects

Displacements: Gendered-based Violence, Women’s Writing and Creative Practices

Displacements: Gendered-based Violence, Women’s Writing and Creative Practices in Modern Central and Southeastern Europe

A project funded by a 4EU+ minigrant

Partners: UČL FF UK – IKP WP UW – SU – CEFRES

Conveyors: Eva Krásová – Mateusz Chmurski – Clara Royer – Lola Sinoimeri – Iwona Kurz – Hélène Martinelli

Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, the proposed research program confronts the polysemic category of displacement/dépaysement (exile, disorientation, dislodgement…) with the literary and artistic trajectories of Central European women. We aim at observing how the experience of gendered-based oppression fuels the literary and artistic practices of women from a region that has been torn between different imperial structures, marked by mass violence (the Holocaust, forced migrations, war crimes…) and where culture has always been permeated by a strong dialectical relationship between norms and transgressive gestures.

The aim of the project is twofold:

  1. To bring together European scholars and PhD students of different methodological orientations (gender studies, philosophy, history, literature, arts), launch and foster their cooperation by establishing an international research network (methodological seminar, Erasmus+ lecturers exchanges, research blog).
  2. To raise students, colleagues, and wider public awareness to the gender-based violence endured by Central-European women and to practices of their creative resilience: from different forms of changing yet constant oppression to transnational trajectories and the specificity of women’s role in (Central-)European history, leading to a better understanding of both the European past and present.

Two scientific events devoted to Central European women’s displacements and creative trajectories will lead to establish an Erasmus+ network of researchers reunited by a hybrid methodological seminar reuniting junior and senior scholars as well as PhD students:

  1. International conference “Displacements: Women’s writing and creative practices in modern Central and Southeastern Europe – emancipatory experiences and transnational trajectories?”, Prague, 16-17 March 2023: devoted to the displacement of Central European women, their trajectories of exile and emancipation from a transnational perspective.
  1. International conference “Facing Familiar Violence: Women’s Creative and Literary Practices in Central and Southeastern Europe in the 20th and 21st Century”, Prague, 9-10 November 2023. The conference will explore the experiences of Central European women in relation to displacement, empowerment, and violence – especially domestic violence in familial and institutional settings. Please find the call for papers here. Proposals must be submitted by 15 July 2023.