for Best Article (published in English or in French) in Social Sciences and Humanities
Deadline for applications: April 25, 2021 (midnight) Prize Amount: 213 CZK (i.e. 9.261 CZK) Official Award Ceremony: September 30, 2021. Language of application: English
This award is included within theJacques Derrida Awardorganized by the French Embassy in the Czech Republic and Mgr. Karel Janeček, PhD., MBA, which rewards thebest PhD research work in social sciences and humanities in the Czech Republic.Continue reading CFA: 2021 CEFRES Platform Award→
Date and place : every Thursday at 9h10, room C17, Sociology Department, Charles University (Celetná 13, Praha 1) Lecturer : Julien Wacquez (CEFRES/EHESS Paris) Language : English
During the last decades, scholars within the Humanities and social sciences have shown a growing interest in science fiction literature. Unlike most overview studies concerning science fiction literature, in this course we will treat science-fiction not only as an object of investigation (is it possible to embrace the huge diversity of stories published under the label ‘science fiction’ as a whole? Is it possible to grasp it as just a ‘literature’ or should it be considered as a ‘culture,’ a ‘social movement?’ What is its relation to science?) but also as a field to work with, as a tool to produce new concepts which would help us to better understand our reality.
Throughout the semester, and through the lens of science fiction literature, we will explore a vast range of current and urgent themes on which much research in Humanities and social sciences is focused on, such as the Anthropocene, Feminism, Posthumanism, Postcolonialism, Science, and Technology.
For each session, two kinds of readings will be assigned: 1) a text by a scholar (or two) who uses science fiction narratives in her/his theoretical research, and 2) some science-fiction novels that allow to reflect upon a particular theme (animals, gender roles, climate change, etc.) We will observe how this scholar reads the stories, and which place (or function) s/he gives to these stories in her/his work. This method of investigation will enable us to think in two directions:
(i) what can we learn about science fiction literature through its usage by scholars coming from different fields of study? (ii) what can we learn about academic research through these practices of reading science fiction stories? What does it mean to read science fiction as a scholar working on the Anthropocene, feminism, postcolonialism?
Since one of the aims of this course is also to introduce science fiction to those students who are not familiar with this literary field, we will mostly focus on the classics and the most renowned authors (Karel Čapek, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Olaf Stapledon, H. G. Wells), chosen from among different genres of science fiction (Hard Science, Cyberpunk, Space Opera, Climate Fiction), from the 19th century to today. The course also aims to give students the basic tools to undertake their own research on science fiction, be it in Humanities or social sciences.
Requirements:
– Class participation. Students are strongly encouraged to attend all classes. (20 % of the final grade) – One short presentation of the assigned readings (10 minutes) for each student. The presentation should provide a summary of the texts, backed up by a critical analysis. (35 % of the final grade) – Final paper. (50 % of the final grade)
De-Imperial Europe: a Resentful Confederation of Vanquished Peoples? Raw and Lapsed Memories of Post-Imperial Minorities
Research Area 1 – Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices
Contact: johana.wyss@gmail.com
Johana Wyss is a researcher at CEFRES and the Institute of Ethnology, the Czech Academy of Sciences since February 2020. Currently she works with Michèle Baussant on the TANDEM project ‘Europe: a Resentful Confederation of Vanquished Peoples? Raw and Lapsed Memories of Post-Imperial (European) Minorities’. She is also a research member of the V4 Network at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale in relation to her individual postdoctoral project ‘Memory and Commemoration in Czech Silesia’.
Michèle Baussant is an anthropologist, research director at CNRS. She graduated in history and anthropology at Paris-Nanterre University and held a postdoctoral position at Laval University (Quebec) between 2003 and 2005. Her research, since its beginnings, has crossed an anthropological perspective with other disciplinary approaches (history, political sociology, geography, digital humanities) and a comparative and connected vision of her different fields allowing her to grasp her main research topic: the role of memory as a resource for, on the one hand, creating solidarities based on a lived and/or transmitted past, and, on the other hand, producing mechanisms of rejection, exclusion and disaffiliation. This path is, therefore, characterised by the continuity of her fields of investigation, from Algeria in its links with France, to Egypt and Lebanon, and finally to the Israeli-Palestinian spaces.
The Europe of Resentment and Rubble: a Confederation of the Vanquished?
Research Area 1 – Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices
Maria Kokkinou has recently completed a PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology in the IIAC (Institut Interdisciplinaire de l’Anthropologie du Contemporain) research lab at the EHESS school in Paris. At CEFRES she is a postdoctoral researcher within the TANDEM project entitled “The Europe of Resentment and Rubble: a Confederation of the Vanquished?”.
Insurance, Banking, and Capitalist Modernity in the Late Habsburg Monarchy
Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies
Mátyás Erdélyi explores the social and intellectual history of private clerks in the late Habsburg Monarchy, their battle for social legitimation, intellectual authority, and a middle-class identity between the 1860s and the onset of the First World War. He studies bureaucratic practices and knowledge production in banking and insurance in Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. Research questions include, how agents in the early capitalist urban environment negotiated and re-negotiated issues of public interest and defined what qualified as public good, why and who assigned meaning to hitherto non-existent social problems, and how agents in the private economy tried to assure and monopolize social authority against competition from outsiders and insiders. The rationale of this research is to provide an alternative narrative to the process of modernization and enrich our understanding of capitalist modernity through the history of a marginalized social group.
