All posts by Cefres

CEFRES Team

Vera Guseynova – Research & CV

“The International Exposure of Russian Art in 1957-1991: Social and Historical Analysis of Art Transfers and Circulations, the Case of Soviet Non Official Art””

Contact: vera.guseynova[@]ehess.fr

Research Areas 1 & 2

My doctoral research revolves around the international acknowledgment of a localized artistic movement, specifically focusing on unofficial Russian art from the latter half of the 20th century, which defied the Soviet doctrine of socialist realism. Through an analysis of its artistic and market valuation process, I explore four pivotal reception and dissemination hubs: French, German, Anglo-Saxon, and East European contexts. Leveraging a database of visual artists who challenged state-sanctioned norms of creativity in the USSR during the 1950s and the 1960s, my research work delves into the individual and collective trajectories of these artists. Moreover, it underscores the pivotal role played by a diverse cohort of actors, both domestic and foreign, whose interest in this art emerged during the early stages of the thaw period, actively contributing to its dissemination and legitimization. Continue reading Vera Guseynova – Research & CV →

CEFRES Team, Non classé

Julien Allavena – Research & CV

“From a Party Truth to a Class Truth”: Picture of Operaismo in Heresy (1956–1969)

Research Area 1 and 2 

His PhD research focuses on the Italian branch of the international “new left-wing”, appearing after 1956, as an intellectual network and activist groups in periphery of the partisan left-wing. His subject is more precisely connected to the group magazines associated with “Operaismo” or “Workerism”, namely Quaderni rossi and Classe operaia, whose archives he discusses (work notes, letters, mettings reports, personal papers) with hybrid methods. He thus uses tools from social history of political ideas, socio-history of parties, sociology of political crisis and transnational mobilisations.  Continue reading Julien Allavena – Research & CV →

CEFRES Team

Kajetán Holeček – Research & CV 

“Jews in Cheb (Eger) in the High and Late Middle Ages”

Contact : kajetan.holecek[@]cefres.cz

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

My dissertation examines the Jewish position in the urban space of Cheb (Eger), a town on the Czech-German border. Given that the Jewish community in this town is among the oldest and most populous in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, it could be seen as representative of other medieval Jewish communities. The local context thus serves as a valuable case study for understanding the role of Jewish residents in the environment of medieval towns. The primary objective of my research is to define the role of Jews in medieval urban society by analysing social interactions within the urban space in answering the question: How should we speak and think of the Jews in the urban space?  Continue reading Kajetán Holeček – Research & CV  →

CEFRES Team

Josefína Formanová – Research & CV

“Philosophy of Failure: Negativity and Error in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit”

contact: josefina.formanova@cefres.cz

Research Area 2 – Norms & Transgressions

My dissertation project draws on the observation that the current global society revolves around the highly valued ideal of success. In addition, we can witness the declining ability to resign into passivity or doubt on the one hand, as well as the increasing tendency to lethargy where action proves vital on the other. In the broader scope of my research, I explore the notion of passivity in action, and claim it to be the foundation for living in meaningful relationships with others and the world. Specifically, I adhere to the idea of reinventing the understanding of activity according to its inherent uncontrollability, which appears to be present in each human act or relation. My research embarks from the most common situation, in which controllability is open for observations: from human failure.  Continue reading Josefína Formanová – Research & CV →

CEFRES Team, Non classé

Valentin Auger – Research & CV

“The Quest for a Lost Meaning: Work and Workers in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia. A Story of Flying Literature”

 Contact: valentin.auger[@]ff.cuni.cz

Research Area : 1

 

My doctoral research focuses on the notion of meaning in the work experienced by workers in socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. It is being carried out at the Institute of Economic and Social History (ÚHSD) of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. Continue reading Valentin Auger – Research & CV →

CEFRES Team, Non classé

Jan Musil – Research & CV

“Thanatographies and the Modes of Literary Mourning”

Contact : me@janmusil.net 

Research Area 2 

In my research at the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Charles University, I am looking at autobiographical narratives concerned with the death of a close person and mourning, which I call thanatographies. 

In the contexts of claims that death had been made into a taboo during the 20th century (Ariès, Becker, Ohler, Jankélévitch, etc.), I understand thanatographies, emerging mainly in the second half of the period, as counter-narratives that treat death in its different forms, such as death of the other, grief, fear of own death, processes of dying, hospitalization, suicide, etc. in a sensitive and complex manner. If the norm is death that is on the one hand inexpressible or radically Other, or, on the other hand, aesthesized, objectified and medicalized, then the transgression is death, dying and grief as a subjective experience, communicated through writing, which is aware of its own performative nature (de Man) and seeks a sense of agency in the grieving process (Blumenberg). I am mainly interested in how mourning is staged using literary means, and I offer alternatives to the widespread Freudian reading of grief writing (not just thanatographies, but elegies and other commemorative genres, too) as work of mourning.  Continue reading Jan Musil – Research & CV →