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seminars

Cities and Metropolitan Culture in the late 19th century Habsburg Empire

A seminar hosted by CEFRES young researcher Filip Herza

Time & Venue: every Monday 5-6:20 pm, FHS UK Jinonice building, room 2066
Lecturer: Mgr. Filip Herza – Charles University (FHS / CEFRES)
Prague
Language: English
Contact: filip.herza@cefres.cz

Outline

The seminar focuses on cities of the fin-de-siécle Austro-Hungarian empire from the perspective of the recent urban history. In the first part of the course, we will study the process of industrialization and the emergence of the metropolitan culture in different capitals and regional centers of the Habsburg monarchy, from the capitals of Vienna and Budapest, to local urban centres such as Prague and Cracow. In the second part of the seminar, we will concentrate on particular aspects of the metropolitan culture and everyday life in the cities. Specifically we will study the production of urban spaces through different social and symbolical practices related to the social stratification of the Austro-Hungarian society, to the contemporary national movements and to the emergence of an international cosmopolitan culture in Europe. The seminar is offered for those interested in the urban history and in the history of the Central and Eastern Europe alike.

Program of individual sessions

  • 20. 2. Introduction: Cities and urban culture in the Austro-Hungarian empire 
  • 27.2. Industrialization: Vienna and Budapest
  • 6. 3. Architecture and city planing: Die Ringstraße and Vienna
  • 13. 3. City planing, hygiene and nationalism in Prague
  • 20. 3. Urban festivities and nationalism in Prague
  • 27. 3. Urban experiences (in Budapest)
  • 3. 4. Popular press and metropolitan identity (in Cracow)
  • 10. 4. Science in/and the City (of Vienna)
  • 17. 4. Moving between cities – technology and transportation (Bratislava/Pressburg/Poszóny)
  • 24. 4. Cities in war (Vienna)
  • 15. 5. Essay writing and final discussion
Calls for Papers

CFP: Tracing the Legacies of the Roma Genocide: Families as Transmitters of Experience and Memory

First international conference of the Prague
Forum for Romani Histories

When: 20–22 September 2017
Where: Czech Academy of Sciences, Villa Lanna, Prague
Deadline for submission: 31 March 2017

More on the Prague Forum for Romani Histories here

More on the board here

The conference is a joint event bringing together two recent academic initiatives focusing on the research on the history of the Roma and supporting new approaches in the field: the Prague Forum for Romani Histories and the Research network on ‘Legacies of the Roma Genocide in Europe since 1945’, which is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC, United Kingdom). Both initiatives aim at fostering a debate on the history of Roma as part of European history and contemporary European society.

The AHRC-funded Research network on ‘Legacies of the Roma Genocide in Europe since 1945’ is an international group of historians, social scientists, and scholars of language and culture, working with representatives of Romani communities to explore how the genocidal policies pursued in Europe between the mid-1930s and 1945 have shaped the social, political, and cultural history of Roma since 1945. It is led by Celia Donert and Eve Rosenhaft at the University of Liverpool in partnership with the MigRom project at the University of Manchester and the Romani Studies Seminar, Charles University, Prague. The conference is closely linked to its other activities planned for 2017 (workshops for researchers on conceptual approaches and state practices, as well as other events for the general public).

The Prague Forum for Romani Histories is an international academic initiative to promote interdisciplinary, intersectional, and transnational scholarship and dialogue on the study of the Roma as an integral part of European societies and an integral component of the historic research in and of Europe. Supporting methodological approaches that concentrate on processes of social differentiation and acknowledging the problematic role of disciplinary knowledge in reifying unequal power relations, the Forum seeks to contribute to decentring hegemonic national and identity-based narratives in European history. By doing so it seeks to promote reflexive, self-critical work which foregrounds Roma as historical co-actors, without downplaying discrimination and persecution histories. The Forum is institutionally based at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. The partners in establishing the Forum are CEFRES, Prague, and the Romani Studies Seminar at Charles University, Prague. The planned conference is the inaugural event of the Forum.

The conference will be complemented by a workshop for Ph.D./MA students whose final theses are based on a historically informed approach to the study of the Roma. The workshop will be organized by the Prague Forum for Romani Histories in cooperation with the NAIRS (Network of Academic Institutions on Romani Studies) Summer School and announced in a separate call. For further information, please visit the website of the Prague Forum for Romani Histories and/or NAIRS.

Understanding the genocide of the Roma during World War II seems crucial for understanding the post-war history of Romani families and communities across Europe. At least 130,000 Roma were killed as a direct result of racial policies pursued by the German state, its allies, and other European states between 1933 and 1945. Some activists and scholars claim that as many as half a million Roma were killed. Yet although the mechanisms and scope of the Roma Holocaust are now partly understood, the legacies of mass killing, ghettoization, sterilization, and slave labour for first-, second- and third-generation survivors are still unknown. It appears likely, however, that understanding the trauma of the mid-twentieth-century genocide, as well as its contested recognition by majority societies, is of paramount importance for understanding the persistent discrimination against European Roma today.

The purpose of the conference is accordingly to map current research and guide a developing research agenda, investigating the ways in which past experiences and memories of persecution and violence have influenced family histories, political and social identities, and state-society relations amongst the Roma in different parts of Europe since 1945. Such investigations necessarily have a broad geographical focus, going beyond the more familiar sites of memory like the Auschwitz Gypsy camp to consider topics such as the legacies of the wartime deportation of Romanian Roma to Transnistria. We also welcome critical longer-term approaches to periodization, which might shed light on the specificity (or otherwise) of the events that took place between the mid-1930s and 1945. Our hope is thus to promote much-needed comparative and transnational perspectives on the history of Roma in post-war Europe, and also to connect scholarship in the field of Romani Studies to broader debates about the legacies of genocide in contemporary European history.

We invite papers from scholars in all disciplines, including historians, ethnographers, and cultural studies scholars, and particularly welcome cross-disciplinary, comparative, and transnational approaches. Our aim is not to reify an image of the Roma as homogeneous victims of genocide. Rather, we invite contributions that explore and contest narratives of victimhood, for example, by investigating the various ways in which individuals and families have responded to the experience of discrimination in everyday life, interactions with public authorities, politics, economic activities, or activism.

Papers might explore the following questions:

  • How might we search for the traces of genocide in the subjective and material experiences of Romani families since the end of the Second World War?
  • How can scholars trace and narrate the legacies of the Roma genocide within families of first-, second- and third-generation survivors?
  • To what extent can we compare the memories of persecution amongst Roma in different places, and in different migration contexts and with other population groups?
  •  To what extent have continuities in discriminatory practices within local and national welfare agencies, police, health and education authorities in post-1945 Europe influenced experiences and memories of persecution among Roma communities and families?
  • In the light of an emerging agenda of memorialization among Roma advocacy groups, how can we contribute to contextualizing policies and practices of commemoration and memorialization in different local, national, and transnational sites since 1945?
  • How has the legacy of genocide shaped the political construction of Romani identities, for example, through social activism or political movements?
  • What are the ethical and political dilemmas for historians who seek to explore these histories of trauma and violence?

We expect to be able to pay full travel and accommodation costs.

Abstracts of up to 500 words and a short biography should be emailed to legacies2017@gmail.com by 31 March 2017.

Calls for Papers

CfP: Acts of Justice, Public Events: World War II Criminals on Trial

Deadline for submission of proposals: 30 March 2017
Notification due: 1 June 2017
When and Where: 12-14 Octobre 2017, CEFRES, Prague
Language: English

This conference originates from the encounter of three projects: a Russian-French project on trials in the USSR (FMSH/RGNF), the micro-project of the Labex Création, Arts, Patrimoines ‘Images de la justice”, and the WW2CRIMESONTRIAL1943-1991 project supported by the French National Research Agency, whose first step it is.

Partners : CEFRES, March Bloch Center, CERCEC, CEFR, GDR “CEM” and CERHEC
Scientific Committee: D. Astashkin, A. Blum, A. Kichelewski, S. Lindeperg, F. Mayer, G. Mouralis, M. Steinle, I. Tcherneva

Please send by the 30 of March 2017 a 300 word proposal in English including a title, along with a selective bibliography and a short resume to: https://ww2justice.sciencesconf.org/submission/submit

Contacts:
Audrey Kichelewski : kichelewski@unistra.fr
Irina Tcherneva: irina.tcherneva@ehess.fr

Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the organizers in priority for researchers without tenure.

Outline

The social history of trials of war crimes and of crimes against humanity,[1] which took place in the aftermath of WWII and its following decades, opens up two new investigation fields. First, taking into account the legal, political and social dimensions of these trials calls forth the inclusion of the various actors who co-produced the legal action. Recent historiography has indeed started to investigate the practices and discourses of the professionals working in the justice system, as well as of the political authorities and of the witnesses who somehow shaped the trials. Second, the diversity of the media mobilized to cover the trials, along with the diversity and temporalities of their hybrid usages, are still a brand new field of exploration. Therefore, the studies focusing on the platforms disseminating the information about these trials cast a new light on the frictions between the ‘legal dramaturgy’ and those provided by journalistic, literary, and visual narratives.

The aim of this conference is to join these two fields of investigation focusing on the trials which were designed as public events. By including the many professional and social actors who got involved and shaped such public, or publicized, trials, we endeavour to question the notion of publicization. The political and institutional choices not to have closed hearings had an impact on the ways such trials were made public. A specific policy accompanied the distribution of the information in order to channel their perception by the population as well as the interactions . On an epistemological level, putting at a distance the notions of communication and mediatization allows for a reappraisal of these actors, who were more than those implementing political decisions. It also enables to consider the press, written or filmed, the radio and the theatre, not only as sheer channels of political information through other media. Analysing the forms of involvement of these various actors (magistrates and police force, whistle-blowers, witnesses, defendants…) should therefore be crossed with a study of the part played by the media supports in the organization, the development and the reception of the trials. The conference will thus highlight the specificity of these publicized trials within the procedures conducted against criminals against humanity.

The tensions between the legal and historical nature of such trials shall not only be studied through the intents and practices of the political and legal authorities, but also through the part played by the other co-makers of the event. Special emphasis will be put for instance on the search for perpetrators by former victims who called on investigative bodies to bring them to justice, on the involvement of commemorative associations in organizing the trials, on the reactions of the public, on the media coverage of the trials. the readers of the newspapers which published such promotional materials, demanded heavier sentences and a large coverage of the prosecutions of war criminals. Was such public participation only organized from the top? Moreover, legal and media actors, witnesses and memory communities took part in the shaping of WWII narratives promoted in the public space in part by legal action.

If we consider these trials as social facts, another challenge must be met that concerns more specifically the trials taking place in the East of Europe, in the states undergoing Soviet satellization. An analytical method seeks to understand how public space was thought up in socialist regimes. Benefiting from the outcomes of the research led on the forms of autonomy of social actors under socialism, we strive to intertwine this perspective with a comparative approach as we investigate the trials taking place in Eastern and Western Europe. Such approach will enable to deal both with the political dimension of public trials and with the forms of mobilization of professional and social actors in the context of the Cold War.

The political time frame pertaining to each country will be taken into consideration. For instance, the legacy of the Soviet trials of the 1930s shall not be overlooked, although the transformations introduced in the after-war should not be underestimated. How were such trials of crimes against humanity employed in order to consolidate the internal legitimacy of the various regimes, to unfold political pedagogy and stir popular participation within the societal project aimed at? Did individual requests or popular unrest influence the choice to make these trials public or not? The proposed method should enable to position them in connection with the national narratives on WWII cast after the war and to give a sense of the responses according to the various types of political regimes.

[1]  The generic term ‘war crimes’ was commonly used in the texts and proceedings of this period referring to acts and violations of the rights and customs of war (definition of “war crimes” in the August Statute of the International Military Tribunal, 1945), and to ‘crimes against humanity’ (ibidem).

[2] Interrogation which continues the analyses on Western media transforming the information on such trials. A. Pinchevski & T. Liebes 2010, M. Steinle 2004, J. Maeck & M. Steinle 2016.

Topics

The conference will be built around three research topics. Which professional, institutional and individual actors got involved as these trials unfolded within the different historical and national contexts, and what was the extent of their autonomy? To what political and social aims did the publicization practices of these trials answer to? How did the arts and the press media shape the reception of these trials?

The first research topic of this conference shall be devoted to identifying of the involved actors, and to understanding the forms and extent of their involvement, and the mutual interactions of such actors with uneven political and symbolic assets. It shall follow the steps of the publicization of the trials: the mobilization of actors (broadly speaking, e.g. including close and distant audiences of the trials); the making of media (films, photography exhibitions, etc.); the reception.
Papers dealing with the following topics will be especially welcome: what relationships did political makers engage with the population? What could prompt new actors (institutional, associative…) to get involved as the trials were set up? What interactions can be observed during the reception of these trials? In socialist regimes, could the political pedagogy conducted by political authorities during the trials stir social initiatives? According to which criteria, the degrees of the autonomy of the bottom up legal elaboration can be determined for different national contexts?

The second research topic shall investigate the aims granted by the State to such public trials and their political consequences. The reinterpretation of WWII during the trials stands out within the range of legitimacy strategies followed by the State. Was the public nature of these trials connected with commemorative endeavours, even with small-scaled investigations? More broadly, how were such decisions to make these trials public received? In this wake, what practices were unfolded by legal and professional actors or by witnesses? What spaces of autonomy were at stake as knowledge and expertises met? What pedagogy of power can be disclosed as the work of the legal system received such emphasis?

Special focus shall be put in a third topic area on the communication tools used to cover the trials and on their content. Connecting studies on cinema, the written press, the radio, leaflets, and the arts, can help understanding the specificity and temporality of the usages of each medium.
Media professionals, who put into words and images the portraits of the victims, the perpetrators and the witnesses, shall be put under scrutiny, along with the processes they resorted to. How did they interact with the know-how and the documentation that were provided by other professional actors implied in setting up the legal procedures? In which social, political and professional contexts did the visual and textual representations get shaped? How did the media impact the trial dramaturgy, the attorneys, judges, defendants and witnesses?[2] What portraits of the public did they sketch? Observing the possible correlations, or even confrontations, between the ‘legal dramaturgy’ elaborated by legal actors and the police, on the one hand, by the media on the other, shall be at the core of this topic.

Papers can consist in case studies of trials or approach transversal dynamics can focus on types of involved actors, forms of public engagement and of mediatization of the trials. The analysis of international dimensions of such trials is particularly welcome, both in terms of aims sought by a large-scale media coverage and in terms of international exchange of information, legal know-how, witnesses, exhibits.

Selective Bibliography

  • Astaškin, Dmitrij. 2014. ‘Otkrytyj sudebnyj process nad nacistskimi voennymi prestupnikami v Novgorode (1947 god)’, in: Janin, V. (Ed.), Novgorodskij Istoričeskij Sbornik. Sbornik Naučnyh Trudov. Velikij Novgorod, Institut istorii RAN / Novg. gos. universitet, Velikij Novgorod: 352-375.
  • Astaškin, Dmitrij. 2015. Sovetskij Njurnberg. Processy nad nacistskimi prestupnikami na territorii SSSR v 1943-1949 gg.. Rossijskoe istoričeskoe obščestvo / Gosudarstvennyj central’nyj Muzej sovremennoj istorii, Moskva.
  • Bankier, David & Michman, Dan (Eds.), 2010. Holocaust and justice: representation and historiography of the Holocaust in post-war trials. Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel.
  • Barbat, Victor. 2017. ‘Une guerre en marge. Le conflit sino-japonais sur les écrans soviétiques, 1938-1941’. Conserveries mémorielles. To be published in 2017.
  • Berkhoff, Karel C. 2009. ‘“Total Annihilation of the Jewish Population”: The Holocaust in the Soviet Media, 1941-45’. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10 (1): 61 ‑ 105.
  • Berkhoff, Karel C. 2012. Motherland in Danger Soviet Propaganda during World War II. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Bosch. William. 1970. Judgement on Nuremberg. American Attitudes toward the Major German War-Crime Trials. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.
  • Cassiday, Julie A. 2000. The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press.
  • Cehreli, Ayse Sila. 2014. Les magistrats ouest-allemands font l’histoire: la “Zentrale Stelle” de Ludwigsburg. Paris, France: L’Harmattan.
  • Christian, Michel & Emmanuel Droit. 2005. “Écrire l’histoire du communisme : l’histoire sociale de la RDA et de la Pologne communiste en Allemagne, en Pologne et en France”. Genèses no 61 (4): 118‑33.
  • Delage, Christian. 2006. La vérité par l’image: de Nuremberg au procès Milosevic. Paris: Denoel.
  • Delpla, Isabelle. 2011. Le mal en procès: Eichmann et les théodicées modernes. Paris: Hermann.
  • Douglas, Lawrence. 2001. The Memory of Judgement Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust. New Haven [CT]: Yale University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10217106.
  • Douglas, Lawrence, Martha Merrill Umphrey & Austin Sarat. 2005. Law on the Screen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Douglas, Lawrence, 2016. The right wrong man: John Demjanjuk and the last great Nazi war crimes trial. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
  • Dufour, Diane & Christian Delage. 2015. Images of conviction: the construction of visual evidence. Paris: Le Bal : Éditions Xavier Barral.
  • Feferman, Kiril. 2014. ‘Soviet legal procedures against the Nazi criminals and Soviet collaborators as Historical Sources’. Legacy, no 6: 34‑ 43.
  • Feltman. Brian K. 2004. ‘Legimizing Justice: The American Press and the InternationalMilitary Tribunal, 1945–1946’. Historian, 66 (2): 300–319.
  • Fischer, Axel. 2014. ‘Promoting International Criminal Law: The Nuremberg Trial Film Project and US Information Policy after the Second World War’. In Historical Origins of International Criminal Law: Volume 1, Morten Bergsmo, Wui Ling Cheah, et Ping Yi: 623‑53.
  • Friedman, Alexander. 2016. ‘Krankenmorde im Raum Minsk und ihre Aufarbeitung in der Sowjetunion und in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’ in Alexander Friedman and Rainer Hudemann (eds.): Diskriminiert – vernichtet – vergessen. Behinderte und Kranke in der Sowjetunion, in den besetzten sowjetischen Gebieten und im Ostblock, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag: 395-414.
  • Friedman, Alexander, 2016. “”Objektiv unausweichliche Maßnahmen“. Die Ermordung von Menschen mit körperlichen und geistigen Behinderungen In den besetzten sowjetischen Gebieten: Die Beispiele Šumjači (Gebiet Smolensk) und Makar’evo (Gebiet Leningrad)’ In Alexander Friedman and Rainer Hudemann (eds.): Diskriminiert – vernichtet – vergessen. Behinderte und Kranke in der Sowjetunion, in den besetzten sowjetischen Gebieten und im Ostblock, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 385–393.
  • Hicks, Jeremy. 2012. First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938–1946. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
  • Holmila. Antero. 2011. Reporting on the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish Press, 1945-50. London. Palgrave Macmillan: 89–106.
  • Smith, Jeremy & Melanie J. Ilic. 2011. Khrushchev in the Kremlin : Policy and Government in the Soviet Union, 1953–1964. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge.
  • Kantorovitch, Nati. 2007. ‘Soviet Reactions to the Eichmann Trial: A Preliminary Investigation 1960–1965’, Yad Vashem Studies, t. 35. 91–122.
  • Koskenniemi, Martti. 2002. The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870–1960. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Koskenniemi, Martti 2002. Between Impunity and Show Trials. Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law 6, 1–35.
  • Kozlovsky-Golan, Yvonne. 2011. “L’image visuelle de la Shoah et les procès de Nuremberg. Le film Les Camps de concentration nazis et son impact”. Les Écrans de la Shoah. La Shoah au regard du cinéma, Revue d’histoire de la Shoah, no 195: 61‑104.
  • Krakovsky, Roman. 2014. Réinventer le monde. Les cadres sociaux d’espace et de temps en Tchécoslovaquie communiste. Paris: Publications Sorbonne.
  • Lindeperg, Sylvie & Annette Wieviorka. 2008. “Les deux scènes du procès Eichmann”. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 63 (6): 1249‑74.
  • Lindeperg, Sylvie & Annette Wievorka, éd. 2016. Le Moment Eichmann. Bibliothèque histoire. Paris: Albin Michel.
  • Maeck, Julie, et Matthias Steinle. 2016. L’image d’archives : Une image en devenir. PU Rennes.
  • Marrus. M. R.. 2000. “L’histoire de l’Holocauste dans le prétoire”. In Bayard. Florent, (dir.), Le génocide des Juifs entre procès et histoire. 1943-2000. Bruxelles. Complexe: 26–56.
  • Michalczyk, John J. 2014. Filming the End of the Holocaust: Allied Documentaries, Nuremberg and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps.
  • Moine, Nathalie. 2011. ‘Defining “war Crimes against Humanity” in the Soviet Union Nazi Arson of Soviet Villages and the Soviet Narrative on Jewish and Non-Jewish Soviet War Victims, 1941–1947’. Cahiers Du Monde Russe 52 (2-3): 441‑73.
  • Moine, Nathalie. 2013. ‘‘Fascists Have Destroyed the Fruit of My Honest Work”. The Great Patriotic War, International Law and the Property of Soviet Citizens’. Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas 61 (2): 172‑95.
  • Mouralis, Guillaume. 2008. Une épuration allemande: la RDA en procès, 1949-2004. Paris: Fayard.
  • Mouralis, Guillaume. 2015. “Outsiders du droit international. Trajectoires professionnelles et innovation juridique à Londres, Washington et Nuremberg, 1943-1945”. Monde(s) 1: 113-34.
  • Mouralis, Guillaume. 2012. ‘Lawyers versus Jurisconsults: Sociography of the Main Nuremberg Trial’, In: X., D.K.M., Leuwers, H. Luyten, D. et Rousseaux, (Ed.), Justice in Wartime and Revolutions: Europe, 1795–1950 : Europe, 1795–1950, Justice and Society. Archives générales du Royaume, Bruxelles: 325–36.
  • Pendas, David O. 2006. The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, 1963-65: genocide, history and the limits of the law. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York.
  • Pinchevski, Amit, & Tamar Liebes. 2010. ‘Severed Voices: Radio and the Mediation of Trauma in the Eichmann Trial’. Public Culture 22 (2): 265 ‑ 91. doi:10.1215/08992363-2009-028.
  • Schulberg. Sandra. 2012. ‘Filmmakers for the Prosecution. The Making of Nuremberg: Its lessons for Today’. American Bar Association. Chicago. http://www.americanbar.org
  • Shneer, David. 2011. Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust, Rutgers U.P.
  • Shneer, David. 2015. ‘Is Seeing Believing ?: Photographs, Eyewitness Testimony, and Evidence of the Holocaust’, In East European Jewish Affairs, vol. 45, no. 1.
  • Steinle, Matthias. 2004. “Images inter-allemandes pendant la guerre froide: les séries “Archive sagen aus” (DEFA) et “Mitteldeutsches Tagebuch” (SFB).” Allemagne d’aujourd’hui: 178‑90.
  • Voisin, V., 2012. ““Au nom des vivants”, de Léon Mazroukho : une rencontre entre discours officiel et hommage personnel”, In Pozner, V., Laurent, N. (Eds.), Kinojudaica: les représentations des Juifs dans le cinéma de Russie et d’Union Soviétique des années 1910 aux années 1980. Nouveau monde ; Cinémathèque de Toulouse, Paris; Toulouse: 365-407.
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  • Voisin, Vanessa. 2016. “Le procès de Jérusalem et la représentation de la Shoah en URSS”. In Lindeperg. Sylvie, Wieviorka. Annette (eds.). Le Moment Eichmann. Paris: Albin Michel, 139 ‑ 68.
  • Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 2009. Murder without hatred Estonians and the Holocaust, Syracuse, N.Y., Syracuse University Press.
  • Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 2004. ‘Extermination of the Gypsies in Estonia during World War II’. In Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eds.: David Gaunt et al., Bern: Peter Lang: 383‑402.
  • Wittmann, Rebecca. 2005. Beyond Justice the Auschwitz Trial. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
CEFRES Team

Alessandro Milani: Research & CV

Management of ethno-ritual minorities by two newly (re)born states having opposed religious policies: a comparative analysis of Poland and Czechoslovakia (1919-1929)

Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies

Post-doctoral fellow qualified as a tenure track assistant professor «Maître de Conférences » CNU section 22 ‘History and Civilization / Contemporary History’ Post doc affiliated to the École Pratique des Hautes Études Groupe, Sociétés, religions, Laïcités, CNRS, Paris.

Continue reading Alessandro Milani: Research & CV →

CEFRES Team

Benedetta Zaccarello: Research & CV

The Test of Travel: Hybridations of Paradigms and Circulation of Traditions in the Writing of Contemporary Philosophy 

Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices

Research Project:  Archives and Interculturality 

Contact: benedetta.zaccarello@cefres.cz

A researcher at CNRS, Benedetta Zaccarello works on contemporary philosophy through the study of its manuscript documents and archives. Her work aims at understanding the part played by writing in the process of conceptual creation. Indeed, such an approach enables to uncover the existential, historical and cultural foundations of the protean set of thinking practices that form contemporary philosophy. It, thus, also aims to better understand texts and ideas themselves. Such a perspective shows that a philosopher is like a writer: rooted in culture, leading a dialogue with tradition, he/she negotiates between his/her own aspirations and his/her professional practice. Such dynamic, diachronic and genetical approach of the writing of philosophy has led Benedetta Zaccarello to study the forms, genres, and even literary strategies working through abstract texts, so to grasp the epistemic limits, the ambitions and the self-images built up by conceptual research in our contemporary times.

After working on Paul Valéry’s manuscripts (of which she has edited within an international research team the Cahiers 1894-1914 for Gallimard publishing house), as well on the manuscripts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Marguerite Duras and Michel Foucault, Benedetta Zaccarello has started to work on a yet unexplored aspect of the question of the expression of philosophy. Namely: the interference between various traditions happening in abstract writing.

As a researcher at CEFRES, she will mainly focus on exemplary case studies of philosophers who have dealt with various languages and traditions in their own philosophy. An intercultural phenomenon per se, philosophy has seen from the end of 19th century onward the multiplication of its paradigms, when the model of systematization, as best embodied by Hegel, started to wane. Within cultural traditions often considered as homogeneous, different ideas of what philosophy was unfolded: the practices of Western philosophy themselves are today divided in part by so-called analytical and continental types of writing. Thus, considering that such codes, styles and traditions constantly interact in contemporary philosophical creation, Benedetta Zaccarello aims to observe such intercultural mechanisms through the study of emblematic “mediator” philosophers such as Jan Patočka and Aurobindo Ghose.

CV

Researcher at CEFRES

PhD in Philosophy from the University Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna and from “Blaise Pascal” University, Clermont-Ferrand II

Disciplines and leading research areas: 

Forms and pratiques of abstract writing; Relationship between philosophy and literary criticism in 20th century France; Aesthetics, theories of literature and of reception; the history of contemporary philosophy; genetical criticism and author philology.

Teaching 

2013-2016: Associate Professor at Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Semiotics and Electronic Culture

2006-2007: Assistant professor in Aesthetics, University Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah of Fès, Morocco

2008-2009: Assistant professor in Aesthetics, University IUAV of Venice, Italy

Collective Responsibilities

Member of the peer-review committee of the international periodical on aesthetics Aisthesis

Member of the scientific committee of the International Theatre Institut Italia

2010-2014: Co-organizer with Emmanuel de Saint Aubert (Archives Husserl, CNRS-ENS) of Qu’est-ce que la littérature ? Merleau-Ponty et la philosophie à l’épreuve de l’écriture (a series of international workshops and conferences).

2010-2013: Host of the seminar of genetics of the Valéry Team at ITEM

2006-2014: Co-editor of Paul Valéry, Cahiers 1894-1914, Paris, Gallimard

Grants

2016: Soutien à la mobilité internationale (SMI) of the CNRS for a research stay in Prague

2011: Award from the Institut Émilie du Châtelet

2009: Grant for the project “Research in Paris” of Mairie de Paris

2007: Vittorio Sainati Award: special award for a PhD on philosophy allotted by the presidency of Italy, the University of Pise and the ETS publishing house

2004: Fellowship at École thématique en critique génétique et analyse des manuscrits, ITEM (CNRS-ENS)/ IMEC, Abbaye d’Ardennes

2004: Vinci Grant from the French-Italian University of Grenoble/Torino for the PhD in international “cotutelle”

2003-2006: Grant from the Italian ministry of Education for the 3 years of the PhD in Aesthetic Philosophy at the Bologna University

2002: Grant from the Fondazione del Collegio San Carlo di Modena for the 2002 edition of “Festival Filosofia”

1999-2000: Erasmus grant from the University of Firenze for a research stay at Panthéon Sorbonne University (Paris I)

Publications

Monographies
  • Marguerite Duras, La Chaise longue (édition annotée et commentée d’un scénario inédit. To be submitted).
  • Funzione e Mistero di Paul Valéry: tracce dei Cahiers nella filosofia contemporanea, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2016 (forthcoming)
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage, Genève, MêtisPresses, 2012 (cours inédit au Collège de France, édité, annoté et commenté), 251 p.
  • « Piccoli poemi astratti » : i Cahiers come progetto filosofico, Verona, Fiorini Edizioni, 2010, 149 p.
Edited books and collaborative publications
  • Puissances et possibilités d’une île. Etudes sur un projet dramatique inédit de Paul Valéry : L’Isle sans nom, Benedetta Zaccarello and Franz Johansson (eds.), Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2016 (forthcoming) – edition, foreword.
  • Du divin et des dieux : Recherches sur le Peri ton tou theou de Paul Valéry, Francfort/Main, Peter Lang, coll. “Rostocker Romanistische Arbeiten”, 2013, Benedetta Zaccarello, Franz Johansson and Fabienne Mérel (eds.) – edition, foreword, article.
  • “Paul Valéry : strategie del sensibile”, numéro de Aisthesis, no. 1/2012, Benedetta Zaccarello, Jean-Michel Rey and Fabrizio Desideri (eds.) — edition, foreword, article. http://www.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/issue/view/842 – 
  • Paul Valéry, Cahiers 1894-1914, vol. X-XIII, Paris, Gallimard, 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2014.
  • Enciclopedia Filosofica della Fondazione centro studi filosofici di Gallarate, Milano, Bompiani, 2006 (24 articles).
Selection of peer-reviewed articles
  • « La poésie comme activité ‘spirituelle’ : sur la correspondance entre Aurobindo Ghose et Dilip Kumar Roy », in Crossed Correspondences: Writers as Readers and Critics of their Peers, Vanessa Guignery (ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, pp. 98-117.
  • « L’écriture de la philosophie : traces, pratiques, horizons », Littérature, 2015/2, no. 178, pp. 55-63.
  • « La leçon au Collège de France. Notes sur la transmission orale des savoirs à partir de quelques avant-dire de Valéry, Merleau-Ponty et Foucault », Genesis, no. 39, 2014, pp. 71- 85. 27.
  • « Paul Valéry : pour une logique organique du tracé » dans Genesis, no. 37, 2013, pp. 68-81. 26.
  • « Que veut dire ‘Théta’ ? », in Du divin et des dieux : Recherches sur le Peri ton tou theou de Paul Valéry, Francfort sur le Main, Peter Lang, coll. « Rostocker Romanistische Arbeiten », 2013, pp. 289-306.
  • « La philosophie et son double : notes sur Merleau-Ponty, Valéry et la littérature », in Du sensible à l’œuvre. Esthétiques de Merleau-Ponty, Bruxelles, La Lettre Volée, 2012.
  • « Principes d’analogie pure et appliquée », Tangences, no. 95, Paul Valéry, identité et analogie, Winter 2011, pp. 29-41.
  • « Valéry théoricien de la littérature selon Maurice Merleau-Ponty», in Paul Valéry et l’idée de littérature, conference proceedings of Paris Ouest University. http://www.fabula.org/colloques/document1422.php
  • « Le ‘Drame intérieur’ et l’ ‘ornement’ dans les brouillons de l’Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci », in Valéry et Léonard : le drame d’une rencontre, Zürich, Peter Lang, coll. «Rostocker Romaistische Arbeiten», 2007, pp. 107-124.
  • « L’Ombre de la pensée : individuation de la conscience et irréductibilité de l’individualité dans la stratégie philosophique des Cahiers », Bulletin des Etudes Valéryennes, no. 98, 2004, pp. 46-75.
  • « Drame, Lutte, Tragédie : une symbolique théâtrale à l’œuvre dans le Cours de Poétique », Revue des Lettres modernes. Cahiers Paul Valéry : 10, pp. 95-133.
  • « Alcuni modelli di rappresentazione del pensiero nei primi Cahiers di Paul Valéry », in Atti dell’Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche, Volume CXI – 2000, pp. 159-189.
CEFRES Team

Ayşe Yuva: Research & CV

The Borders of Philosophy and the Writing of its History in 19th century Prague

Research area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies

My research explores the historical, geographical and epistemological borders assigned to 19th century philosophy through the writing of its history. At a time when philosophies were increasingly considered to be “national”, it is worth looking into the place allotted to the geography of philosophy within the Slavic Czech space, and its relationship with the philosophy from Germany.  Prague University’s philosophers, especially those who spoke German, and who are the focus of my research, were set in a singular frame: writing in a multinational state, they chose to do so in German, a language that was philosophically renowned, but in a territory that, branded as Slavic, was at the margin of philosophy.

Through classification and the ranking of systems within the texts themselves—see for instance the debates around “materialism”—such histories of philosophy also involved practical, pedagogical or political aims. I want to understand what the “new philosophy” was, which was hoped to bring forth a “philosophical peace” with possible social counterparts. Special attention will be paid to the period around 1848. Less than a comparison between concepts from different political, national and cultural spaces which tend to be seen as given, I propose to study these concepts through their shifts and displacements, since their borders are themselves a place for various negotiations.

CV

Education

2010: PhD in philosophy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (supervisor: Bertrand Binoche).
Thesis title: L’efficace de la philosophie en temps de révolution. Principes de gouvernement, enseignement, opinion publique en France et en Allemagne (1794-1815) [The Efficiency of Philosophy in Revolution Times. Governing Principles, Education and Public Opinion in France and Germany (1794-1815]. PhD Award of C.I.E.R.A.

2005: 2nd year of MA in philosophy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (supervisor: B. Binoche)
Topic title: Schiller et l’histoire. La leçon inaugurale de 1789 «Qu’appelle-t-on et à quelle fin étudie-t-on l’histoire universelle?» [Schiller and History. The 1789 Lecture on “What Is, and to What End Do We Study Universal History?”

2002: MA from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris

2001: 1st year of MA in philosophy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (supervisor: A. Moeglin-Delcroix)
Topic title: L’intériorité chez Henri Michaud [Inwardness in Henri Michaud’s Work]

2000: BA in philosophy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University

1997-2000: “Classes préparatoires” in Humanities at Lycée Lakanal, Sceaux

Professional and Teaching Experience

2014-2016: Teaching assistant (ATER) in moral and political philosophy at the University of Lorraine

2016: “Qualification” by the CNU—French National Council of Universities—in philosophy (section 17) and in German language and literatures (section 12)

2013-2014: Invited researcher at the Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, Halle/Wittenberg University

2011-2013: Post-doctoral fellow at Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin) within the frame of French-German research project on Esthétique. Aisthesis. Histoire d’un transfert d’idées franco-allemand (1740-1810)

2011: “Qualification” by the CNU—French National Council of Universities—in philosophy (section 17)

2008-2010: Teaching assistant (ATER) at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University

2005-2008: Allocataire-monitrice at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University

2004: Accepted at the agrégation—national competition to be a high school teacher— at rank 19.

Publications 

Book
  • Tranformer le monde ? L’efficace de la philosophie en temps de révolution, Paris, Éditions de la Maisons des Sciences de l’Homme, 2016.
Edited book
  • With Anne Baillot: France-Allemagne : les figures de l’intellectuel, entre Révolution et réaction (1780-1848), Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2014.
Chapters in collective monographies
  • « Le récit historique permet-il de résoudre les questions philosophiques ? Les histoires de la philosophie de Tennemann et Degérando », in D. Fulda, E. Décultot (eds.) : Die Vielfalt der Sattelzeit. Strukturen und Tendenzen des historischen Erzählens um 1800 im deutschfranzösischen Vergleich, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, pp. 272-287.
  • « Comment éclairer le peuple souverain ? Sabahattin Eyuboğlu ou les réflexions d’un intellectuel kémaliste » in P. Pellerin, J. Domenech (eds.) : La place des Lumières dans les pays arabo-musulmans XVIIIè-XXIè siècles. Nationalisme, indépendances et printemps arabes, Classiques Garnier, collection « Rencontres – Le dix-huitième siècle », 2016, forthcoming.
  • « L’utilité indirecte de la philosophie chez J.-M. de Gérando » in J.-L. Chappey, C. Christen, I. Moullier (eds.), Observer, normaliser et réformer la société du premier XIXe siècle. Joseph-Marie de Gérando (1772-1842) au carrefour des savoirs, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014, pp. 63-77.
  • « La raison pure peut-elle être pratique ? La figure du philosophe allemand au début du XIXe siècle en France », in A. Baillot, A. Yuva (eds.), France-Allemagne : les figures de l’intellectuel, entre Révolution et réaction (1780-1848), Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2014, pp. 115-134.
  • « Ecriture et histoire : le caractère anti-systématique des Sylves critiques », in E. Décultot (ed.), Herder und die Künste. Ästhetik, Kunsttheorie, Kunstgeschichte, Heidelberg, Carl Winter Verlag, 2013, pp. 121-138.
  • « Philosophie populaire et philosophie popularisée : les critiques à l’encontre de l’opinion publique à la fin du XVIIIème siècle chez Garve, Fichte et Kant », in B. Binoche et A. Lemaître (eds.), L’opinion publique à l’âge des Lumières. Stratégies et concepts, Paris, Armand Colin, 2013, pp. 211-229.
  • « L’efficace politique des discours philosophiques chez G. de Staël, B. Constant et J.G. Fichte, du Directoire aux guerres napoléoniennes », Conference proceedings on La rhétorique démocratique en temps de crise », Nice, 20-21 January 2011, portail des Revues électroniques de l’Université de Nice, URL: http://revel.unice.fr/symposia/rhetoriquedemocratique/index.html?id=848
Articles
  • « La fécondité d’une philosophie et ses effets sur le présent : la réception de Descartes et Leibniz chez Bonald, Staël, Degérando et Chateaubriand », in « La mer retentissante ». Descartes et Leibniz au XIXème siècle – Corpus, n° 68, Paris, Fayard, pp. 57-76.
  • « L’efficace politique des littératures étrangères : G. de Staël et l’Allemagne », Les Cahiers Staëliens, Paris, Honoré Champion, Genève, Slatkine, 2012, pp. 151-176.
  • « Rousseau ou le rôle politique de l’écrivain étranger », Littera edebiyat yazıları, Ankara, n° 30, 2013, pp. 53-65.
  • «Mme de Staël, Benjamin Constant et les “philosophes du XVIIIe siècle” : un héritage contrarié », Philonsorbonne, 2009-2010, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, pp. 85-107. URL : http://edph.univ-paris1.fr/phs4/numero4.pdf.
  • « Les républicains de Thermidor, ou produire du nouveau sans “homme nouveau”», La Révolution française. Cahiers de l’I.H.R.F., 6/2014, issue on « La Révolution ou l’invention de la femme et de l’homme nouveaux ». URL : http://lrf.revues.org/
Translations
  • J.G. Herder, « Kritische Wälder », in Herder. Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur. 1767- 1781, Frankfurt/Main, Deutscher Klassikler Verlag, 1993, pp. 11-442, submission in 2017.
  • Fabian Link, « Peuple (Volk) et Race (Rasse) », in Olivier Christin (ed.), Dictionnaires des concepts nomades, vol. 2, Paris, Editions Métailié, 2016, pp. 67-82.
  • « Qu’appelle-t-on et à quelle fin étudie-t-on l’histoire
    universelle? », translation and presentation of F. Schiller’s text, Philosophie, Paris, Editions de Minuit, n° 96, Winter 2007, pp. 3-24.
Review
  • Stephan Jaeger, Performative Geschichtsschreibung. Forster, Herder, Schiller, Archenholz und die Brüder Schlegel, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2011, forthcoming in Herder.