Samuel Beckett in Central Europe. Stagings and reception beyond censorship

Researchers working on Beckett or on theatre in Central Europe are invited to meet in April  at the CEFRES and at Charles University. The aim will be to examine the political and aesthetic, and sometimes legal and social, issues that certain dramatic texts may embody, taking Beckett’s theatre as a case study. 

Date: Thursday 20th and Friday 21st April 2023
Location: CEFRES library and Charles University
Organizers: CEFRES in partnership with Sorbonne University, Paris, Bordeaux University and Charles University
Language: English
Convenors: Alice Clabaut, Charles Guillorit
Deadline for sending propositions: 31st January 2023

Abstract 

From the 1950s onwards, Samuel Beckett’s theater has been a fixture on all international stages. Plays such as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days have become canonical, and both Beckett’s texts and their influence can be found in most theaters. While Beckett was considered “absurd” in his early days, on the fringes of traditional theater and a self-confessed avant-gardist, he is now viewed as a repertoire playwright. Behind the Iron Curtain, however, Beckett was a persona non-grata, sometimes heavily censored, in most of the countries until very recently This political censorship — the extent of which depended on the country — slowed down the arrival of Beckett’s works and the delay undoubtedly had some impact on the reception of his theatre. To what extent was the arrival of Samuel Beckett’s work prevented, concealed and delayed in the former communist countries of Central Europe? To what extent can it still be perceived and understood in staging and in readings of his plays?  Continue reading CFP – Samuel Beckett in Central Europe →

Call for papers: Conference Proustian Perspectives

Date and location: March 22–24, 2023, Prague and online
Organizers: Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Czech Literature and Comparative Studies & Department of Romance Studies; with the collaboration of CEFRES
Deadline for proposals: November 15, 2022
Languages: French and English

Although well explored, Marcel Proust’s literary work is a territory that never ceases to reveal unknown corners. Whether the subject of interest is the author’s masterpiece or his other literary attempts, or even his unpublished writings, research continues to bring out new discoveries. The century that has passed since the author’s death has been marked by efforts to understand his work, or at least to multiply its readings with different interpretative languages. Continue reading CFP – Proustian Perspectives →

Displacements:
Women’s Writing and Creative Practices in Modern Central and southeastern Europe. Emancipatory Experiences and Transnational Trajectories?

Organizers: Mateusz Chmurski, Clara Royer, Lola Sinoimeri
Time and Place: March 16-18, 2023 – CEFRES (CNRS-MEAE), Prague
Proposal Deadline: October 15, 2022
Languages of the conference: French, English

Scientific Committee:
Anna Borgos (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia), Libuše Heczková
(Univerzita Karlova), Luba Jurgenson (Sorbonne Université), Iwona Kurz (Uniwersytet Warszawski), Jasmina Lukić (Central European University), Markéta Theinhardt (Sorbonne Université)

Partners: EUR’ORBEM (CNRS-Sorbonne Université) – CEFRES (CNRS-MEAE) – Ústav české literatury a komparatistiky, Filosofická fakulta, Univerzita Karlova – Instytut Kultury Polskiej, Wydział Polonistyki, Uniwersytet Warszawski

Using a transnational approach, this conference tries to bring together and confront the polysemic category of dépaysement (exile, uprootedness, dislodgement – hereinafter coupled with its imperfect English equivalent, displacement) with the literary and artistic trajectories of Central European women. It is an attempt to see how the experience of dépaysement/displacement — in its variety of meanings (exile, disorientation, dislocation, but also ec-centric creativity or transfer of marginalized traditions) — fuels the creative and writing practices of women from a region that has been torn between different imperial structures (Bartov & Weitz 2013), 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 – with the later themselves tending to gain strong normative undertones (Royer 2019). The starting point of this conference is that the social, political, and cultural engagements prodding women artists from a variety of fields — artists, photographers, musicians, actresses, directors, literary figures (authors, critics, translators, etc.) — to reinvent themselves elsewhere requires a type of historical analysis that pays attention to the variety of practices of dépaysement: displacement that could be as much geographical as creative or even epistemic. Continue reading CFP – Displacements. Women’s Writing and Creative Practices in Modern Central and Southeastern Europe →

Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Workshop

When: 4 – 5 November 2022
Where: Prague, Czech Republic
Deadline for submission: 9 September 2022
Convenors:
Astrid Greve Kristensen (Sorbonne University)
Rose Smith (Charles University & University of Groningen),
Emina Zoletic (University of Warsaw)

A Workshop organized by 4EUPlus with the collaboration of CEFRES.

We kindly invite Ph.D. students in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences to apply for our one-day workshop ‘TRUTH AND UNTRUTH. TRANSMISSIONS OF MEMORIES OF WAR’. With memory studies as the theoretical focus of this workshop, we will host a varied interdisciplinary workshop consisting of presentations and discussions among young scholars in Prague this November 2022. We will tackle the transmission of memories of war, inviting scholars to present their research on this topic in different media, such as oral/family history, museums, literature, film, the arts, news media, et cetera, with a focus on the kitschification of the past.

As war once again ravages a European country, it is hard not to persist with clichéd phrases to describe the horrors we are observing. Our collective struggle to understand is palpable in repeated phrases such as: How can this be happening – again? But inherent in language clichés is also the danger of inertia and falsehoods. As Czech writer Karel Čapek put it in a 1933 article: “The cliché blurs the difference between truth and untruth. If it were not for clichés, there wouldn’t be demagogues and public lies, and it wouldn’t be so easy to play politics, starting with rhetoric and ending with genocide.” The dangerous use of clichés, as well as kitsch and nostalgia in media representations of the past, lies at the core of this workshop. The aesthetic kitsch of Nazi propaganda or the aim to recover a lost Russian city in Kyiv constitute examples of this. To better understand what is transpiring in Ukraine, one is compelled to look to the past for answers. Continue reading CFP – Truth and Untruth. Transmission of Memories of War →

Call for papers for PhD students

PhD Students Workshop organized by EHESS and CEFRES will be held on the theme:

Household, Kinship, Intimacy: The Reconfiguration of Living Together

Date: May 3rd, 2022 (9:30-17:00)
Deadline for submission: April 1st, 2022
Location: online and at CEFRES, Na Florenci 3 (Prague)
Language: English

The household (or home) is the institution par excellence in western societies, where live alone or together singles, heterosexual or homosexual couples, with or without one or more children, not forgetting neither flatmates, friends or relatives co-housing or homes of elderly. While the Western contemporary imaginary of household is linked to the idea of nuclear family, a shift in both the representations of home and sociological realities of what home/household looks like occurred. These social micro-entities are clearly concrete places that are subject to significant investment by their members; they are both economic units and shared intimacy spaces. Based on these two fundamental characteristics of the home, we propose to link the issue of the relationship between individuals with those relating to the family (relationships with children, relationships with parents outside the nuclear family), the economy (income and expenditure of domestic entities, production, consumption) and intimacy (a notion that covers a wide range of practices, emotions and affects, attitudes, from sexuality to the sharing of spaces, caring for bodies). Continue reading CFP – EHESS–CEFRES PhD Students Workshop : Household, Kinship, Intimacy →

International Workshop organized by the CEFRES, in cooperation with the Institute of Sociological Sciences (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague), Fundacja Zatoka (PL) and Periféria (HU)

Date: 4-6.11.2021
Place: CEFRES, Prague and online
Language: English 
Deadline for submission: 30.5.2021
Pre-program:
Thursday evening: keynote and reception;
Friday: presentations
Saturday morning: critical urban tour in the Karlín district: from a working-class neighborhood to a symbol of gentrification

The workshop explores the role of political institutions and social movements in the process of urban change in the CEE countries. The case of Prague demonstrates that post-communist cities have particular historicity in terms of urban development after 1989. Continue reading CFP – Urban Movements and Local Politics in CEE countries: Recent Developments and Conceptual Ambivalences →