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 →

PhD Students Workshop organized by EHESS and CEFRES will be held on the theme of  Humanities and Social Sciences Facing the Unexpected.

Date: April 12th, 2021 (9:30-19:00)
Deadline for propositions: March 15th, 2021
Location: online and at CEFRES, Na Florenci 3 (Prague)
Language: English

Coordination: Falk Bretschneider (EHESS), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)

Supervisors: Michèle Baussant (CNRS/CEFRES), Falk Bretschneider (EHESS), Emmanuel Désveaux (EHESS), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES), Pavel Himl (FHS UK), Claire Madl (CEFRES), Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS)

The sanitary crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the whole world into deep uncertainty and radically shaken almost all our habits. This also applies to the research community. Lockdowns, travel restrictions, curfews, closures of libraries or archives and other measures of distance and protection have a direct and sometimes brutal impact on many scientific projects, especially those of many young researchers on fixed-term contracts. This context therefore leads us to question the ways in which humanities and social sciences can deal with uncertainty, the unexpected and the unforeseen, and this in two directions:

(1) On the one hand, it is a question of our own research practices, i.e., the techniques and methods that we have – or that remain to be developed – to confront us with a reality that has abruptly changed. In particular, how to deal with the sudden impossibility to access a research field or archives (whether it is due to the current pandemic or to any other unexpected event)? How to react in the face of external conditions making it impossible to carry out a project as originally planned? What opportunities offer the new means of remote research, but also what are the risks they entail – and how can we think about these two phenomena together in a methodological reflection that is both lucid and productive?

(2) On the other hand, it is relevant to raise the question of the rapid changes that sometimes affect our research objects, sometimes leading to their radical reformulation. The occurrence of an unexpected event or a brutal reversal – human history abounds in wars, revolutions, pandemics, or other cataclysms which each time induce a more or less complete reversal of the current norms and practices in the societies concerned. How can we analyse the effects of these transformations on past and present societies, both collectively and individually (biographical ruptures, etc.) and report on the forms of resistance and adaptation? How can we think about these disruptions, the reactions they provoke and the forms of resilience they give rise to?

We invite all PhD students interested affiliated to CEFRES, EHESS or a Czech University to submit their application, which will include, in a single PDF file, a CV (maximum two pages) as well as a brief description of the planned intervention (approximately 1.500 characters, including spaces). The workshop will be organised around the presentations of the young researchers and their discussion by the supervisors and other participants. In addition, there will be time for an exchange of individual experiences about the global pandemic. Please send your application by March 15^th, 2021 to the following addresses: falk.bretschneider@ehess.fr and jerome.heurtaux@cefres.cz

More information:

falk.bretschneider@ehess.fr

jerome.heurtaux@cefres.cz