Sexuality and social transformation in the  writing of the self

Research Area 2: Norms & Transgressions

Contact: josef.sebek@ff.cuni.cz

Josef Šebek is an assistant professor at the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University. He specializes in cultural materialism, the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and current French sociology of literature and works also on contemporary theory of discourse and rhetoric, media theory of literature, genres of life writing, and queer theory. He is the author of the book Literature and the Social: Bourdieu, Williams, and their Successors (Prague, FF UK, 2019), managing editor of the journal Slovo a smysl / Word & Sense and a member of the editorial team of Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics. 

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 Education 

 2016 Ph.D., Faculty of Arts, Charles University, history of literature and literary theory 

2010–2011 SSEES, University College London 

2008 MA, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Czech language and literature, aesthetics 

 Positions 

 Since 2018 – managing editor of the journal Slovo a smysl (Charles University) 

Since 2017 – researcher (since 2017) and assistant professor (since 2019) at the Institute of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University 

2016–2018 – Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Department of theory 

Since 2008 – member of the editorial team of the journal Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, since 2020 Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics (Charles University – University of Helsinki) 

Since 2005 – translator of scholarly books and articles 

 Selected Publications 

 Monographs 

•  Literatura a sociálno. Bourdieu, Williams a jejich pokračovatelé. Praha, Filozofická fakulta, Univerzita Karlova 2019.  

 Edited books 

•  Petr A. Bílek – Josef Šebek (eds.): Česká populární kultura. Transfery, transponování a další tranzitní procesy. Praha, Filozofická fakulta, Univerzita Karlova 2017. 
• Richard Müller – Josef Šebek (eds.): Texty v oběhu. Antologie z kulturně materialistického myšlení o literatuře. Praha, Academia 2014. 

 Articles and chapters  

•  ‘Sketch for a Self-Analysis’: Self-Reflexivity in Bourdieu’s Approach to Literature. In: Vojtěch Kolman, Tereza Matějčková (eds.): Perspectives on the Self: Reflexivity in the Humanities. De Gruyter, Berlin – New York 2022, pp. 209–227.  
• The Author in the Making: Ethos, Posture, and Self-Creation. In: Vojtěch Kolman, Tomáš Murár (eds.): Devouring One’s Own Tail: Autopoiesis in Perspective. Praha, Karolinum 2022, pp. 152–172. 
• ‘And Don’t Forget To Subscribe…’ Reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race mezi komplexní reprezentací queer identity a komodifikací individuality.“ In David Skalický, Jan Wiendl (eds.): Protřepat, nemíchat! Mezi literární vědou a kulturálními studii. K 60. narozeninám Petra A. Bílka. Praha, Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická fakulta 2022, pp. 229–245.  
• Social Space, Physical Space, Representation of Space: Spatiality and Bourdieu’s Theory of the Literary Field. Brünner Beiträge zur Germanistik und Nordistik 35, 2021, no. 2, pp. 7–21. 
• ‘Práce, o kterou se pokoušíte, se vám ani v nejmenším nedaří’: Reflexe psaní v povídkách Karla Miloty. Svět literatury 31, 2021, no. 63, pp. 41–58. 
• Komunikace, roztok a medialita. K paradoxnímu charakteru Williamsova myšlení o médiu. In Richard Müller, Tomáš Chudý a kol.: Za obrysy média. Literatura a medialita. Praha, Karolinum, 2020, pp. 393–418. 
• Richard Müller – Tomáš Chudý – Alice Jedličková – Josef Šebek – Stanislava Fedrová: Kroky k mediální teorii literatury. Závěrečná úvaha (polylog). In Richard Müller, Tomáš Chudý a kol.: Za obrysy média. Literatura a medialita. Praha, Karolinum, 2020, pp. 567–581. 
• Komunikace a roztok. K pojetí média u Raymonda Williamse. Česká literatura 67, 2019, no. 5, pp. 684–710. 
• Mezi sociální determinací a singularitou. Autorská postura podle Jérôma Meizoze. Slovo a smysl 16, 2019, no. 31, pp. 261–262.  
• Postmoderna. In Ondřej Sládek a kol.: Slovník literárněvědného strukturalismu. Brno, Host 2018, pp. 540–549. 
• Literární pole. In Jan Matonoha a kol.: Za (de)konstruktivismem. Kritické koncepty (post)poststrukturální literární a kulturní teorie. Praha, Academia 2017, pp. 318–332. 
• Výjimečný stav. Násilí a válka v prózách Ladislava Fukse. In Vít Schmarc (ed.): Obraz válek a konfliktů. V. kongres světové literárněvědné bohemistiky. Válka a konflikt v české literatuře. Praha, Akropolis 2015, pp. 315–323. 
• Motiv a intertextovost. Vztahy mezi texty v literárněvědných pracích Alexandra Sticha. Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Philologica. Slavica Pragensia 42, 2014, no. 3, pp. 211–221. 
• Literárněvědná metodologie Alexandra Sticha. Česká literatura 55, 2007, no. 4, pp. 479–516. 

Conference papers 

• Subversive ‘Realism’: Style, Latency, and Politics in the Novels of Ladislav Fuks, XXIII. Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Tbilisi, Georgia, 24.7.–29.7.2022. 
• Literatura a společnost: Návrat sociologického pohledu?, VI. kongres světové literárněvědné bohemistiky, The Institue of Czech Literature of the CAS, Prague, 27.6.–1.7.2022. 
• Le miroir impossible: Politique, sexualité et transformation sociale dans l’autobiographie de Ladislav Fuks. « Le Crépuscule des paradigmes ? » Les canons culturels en Europe centrale : transgressions et réhabilitations depuis la fin du XXe siècle, Faculté des Lettres, Sorbonne Université, Paris, 23.5.2022 – 25.5.2022. 
• Literatura a sociálno: Číst literaturu „sociologicky“, nebo „v sociálním kontextu“?, ČSS 2021: sociologické reflexe | sociological reflections: Výroční konference České sociologické společnosti, online, Masaryk University, Brno, 23.6.2021 – 25.6.2021. 
• „Moje zrcadlo“: Queer sebeprezentace Ladislava Fukse v nefikčních a fikčních textech, Teplé dějiny v českých zemích / Queering Czech History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, 29.11.2019 – 30.11.2019. 
• “Sketch for a Self-Analysis”: Self-Reflexive Aspects of Contemporary Literary Theory, Narrativity and Self-Creating Forms: Autopoiesis in Perspective, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Praha, 18.9.2019 – 21.9.2019. 
• Le « Je » chez Bourdieu : L’auteur littéraire et le sujet linguistique. Dire « je ». Atelier autour de la subjectivité linguistique, The Institue of Philosophy, CAS, Prague, 24.11.2017–24.11.2017. 
• The Blurred Space In-Between: Repetition in Fiction and Affectivity. XXI. Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Vienna, Austria, 21.7.2016–27.7.2016. 

Imaginary Ecologies: Futuristic Technological Dwellings, Persistent Residual Entanglements

Project TANDEM “Home Beyond Species”, with Chloé Mondémé and Petr Gibas.

Ange Pottin holds a PhD degree from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris. His research focuses on philosophy of technology and Science and Technology Studies. It deals primarily with analyzing energy and chemical industries from the perspectives of their materiality and the imaginaries that they bear.

From the first methods of synthetic chemistry in the 18th century to the present-day discourse on circular economy, modern industry has often represented itself as evolving into a system independent of natural resources with an optimal externality management. By doing so, it has paradoxically brought about new cycles of waste extraction and proliferation. The principal hypothesis of the research project is that such imaginary ecologies can be studied as a confrontation between two conflicting sets of representations and practices of our technical and ecological household: futuristic technological dwellings on the one side, residual entanglements on the other. More specifically, the aim is to analyze two fields of investigation: certain promises of circularity advanced by the oil and petrochemical industries, and the imaginary associated with the maintenance and dismantling of certain nuclear power plants.

More information here.

 

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Education

2022: PhD, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, “Matière fertile. Le résidu radioactif, le capital fissile et l’écologie imaginaire de l’industrie nucléaire”.

2016: MA in History and Philosophy of Science, Université de Paris

2012-2018: Student at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris

 

Publications

French version: “Le pouvoir et les opérations : Simondon et les imaginaires de l’industrie nucléaire”, Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances, 15-2, 2021

English version: “Power and Operations: Simondon and the Imaginaries of the Nuclear Industry”, Trilogia, Ciencia Tecnologia Sociedad, 13-25.

Research area 3 – Objects, traces, mapping : evereyday experience of spaces

Joseph holds a PhD in political anthropology from Leiden University (2019). His research interests include the intersections of extraction, environment, climate change and governance in and around the Congo Rainforest and Basin. As the 2^nd largest tropical rainforest in the world, The Congo Basin is critical to global ecological systems and the longevity of human life on Earth, yet the Basin remains under threat. While six different states—Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon—occupy the Congo Basin, all pursue extractive and conservationist policies to quite varying degrees.

How and why do these policies and attitudes evolve? How does the past inform the present, and hopefully the future? Last but not least, which ethnological, political anthropological, and political economic approaches can best help us understand the path to global resilience and sustainability?

Joseph is also working with CEFRES and Charles University to help build CUNI’s study of, and research capacities for, African Studies. Africa’s importance to world affairs has grown with trends in immigration, climate change, demographics, and renewed scrambles for African resources in the past decades, and CUNI is well placed to potentially become a leader in these fields. Please contact Joseph if you are interested in joining the Africa-Charles Project.

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Refereed Publications

“Rural Rentierism? The Rentier State Theory and Its Applicability to Local Spaces in Gabon.” In Oil-Age Africa, pp. 59-83. Brill, 2022.

“The Pitfalls of conservation in an African rentier state: The case of Gamba, Gabon (1960s-2015).” The Extractive Industries and Society 8, no. 4 (2021): 100995.

“Workshop Report: Tracing Legacies of Violence in French Equatorial Africa.” Africa Spectrum 54, no. 2 (2019): 162-172.

“Equatorial Guinea.” In Africa Yearbook Volumes 11-18. Brill, 2015-2022. (8 chapters)

“Equatorial Guinea Country Report.” Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2020,2022). https://bti-project.org/fileadmin/api/content/en/downloads/reports/country_report_2022_GNQ.pdf (2 reports)

 

Blog Posts

“Neoliberalism and the March of Impunity in Equatorial Guinea.” Africa is a Country, July 2019. https://africasacountry.com/2019/07/neoliberalism-and-the-march-of-impunity-in-equatorial-guinea

“Tropical Oppressors: State Violence in Equatorial Guinea.” ASCL Africanist Blog, 27 May 2019.  https://www.ascleiden.nl/content/ascl-blogs/tropical-oppressors-state-violence-equatorial-guinea

 

Professional Background

Liaison Officer, Project Rethink, Czech Business Council for Sustainable Development—Prague (2021-2022)

Guest Researcher, Leiden University (2019-present)

Country Expert, ViEWS, A Political Violence Early-Warning System, Uppsala

University (2019 – 2021, Remote)

Lecturer of Academic Writing, University of Regensburg (2018)

Lecturer of Business and Economics in Africa, Institut National Supérieur des Etudes Economiques et

Commerciales – Paris (2013-2016)

Lecturer of Legal English, Université de Panthéon-Assas Paris 2 (2013-2017)

Lecturer of Legal English, Université de Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1 (2013-2015)

 

 

Memories of Imvros: Transformed Spaces of Identity and Belonging on an Aegean Island

Research Area 1 – Displacements, “Dépaysement” and Discrepencies: People, Knowledge and Practices

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

Contact: laura.brody(@)alumni.duke.edu

Fitting into the wider context of studies on diasporic transformation, the purpose of this research is to investigate intergenerational differences in the relationship that members of the Greek-speaking Imvriot diaspora have to Imvros (Gökçeada), one of the islands ceded to Turkey in the aftermath of WWI. The project seeks to take an alternative approach to understanding the experiences of ‘being Imvriot’ and ‘belonging to Imvros’ through an exploration of both the individual and collective relationships that members of the Imvriot diaspora exhibit towards both the island as a whole and to specific sites across the island.

Continue reading Laura Brody: Research & CV →

PhD Fellows Team 2021–2022

Véronique Gruca

Contact: veronique.gruca(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at Paris-Nanterre University. Her PhD dissertation, entitled Family Stories. Sociability, Rituals and Everyday Life among the Mongolian Buryat Herders, contributes to CEFRES research area 1.

Jan Kremer

Contact: jan.kremer(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at Charles University in Prague. His PhD dissertation, entitled The Digital Game as a Historical Representation – Medievalism and Czech Historical Culture, contributes to CEFRES research area 3.

Nikola Ludlová

Contact: nikola.ludlova(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the Department of History of the Central European University in Budapest. Her PhD dissertation, entitled Roma as an Object of Science and State Polices. Knowledge and Citizens in the Making in Post-war Czechoslovakia, 1945–1989, contributes to CEFRES research area 2. 

Vojtěch Pojar

Contact: vojtech.pojar(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the Central European University in Budapest. His PhD dissertation, entitled Experts in Post-Imperial Transitions: Entanglements and Diverging Trajectories of Eugenicists between the Habsburg Empire and the Nation States, 1912-1939 contributes to CEFRES research area 1.

Agnieszka Sobolewska

Contact: agnieszka.sobolewska(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the Warsaw and Sorbonne University. Her PhD dissertation, entitled Between Self-Analysis and Autobiography. Everyday Writing Practices of Freud’s First Disciples and the importance of intimate documents for the developpement of Freudian theory, contributes to CEFRES research area 2.

Associated PhD students 2021–2022

Honoré Banidjè

Contact: honore.banidje(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student in history at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague. His researches focus on The National Construction in Benin (1894–1975) through the Central-European prism, and aims to compare national processes in African states established after decolonial movements, specially Benin, with “successor states” born after the dislocation of Central Powers in Central Europe, Czechoslovakia in particular.

Adrien Beauduin

Contact: adrien.beauduin(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the Central European University in Budapest. His thesis focuses on the ideas and members of new right-wing political parties in Czechia and Poland and contributes to the CEFRES research areas  2 and 3.

Alice Clabaut

Contact: alice.clabaut.billier(@)gmail.com

is a PhD student in cotutelle between Charles University (Prague) and Sorbonne Université (Paris), under the supervision of Florence Naugrette, Elisabeth Angel-Perez, and Petr Christov. Her dissertation, entitled Staging and reception of Samuel Beckett’s theatre in France, Germany and the Czech Republic after the fall of the Berlin Wall, contributes to CEFRES research area 1.

Astrid Greve Kristensen

Contact: astrid.grevekristensen(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at Sorbonne University, Paris, under the supervision of Clara Royer. Her dissertation is entitled Strangers in a Strange Land: Orphans of East-Central European Literature and the Turn towards the Village,  and contributes to CEFRES research area 3.

Felipe Kaiser Fernandes

Contact: fernandes@cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Institute of Anthropology of the Contemporary (IIAC), under the guidance of Sophie Wahnich. His dissertation entitled Rise of a Merchant Nation: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Bazaar Economy in Central Europe, contributes to CEFRES research area 1.

Adéla Klinerová

Contact: adela.klinerova(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student in cotutelle between the Charles University (Prague) and the École pratique des hautes études (Paris), under the supervision of Richard Biegel and Sabine Frommel. Her dissertation, entitled: Modern French Architecture in the Context of Czech and East-Central European Nineteenth-Century Architecture, contributes to CEFRES research area 1.

Barbora Kyereko

Contact: barbora.kyereko(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the Charles University in Prague. Her PhD dissertation, entitled Ghana in Cocoa, Cocoa in Ghana: A Study of Theobroma Cacao L. within its Parameters of Time, contributes to CEFRES research area 3.

Dušan J. Ljuboja

Contact: dusan.ljuboja(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. His dissertation, entitled The State, Nationalism and Pan-Slavism in the “Age of Metternich” (1815–1848) — The Case of the Serbs of Pest and Buda, contributes to CEFRES research area 3.

Yuliya Moskvina

Contact: yuliya.moskvina(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University (Prague) under the supervision of Paul Blokker. Her dissertation in sociology, entitled: Squat, State, Society, contributes to CEFRES research area 2.

Arthur Pérodeau

Contact: perodeau.arthur(@)gmail.com

is a PhD student at the EHESS (Paris) and at Charles University. His dissertation focuses on The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas and its Influence on Practices and Uses of History till the Beginning of the 13^th Century and contributes to CEFRES research area 3.

Pascal Schneider

contact: pascal.charles.schneider(@)gmail.com

is a co-supervised Phd student at Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) and Saarland University, under the supervision of Johann Chapoutot and Dietmar Hüser. His dissertation in contemporary History, entitled: NSDAP Member’s Sociology: the Germans’ Workers National-Socialist Party in the Annexed Territories of the IIIrd Reich (Alsace, Moselle, Eupen-Malmédy, Sudètes) from 1938 to 1944, contributes to CEFRES research area 2.

Florence Vychytil-Baudoux

Contact: florence.vychytil-baudoux(@)cefres.cz

is a PhD student at the EHESS (Paris) under the supervision of Nancy L. Green. Her dissertation in history, entitled Between Citizenship, Ethnicity and the Politics of Exile: The Logics of Polonia‘s Political Integration in France, the United States and Canada, 1945–1980, contributes to CEFRES research area 1

 

Metonymy and Stereotypes: theoretical perspectives and immigration discourse in German language

Research Area 1 – Displacements, “Dépaysement” and Discrepencies: People, Knowledge and Practices

Contact: ciro.porcaro(@)cefres.cz

The project has as its object metonymic phenomena in German Language. In the project, special attention is paid to the German migration discourse and to the metonymic models underlying social stereotypes (cf. Lakoff 1987). More specifically, metonymic phenomena which contribute to the stereotypical comprehension of the category of “migrants” (understood as category of practice in the migration discourse) are identified and analyzed, with particular reference to the tabloid Bild-Zeitung and to the news magazine Der Spiegel. In order to analyze the topics of displacement and migration, the methods and the instruments of Cognitive Linguistics are adopted as part of a discourse-analytical approach (cf. Ziem 2013).

Continue reading Ciro Porcaro: Research & CV →