Archives

Archives Stories: Writing thinkers and their archives

Archives stories: Writing thinkers and their archives

The conference aims at fostering a collective reflection about methodologies and digital tools that could enable us to better perceive, beyond and through the manuscripts, the intellectual figures and their transcultural trajectories, the stories and their roots in cultural contexts, the networks and the collective practices they have been grounded in. Besides giving a different image of the history of ideas, such approach could also produce more intuitive narrations, enabling these materials to reach – thanks to their digital representation – a broader public and a non-scholar audience. The event will gather all the major actors of the network « AITIA – Archives of International Theory, an Intercultural Approach ».

Date: December 12, 2024, from 9:30 a.m.
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague, and online
Language: English

Provisional program

MANUSCRIPTS

Morning: Writing Thinkers

Jan Frei, Jan Patocka Archives, Prague

Julia Jensen and Emanuele Caminada, Husserl Archives Lewen

Ladislav Hejdanek Archives*, Prague

Benedetta Zaccarello, ITEM (CNRS/ENS) (on dialogues in philosophical manuscripts)

Afternoon: Displaying Literature

Museum of Literature (ML PNP) Prague*

Archives et Musée de la Littérature*, Brussels

The School for Cultural Texts and Records*, Jadavpur University Kolkata (on Tagore’s digitalarchive “Bichitra”) (will be held online)

Mateusz Chmurski, director at CEFRES (CNRS/MEAE), Prague (on a facsimile edition)

Round table: “interpreting and (digitally) archiving intellectual manuscripts”, a dialogue with Alois Pichler*, Wittgenstein Archives at the Bergen University, followed by a round table on the topic.

Conference dinner

ARCHIVES

Morning: Archiving Research

Lucie Merhautová and Milan Hanis, on the collections at “The Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS”

Sylvie Archaimbault, Eur’ORBEM (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle), on « Numerislav » digital archive

Nirmalya Chakraborty (Professor of Philosophy, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata) and Madhucchanda Sen (head of Philosophy Department, Jadavpur University Kolkata), on Darshan Manisha Digital Library (Sanskrit Philosophy) (will be held online)

Daniel Raveh, Professor of Indian and Comparative Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, on Daya Krishna digital archive online

Afternoon: when research shapes the archives

Emmylou Haffner* and Christophe Eckes* (ITEM, CNRS/ENS), on Banana ANR project, digital archives of “Nicolas Bourbaki” (mathematics collective manuscripts) (will be held online)

Venkat Srinivasan*, National Centre for Biological Sciences Archives, on the making of NCBS archives and collections (will be held online)

Institut Français de Pondichéry*, CNRS/MEAE, on the making of their own archives (Indology, Ecology, Indian Traditional Medicines) and the history of their French-Indian institution (will be held online)

Round table: Archives on the make, the making of archives – a dialogue with Laetitia Zecchini* (THAMIL, PI IRN Postcolonial Print Cultures), on the Pen India archives, followed by a round table on the topic.

CEFRES Review of books – June 2023

The next edition of CEFRES Review of Books will take place on Friday, June 21st, at 3:00 pm at CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1

This informal meeting gathers CEFRES team, the library readers, and professionals from libraries and publishing. The aim of our Review of Books is to make better known the publishing landscape in humanities and social sciences. Each book is presented in French and in no more than 10 minutes, so to stress its originality and stakes.

So far, the following presentations are announced:

  • Lise Foisneau : Kumpania. Vivre et résister en pays gadjo (Marseille : Wildproject, 2023) by Yasar Abu Ghosh
  • Christelle Taraud (dir.) : Feminicides. Une histoire mondiale (Paris : La Découverte, 2022) by Hélène Martinelli
  • Hyacinthe Ravet : Musiciennes. Enquête sur les femmes et la musique (Paris : Autrement, 2011) by Louisa Martin-Chevalier
  • Baptiste Morizot : L’inexploré (Marseilles : Wildproject, 2023) by Hana Fořtová

Central-European Masculinities

Central-European Masculinities in a Comparative Perspective – International workshop and conference

A project developed by the Institute of Literary Studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice (IL WNH UŚ), the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University (ÚČLK FF UK), the Institute of Czech Literature at the Czech Academy of Sciences (ÚČL AV ČR), the Institute of Polish Culture at the Faculty of Polish Studies, University of Warsaw (IKP WP UW), the Institute of Slovak Literature at the Slovak Academy of Sciences (ÚSL SAV), the Center for Social Sciences – Sociology Institute (HUN-REN TK SZI), and the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences, Prague (CEFRES, CNRS-MEAE), supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research through the PARCECO program.

Time and place: June 19th and 20th, 2024, at CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1, and November 14th and 15th, 2024, at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland.
Language: French, English
Organizers: Wojciech Śmieja (IL WNH UŚ), Mateusz Chmurski (CEFRES/Sorbonne), Iwona Kurz (IKP WP UW), Richard Müller (ÚČL AV ČR), Josef Šebek (ÚČLK FF UK), Ivana Taranenková (ÚSL SAV)

Partners:

  • Institute of Literary Studies, University of Silesia in Katowice (IL WNH UŚ)
  • Institute of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University (ÚČLK FF UK)
  • Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences (ÚČL AV ČR)
  • Institute of Polish Literature, Faculty of Polish Studies, University of Warsaw (IKP WP UW)
  • Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences (ÚSL SAV)
  • Centre for Social Sciences Studies – Institute of Sociology (HUN-REN TK SZI)
  • French Centre for Research in Social Sciences, Prague (CEFRES, CNRS-MEAE)
  • Ministry of Higher Education and Research – PARCECO program

With the participation of:

  • Judit Acsády, Társadalomtudományi Kutatóközpont – Hun-Ren, Hongrie
  • Zsolt Mészáros, Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, Hungary
  • Marcin Filipowicz, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Poland
  • Peter Hallama, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France
  • Libuše Heczková, Univerzita Karlova, Czech Republic
  • Antoine Idier, Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
  • Darko Ilin, Univerza v Novi Gorici, Slovenia
  • Iwona Kurz, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Poland
  • Zdeněk Sloboda, Univerzita Karlova, Czech Republic
  • Wojciech Śmieja, Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach, Poland

Read more about the project.

Cartography and art history in dialogue

Cartography and art history in dialogue. Reflections on the functions of maps in Warburgian iconology

Fifth session of the 2023-2024 CEFRES Francophone Interdisciplinary Seminar The map and the border
In 2023, we would like to start by beginning by questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory), in short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, to question the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Dates: Friday, June 14th, 10 – 11.30 am
Language: French

Speaker : Lara BONNEAU, Institute of Philosophy of Czech Academy of Sciences (FLÚ – AV ČR), associate researcher at CEFRES
Discussant : Danièle COHN, Université Paris 1 (to be confirmed)

Has the tendency towards ornamentation in the graphic gesture been an obstacle to the scientific development of cartography? In other words, has cartography had to liberate itself from the artistic dimension, which is too imbued with a sensitive end emotional life, to become a planimetric abstraction? These were central questions for the German art historian Aby Warburg, who saw the cartographic gesture as one of the ways of distancing oneself psychologically from the senses. By giving contours to what is presented as moving, changing, even chaotic in perceptual experience, by assigning it a place within an order (kosmos), and by presenting it in space rather than in time, mapping has a psychological function: it gives the subject points which help him to anchor himself and distance himself from reality. Nevertheless, as the demon-populated astrological natal charts demonstrate, cartography cannot totally abolish the dimensions of fear and desire of our relationship with the world and the universe. Maps have a sensitive “cosmetic” dimension, which is perhaps not directly opposed to the ambition to bring cosmic order. In order to study how these demons moved historically, providing lasting fertile ground for the iconographic tradition as much as for scientific attempts to conquer the space of thought, Aby Warburg was led to draw… maps. Maps of the migratory routes of motifs and styles, of the “formules of pathos” from Athens to Babylon, from Babylon to Southern and the Northern Europe. Drawing in particular on the recent work od Phillipe Despoix (2023), we shall try to present the function of cartography in Warburgian iconology.

Grand entretien – Mali or Bohemia?

Mali or Bohemia ? “Grand Entetien” with François-Xavier Fauvelle and Ladislav Varadzin

Date : May 22, 2024 at 6:00 pm
Location : French Institute in Prague, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Language : french and czech (simultaneous translation)

Partners of the event : CEFRES, French Institute in Prague, Institute of Archaeology, Czech Academy of Sciences

François-Xavier Fauvelle and Ladislav Varadzin will discuss about Africa’s cultural diversity and various historical paths of african societies. The will think about characteristics of a “global” Middle Ages including Central Europe and several regions of Africa. Engaging the exercice (inevitably risky) of historical comparaison, they will share their thoughts about medieval written documentation (including arabic and jewish works) available for these two regions, the role of archaeology, the emergence of the State, meeting of Central European and African societies with Christianity or Islam, “broker” States and business and more. They will mention the kingdoms of Bohemia, Moravia, Ghana, Mali and Ethiopia.

François-Xavier Fauvelle is professor at the Collège de France, holder of the chair of history and archaeology of African worlds at the Collège de France and currently director of the French Research Center in Jerusalem. He worked in South Africa, in Ethiopia where he excavated the Christian site of Lalibela and discovered several Muslim towns, and in Morocco where he excavated the medieval city of Sijilmasa. Among some twenty books translated into a dozen languages, he is the author of Zlatý nosorožec : Příběhy o africkém středověku (Prague, 2021).

Ladislav Varadzin is a researcher in the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. A specialist in recent prehistory and ancient history of societies in North-East Africa and Central Europe, he worked in Sudan and in Egypt, and he excavated the medevial site of Vyšehrad in Prague. He is the author of more than a hundred scientific articles and book chapters.

Racializing Romani People in the 19th Century

Racializing Romani People in the 19th Century

A conference, jointly organized by the Prague Forum for Romani Histories at the Institute of Contemporary History, the Czech Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Gonzaga University, the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU, and the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, and supported by Strategy AV21 (Research Programme: Identities in the World of Wars and Crises), Lumina Queruntur award (LQ300582201), and Gonzaga University.

Date: 20-21 May, 2024 at 12:45pm
Location: Villa Lana, V Sadech 1/1, 160 00 Praha 6-Bubeneč
Conclusive public roundtable discussion (21/5/2024): CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Language: English

CEFRES welcomes in its premices the last public roundtable discussion, 21 May 17h00-18h30 – Round-table discussion

  • Chair : Vita Zalar 
  • Speakers: Margareta Matache, Sunnie R. Chang 

Participants of the conference

  • Rafael Buhigas JIMÉNEZ (member of  the History and Commemoration department of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture, ERIAC)
  • Maria CHIOREAN (PhD candidate at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu)
  • Martin FOTTA (head of the Department of Mobility and Migration at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences – EÚ AV ČR)
    Carolina García SANZ (associate professor in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Seville)
  • Margareta (Magda) MATACHE (lecturer at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)
  • Dezso MATE (Romani Rose Fellow at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at the Heidelberg University’s Department of History)
  • Verena MEIER (PhD candidate at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at the Heidelberg University’s Department of History)
  • Sunnie RUCKER-CHANG (associate professor at the Ohio State University)
  • Laura Soréna TITTEL (postdoctoral researcher at Justus Liebig University Giessen)
  • Tom TYSON (PhD on the history of Gypsies in early modern Scotland at Cambridge University)
  • Dalen WAKELEY-SMITH (assistant professor of history at Washington University in Saint Louis)
  • Egemen YILGÜR (professor of anthropology at Yeditepe University)

Complete Program

Monday, May 20th

12:45 – Welcome 

Ann Ostendorf and Vita Zalar 

13:00-15:00 – Keynote session 

  • Chair: Ann Ostendorf 
  • Margareta Matache: The Racialization of Romani People Across Time and Geographies: Patterns and Mechanisms.
  • Sunnie R. Chang: Relational Perspectives on the Origins and Uses of ‘Blackness’ in Roma and African American Communities 

15:00-15:30 – Coffee break 

15:30-17:30 – Panel I: Intellectualizing Race 

  • Chair: Tina Magazzini 
  • Dezso Mate: History of the Gypsy Lore Society
  • Martin Fotta: Race, Nation, and Lusophone Gypsylorism 
  • Tom Tyson: Antiquarians, Missionaries, and the ‘Romantic Gypsies’ of Scotland 

Tuesday, May 21 

10:00-12:30 – Panel II: Racializing Nations 

  • Chair: Martin Fotta 
  • Rafael Buhigas Jiménez: ‘Gitanos’ from Working-Class Neighbourhoods in the (Proto)Gossip Magazines: Racialization and Criminalization in Madrid (1850- 1900) 
  • Dalen Wakeley-Smith: ‘A Very Undesirable Class of Immigrants’: Immigration Officials, Race, and ‘Gypsies’ in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Egemen Yılgür: Ethno-racialization of the ‘Gypsy’ in the Modern Ottoman Censuses 
  • Carolina García Sanz: Constructing the ‘Racial Enemy’ against the Spanish Colonial Crisis: The Civil Guard and the ‘Gypsies’ 

12:30-13:00 – Lunch break 

13:00-15:00 –  Panel III: Contradictions and Critiques of Racialization 

  • Chair: Renata Berkyová 
  • Verena Meier: Antigypsy Special Legislation in Germany: Labels for State Repression and the Ambivalences of Definition 
  • Laura Soréna Tittel: Marx’s Critique of Vagabondage and the Policing of Roma in the Nineteenth Century 
  • Maria Chiorean: Racialization in Abolitionist Fiction: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Măriuca’s Cabin, a Comparative Case Study 

17:00-18:30 – Roundtable discussion hosted by the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES), Na Florenci 3, Prague. The event is open to the general public. No prior registration needed.

  • Chair: Vita Zalar 
  • Speakers: Margareta Matache, Sunnie R. Chang 

Abstract 

The scholarly study of race, racism, racialization, and racial capitalism on a global scale has significantly reframed our understanding of the nineteenth century. It has been established that ideas about race influenced the thoughts and experiences of all people who lived in the nineteenth century. Racial thinking permeated law, politics, science, and diplomacy. It supported colonizing projects, caused removal from traditional homelands, diminished access to resources, limited citizenship rights, criminalized individuals, and dislocated countless people around the world.

This two-day conference brings the scholarship on nineteenth-century racecraft into conversation with Romani history. The organizers invite contributors to consider the impact of racialization on Romani communities in the nineteenth century.

The intimate two-day conference will be centered around panels consisting of 20-minute presentations with extensive discussion. Scholars from all disciplines were encouraged to apply. We particularly welcomed applications from Romani scholars and early-career scholars.

The conference is an in-person event only. Interested attendees should contact Marek Jandák (jandak@usd.cas.cz) to register.

For further details regarding the discussion content, please visit the Program Forum for Romani Histories website.