According to the dominant understanding, the nation is a product of modernity (the Industrial Revolution, capitalism, linguistic unification, printing press generalization and the democratization of schooling, etc.). However, nations did not appear ex nihilo in the 18th century. Traditional attempts to explain this emergence do not satisfy scholars, as they focus only on the moment when the nation became the hegemonic mode of political organization during the 19th century. In doing so, they fail to describe the long process that led to this hegemony. This conference will reassess the definition and genealogy of the nation.

Date: May 3rd, 4th and 5th 2023
Location: Central European University (CEU) Campus (Vienna) & online : https://bit.ly/3TRxGjT
Organizer:  Medieval Studies Department of the Central European University
Funding/co-organizers: ACRO (CEU), IMAFO (Austrian Academy of Sciences), FPPCHA (Lausanne), CRHiDI (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles), CEFRES (Prague) and Stadt Wien Kultur.
Language: English

Continue reading Community, Identity, Individuals: Shaping the (Political) Nation in Premodern Europe →

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

A summary of the conference and the call for papers is available here.

Program:

Thursday 20 April 2023
at CEFRES Library (Na Florenci 3 Prague 1)
16h- Opening Talk – Octavian Siu [online]
16h30 – Panel 1 : poetics of politics in the work of Samuel Beckett
Vanesa Cotroneo : Breaking the Iron Curtain: Media and Technology in Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe (1982) and Nacht und Träume (1982)
Luciana Peycere : A post-pandemic operatic adaptation of Film (1965): the political and aesthetic potential of performing Beckett at a fringe venue in London.
[break]
17h30 – Roundtable: Staging Beckett today – testimonies of contemporaries stage directors (1h30)
Jan Bosse & Olena Zavhorodnya

Friday 21st April
at Charles University (Faculty of Arts, Room P104, nám. J. Palacha 1/2)
9h30- Welcoming coffees
10h – Keynote Speaker – Marek Kedzierski – Beckett in Perspectives. Discussing with Beckett, staging Beckett, reflecting upon Beckett
[break]
11h 15 – Panel 2: Overview of Beckett reception and stagings in Central Europe
Matthieu Protin – Samuel Beckett Stage Director of his own Theater in Germany: Influence and Consequence.
Tomasz Wiśniewski – “Beckett on the Baltic” and other research experiments in Gdańsk
Anita Rákóczy – A Director’s Apology – Beckett in Hungaria
[lunch break]
14h30 – Panel 2 bis: Overview of Beckett reception and stagings in Central Europe
Miloš Mistrík – Godot has finally come – to Slovakia
Martin Pšenička – Post-1989 stage productions of Beckett in the Czech Republic: a focus on Jan Nebeský’s 1996 production of Endgame
[break]
15h45 – Panel 3 : The question of censorship in and of Beckett’s theatre: a legal or a personal issue?
Alexander Hartley – Beckett’s Legal Scuffles and the Interpretation of the Plays [online]
Matthew Rimmer – The Legal Endgame of Samuel Beckett [online]
Concluding remarks – Alice Clabaut & Charles Guillorit

See more at the conference’s website.

Date and location: March 23–25, 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
Languages: French and English

Read and download the list of participants and abstracts of their presentation on the FF UK website here.

See the program here.

Text of the call for papers:

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.

In Search of Lost Time represents a field of possibilities that – by its essentially open nature – brings to light new answers to old questions: is the aim of the work to satisfy the author’s desire to record his entire life; to overcome death through the power of language, or to express the essence of things? Is it a monumental act of free and involuntary recollection? Or a vast meditation on so many social issues? Continue reading Proustian Perspectives →

Displacements: Women’s Transnational Trajectories & Artistic Experiences of Emancipation in Central Europe

International conference

Convenors: Mateusz Chmurski, Clara Royer, Lola Sinoimeri
Time and Place: March 16-17, 2023 – CEFRES and online
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85661902411?pwd=M3FUZmR0OUhIUWF0ZDFYVzBKa2QvZz09
Meeting ID: 856 6190 2411
Passcode: 456173
Languages of the conference: French & English

Scientific Committee:
Anna Borgos (Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities), 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 University), CEFRES (CNRS-MEAE), Departement of Czech and comparative literature, Charles University (ÚČLK FF UK), Institute of Polish Culture, Warsaw university (IKP WP UW) – with the support of the European University Alliance 4EU+, the GDR “Connaissance de l’Europe médiane” (CNRS) and the French Institute in Prague

Read the thesis of the conference here.

Continue reading Displacements: Women’s Transnational Trajectories & Artistic Experiences of Emancipation in Central Europe →

Center for Science, Technology, and Society Studies (Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences) and CEFRES
are pleased to invite you to the workshop “Pierre Bourdieu’s Science of Science: Sources, Arenas, Legacies.”

When: Thursday 15 December, 2022, 10 am – 6 pm
Where: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1 and online
Convenor & contact: Jan Marsalek marsalek(@)flu.cas.cz

The aim of the workshop is to reflect on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception and practice of sociology of science that he was developing since 1975 onwards. Reputed as neglected for a long time, the sociology of science and scientific knowledge has become, in the second half of the 20^th Century, one of the most prominent sociological sub-disciplines, that does not hesitate to intervene into general sociology itself. Pierre Bourdieu, celebrated and influential in a wide range of sociological areas, was curiously standing aside this spectacular development of the sociology of science we commonly situate in the 1970s and 1980s. From his singular point of view, which we shall analyse, he made several intriguing criticisms of the emerging trend in the sociology of scientific knowledge, on which we wish to reflect.

The workshop picks up the threads of the Sociology and Philosophy of Physics seminars organized in 2022 by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts of the Charles University, Prague.

Program

10:00 – 12:00 GUEST LECTURE

Pascal Ragouet, University of Bordeaux – Centre Émile Durkheim
“Science as a Field. Bourdieu’s Contribution to the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge”

– See below for the abstract –

14:00 – 18:00 ROUNDTABLE

Confirmed speakers

• Jan Maršálek, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
  Pascal Ragouet, University of Bordeaux – Centre Émile Durkheim (UMR 5116)
• Manolis Simos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
• Julien Wacquez, CEFRES
• Lukáš Hadwiger Zámečník, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc

Abstract of the guest lecture

Science as a field. Bourdieu’s contribution to the sociology of scientific knowledge
Pascal Ragouet
Full Professor of sociology – University of Bordeaux – Centre Émile Durkheim (UMR 5116)

In the course of its history, the sociology of science has been traversed by several major debates. The first is the one that T. Shinn and I analysed in the book titled Controversies on Science by proposing to consider Robert K. Merton’s sociology as a form of differentiationism opposed to the anti-differentiationist tendencies of post-Kuhnian programmes of research on science such as the Strong Programme (D. Bloor, B. Barnes), the empirical programme of relativism (H. Collins, T. Pinch), laboratory studies (B. Latour and S. Woolgar, K. Knorr Cetina, M. Lynch) or the network actor theory (M. Callon, J. Law, B. Latour).

The second concerns the question of whether scientific knowledge can be sociologically analysed. With R. Merton, the sociology of science kept its distance from a sociology of scientific knowledge. The break comes with the Strong Programme and the Empirical Programme of relativism. The pendulum swings back the other way with the radical constructivism of network actor theories. Today, sociologists of science and technical innovation seem to be less concerned with scientific knowledge than with the need to think about science in society, when it is called upon by industrialists and politicians, when it feeds expertise, when it is questioned in the context of risk management and reflections on the relationship between science and democracy.

Bourdieu’s contribution to the sociology of science makes it possible to overcome these lines of conflict because it is based on a theoretical framework articulating a theory of social structuring, a theory of practice and a theory of social asymmetries. Based on two personal research projects on biology, the aim is to show the fruitfulness of this approach.

For further information, see:  http://odolnaspolecnost.cz/vedeckagramotnost/

Conservative mobilizations in Central Eastern Europe in transnational perspective

International Conference

Date: 8-9 December 2022
Location: CEFRES Library
Organizers:
– CEFRES
– Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University
– Research Group (GDR)  “Connaissance de l’Europe médiane”, CNRS,
– The French Ministry of Higher Education and Research – PARCECO Programme
Convenors:  Anemona Constantin (CEFRES / Charles University), Valentin Behr (CNRS, Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique)
Language: English, French

Program

Day 1, 8 December 2022

09:30 : Welcome coffee & snacks
10:00 : Opening remarks, Mateusz Chmurski, Director of CEFRES
10:15 : General introduction, Valentin Behr & Anemona Constantin

10:30–12:00 – Panel 1 – Intellectuals’ engagements and the transnational circulation of ideas
Chair : Ronan Hervouet (CEFRES / Université de Bordeaux)
Discussant: Jakub Franek (IPS, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University)

10:30 : Alihan Mestci (CESSP, Paris I University/CNRS/ EHESS), “Erdoğan regime. The expertise on the issue of the “legitimate culture”

10:50 : Anemona Constantin (CEFRES / IPS, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University), “How the conservative intellectuals do mobilize? Reflections on the emergence of a conservative International”

11:10 Discussion

11: 30 : Q&A

12.00-13.30: Lunch

13:30–15:30 – Panel 2 – Espaces intermédiaires et registres de mobilisation conservatrice
Chair: Michèle Baussant (ISP-CNRS / ICM / CEFRES)
Discussant: Annie Collovald (ISP-CNRS / Paris Nanterre University)

13:30 : Marie-Hélène Sa Vilas-Boas (CREDA, IHEAL / ERMES / Paris 3 University – Côte d’Azur University) “The ‘truth’ as a programm. Production of the political offer and religious references among the Bolsonarists in Rio (online)

13:50 : Aurélie Stern (CETOBaC, EHESS / Galatasaray University), “All descendants of Attila? The Turkish presence at the Macar Turan Kurultayı identity festival in Hungary.”

14:10 : Adrien Nonjon (CREE, INALCO), “Technology as a tool of the conservative renewal in Baltic space? The case of the prometheist new-right wings”

14:30 : Discussion

14:50 : Q&A

15.30-16.00: Coffee break

16:00–18:30 –Panel 3 – Late socialism and illiberal post-communism in perspective
Chair: Valentin Behr (CESSP, Paris I University / CNRS / EHESS) & Anemona Constantin (CEFRES / Charles University)

16:00 : Michal Kopeček (Czech Academy of Sciences): “Compromise in the Rule-of-Law: politics of liberal constitutionalism and the Rule of Law doctrines in East Central Europe after 1989”

16:20 : Laure Neumayer (Picardie University “Jules Verne”): The transformations of Central European anti-Communism after 1989

16:40 : Jérôme Heurtaux ( Paris-Dauphine University) : “When left-wing historians and activists re-read the communist past in Poland” (online)

17:00 : Julian Waller (IERES / George Washington University) (online): “‘Illiberalism’ in the East but ‘postliberalism’ in the West? Conceptualizing and mapping ideological dissent from Eastern Europe to America” (online)

17:20 : Discussion

17:40 : Q&A

18.30: End of Day 1

19:30 : Dinner

Day 2: 9 December 2022

9:00–11.00 – Panel 4 – Civil society and grassroots mobilizations
Chair: Valentin Behr (CESSP, CNRS)
Discussant: Pavel Barša (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)

9:00 : Eve Gianoncelli (Maison francaise d’Oxford) The forms and limitations of metapolitics: the case of the European Conservative (tbc)

9:20 : Marcin Ślarzyński (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences), “From the rituals of rebellion to the rituals of power? Local cultural and political practices of right-wing civil society organizations in Poland before and after taking power in 2015”

9:40 : Adrien Beauduin (CEFRES / Central European University), “Learning from the West? Western sources of the Czech parliamentary far-right”

10:00 : Discussion

10:20 : Q&A

11:00-11:30: Coffee break

11:30–13:30: Panel 5 – Legal order, moral order and illiberal identities within the conservative realm
Chair: Fedora Parkmann (CEFRES / Faculty of Arts, Charles University)
Discussant: Zora Hesová (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)

11: 30 : Natasza Quelvennec (CESSP, Paris I University / CNRS / EHESS), “Gender on trial. A legal think tank at the heart of the conservative international”

11:50 : Victor Hugo Ramirez-Garcia (LIPHA, Paris-Est Créteil University), “European institutions’ response to conservative backlash. The case of transnational justice and gender education”

12:10 : Paul Gradvohl (Paris 1 University), “Moral order, social order and (inter)nationalist circulations during the 20th and 21st centuries”

12:30 : Discussion

12:50 : Q&A

13:30: End of Day 2 

You can find the call for papers here.

You can find the abstract of each presentation here.

You can download the programme here.

You can find the list of participants here.

Foto: Petr Sís, Člověk a víra.