On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the French Embassy and French Institute in Slovakia, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the French Centre for Research in Social Sciences and the Czech Centre in Bratislava invite you to round table discussions on the theme: Thirty years of independence for the Czech and Slovak Republics (1993-2023)

Location: Hall of Mirrors of the Primatial Palace, Primaciálne námestie 2, Bratislava
Date: 23 and 24 October 2023
Language: Slovak / French (Simultaneous translation Slovak ↔ French)

The registration for the event is opened until October 12th. Room capacity is limited. Free admission.
Also available online.

Program

23. 10. 2023

17:30 – 18:00: Opening

18:00 – 20:00: Actors – witness of the historical key events
Moderator: Jaro Valent
Discussants: Xavier Galmiche (Sorbonne Université), Michaela
Jurovská (diplomate), Dušan Kováč (SAV), Václav
Bělohradský (philosophe)

20:00 – 22:00: Reception

24. 10. 2023

10:00 – 12:00: Political development of the two independent Republics
Moderator : Agáta Šustová Drelová
Discussants: Étienne Boisserie (Inalco), Michal Kopeček (ÚSD AV ČR), Juraj Marušiak (ÚPV SAV), Jana Vargovčíkova (Inalco)

12:00 – 13:30: Lunch break

13:30 – 15:30: Literature as a mirror of society
Moderator: Agáta Šustová Drelová
Discussants: Xavier Galmiche (Sorbonne Université), Michal Jareš (ÚČL AV ČR), Jana Kantoříková (Humboldtova Universita), Peter Zajac (ÚSlL SAV)

15:30 – 16:00: Coffee break

16:00 – 18:00: Transformation in Czech and Slovak society
Moderator: Jaro Valent
Discussants: Miloslav Bahna (SÚ SAV), František Novosád (FÚ SAV), Viliam Páleník (EÚ SAV), Paulína Tabery (SÚ AV ČR)

Prof. Xavier Galmiche, eminent French Bohemist and winner of the Premia Bohemica Prize (2020), introduces Bohuslav Reynek’s poetry in French translations and his interpretation of his œuvre. The event takes place on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the meeting of Bohuslav Reynek and Suzanne Renaud.

When: Thursday May 4th 2023 at 17:00
Where: Moravian regional library, Kounicova 65a, Brno
Language: Czech Continue reading Reading and translating Bohuslav Reynek’s poetry →

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 →

This roundtable discussion takes place within a conference organized by the Prague Forum for Romani Histories.

Today, many people have become resigned to the fact that xenophobia is a central feature of the transatlantic political landscape. From the United States to France to Eastern Europe, political movements centered on the rejection of “the other” (immigrants; racial and sexual minorities, and so-called “internal enemies”) have garnered mass followings and have entered governments that were until recently seen as immune to the sorts of populism that marked the first half of the twentieth century. The roundtable will sum up a conference organized by the Prague Forum for Romani Histories (18-19 May, Villa Lanna) where participants will discuss politicized xenophobia in the past and today. How, we ask, did past xenophobic movements speak to each other across the Atlantic in the past centuries? How have European and American xenophobia and racism in the past informed movements today? What was and is the role of historical memory in the politics of xenophobia? What are the benefits and risks of drawing parallels between the past xenophobic movements and present ones?

Date: Friday 19th of May 2023, 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Location: CEFRES Library
Organizers: the Prague Forum for Romani Histories (at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences) in partnership with University of Alabama at Birmingham and Romani Studies Program at the CEU in Vienna
Language: English
Convenors: Jonathan Wiesen (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Angéla Kóczé (Romani Studies Program at the Central European University in Vienna), Kateřina Čapková (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences).
Chair: Angéla Kóczé
Speakers: Ann Ostendor, Jonathan Wiesen and Vita Zalar

18 May

1:30 p.m. WELCOME

1:45 – 3:15 p.m.  KEYNOTE SESSION
Chair: Kateřina Čapková
Angéla Kóczé: Anti-Roma Racism as a Socio-Historical Consensus: 2008–2009 Neo-Nazi Murders of Roma in Hungary
Jonathan Wiesen: US Racial Violence in the German Imaginary

Break: 3:15 –3:45 p.m.

3:45-5:30 p.m. PANEL I: Transnational Xenophobia
Chair: Jonathan Wiesen
Ann Ostendorf: Anti-Romani Political Racism in the Nineteenth Century United States
Tayla Myree: Remembrance to Reparations: A Study of the Strategies towards the Recognition of Atrocities by Roma and African Americans
Tina Magazzini: Racism or Xenophobia? Tracing the Category-making of Racialized Minorities across the Atlantic and their Consequences

Dinner: 6:00 p.m.

19 May

9:00 – 11:15 a.m. PANEL II: The Holocaust and Holocaust Memory
Chair: Helena Sadílková
Christopher Molnar: Holocaust Memory, Racism, and the Roma Refugee Panic in Reunified Germany
Cristina Teodora Stoica: The Politics of Antiziganim and its shaping of Romania’s Holocaust Historical Memory
Mariana Sabino Salazar: The Politics of Memory: Romanies in Mexican and Brazilian Holocaust Museums
Justyna Matkowska: Pogroms on Roma and Sinti in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II

Break: 11:15-11:45 a.m.

11:45 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. PANEL III: Discrimination and its Legacies
Chair: Martin Fottta
Sunnie Rucker-Chang:The Enduring Impact of School Segregation in the United States and Europe
Michelle Kahn: USA From Nebraska to Berlin, Zagreb, and Beyond: How American Neo-Nazis Shaped the European Far-Right (1970s-1990s)
Dezso Mate: Roma LGBTI Movement – The Politics of Alliance

5:00-6:30 p.m. – Roundtable Discussion hosted by CEFRES, Na Florenci 3
The Politicization of Xenophobia in Transatlantic Contexts
Chair: Angéla Kóczé
Speakers: Ann Ostendor, Jonathan Wiesen and Vita Zalar

See the website of the conference.

The scientific workshop “War in Ukraine and exile” will bring together European researchers to present the preliminary results of their interviews and observations conducted after 24 February 2022 among exiles from three countries: Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The presentations of papers will address the following themes: trajectories of exiles (mobilised networks, successive displacements), exile experiences (emotions, intimacy), forms of politicisation (ordinary and institutional), interactions between different exiled communities, relations between exiles and host societies/states, relations with relatives left at home, representations and imaginaries associated with the war and its consequences. The workshop is organised in the framework of the BIELEXIL research project. The latter is financed by the flash grant dedicated to Ukraine from the French Collaborative Institute on Migration (Institut Convergences Migrations, ICM).

Continue reading War in Ukraine and exile →

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 →