The Human-Animal Line Interdisciplinary Approaches

This international conference will bring together in Prague researchers from different European countries. One of its main purposes is to create a Central European network of scholars dealing with the topic of the human-animal relations across disciplines.
Organizers: Dr. Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES & FF UK) & Dr. Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala in Poland)
Language: English

Program

7 February 2017 – French Institute in Prague

French Institute in Prague, Štĕpánská 35, 5^th floor

5:00-5:30 Welcome speech by the organizers, Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES & Charles University) and Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala) 5:30-7:00
Lecture by Anne Simon (CNRS/EHESS): Literature and Animal Expressiveness: of the Cognitive and Ethic Aspects of Zoopoetics

8 February 2017 – CEFRES

Na Florenci 3, 3rd floor, conference room

Panel I Animals’ Biography, History and Microhistory

Chair: Lucie Storchová (Charles University)

9:00-9:20 Maria Gindhart (Georgia State University): Animals and Humans in Belle Époque Postcards from the Jardin des Plantes Menagerie

9:20-9:40 Violette Pouillard (Wiener-Anspach Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Oxford): Nonhuman Animals as Objects or Individuals? A History of Primates at the London Zoo from 1828 to the Present Time

9:40-10:00 Discussion

10:00-10:20 Coffee Break

Panel II Literary Lines I

Chair: Alice Flemrová

10:40-11:00 Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES-Charles University, Prague): The Blind Spot of the Plot: Thinking Beyond Human with Karel Capek

11:00-11:20 Matilde Accurso Liotta (University of Pisa): The Renegotiation of the Human-Animal Line in Anna Maria Ortese’s L’iguana

11:20-11:40 Discussion

Lecture

11:40-12:50 Lecture by Kari Weil (Wesleyan University): Animal Magnetism and Moral Dressage: Horses and Their Humans in 19^th Century France

12:50-2:00 Lunch

Panel III Philosophical and sociological narratives

Chair: Ondřej Švec (Charles University)

2:00-2:20 Kári Driscoll (Utrecht University): ‘Une langue ou une musique inouïe, assez inhumaine…’: Narrative Voice and the Question of the Animal

2:20-2:40 Michał Krzykawski (University of Silesia): Animal, Number

2:40-3:00 Tereza Vandrovcová (University of New York in Prague): Moral Evolution Toward the Earthlings: A Sociological Approach

3:00-3:20 Discussion

3:20-3:40 Coffee Break

Panel IV Visual Line I

Chair : Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala)

3:40-4:00 Olivier Vayron (Paris-Sorbonne University): From Frémiet to Kipling: the Orangutan on the Fringe of Mankind

4:00-4:20 Fae Brauer (University of East London): Becoming Simian: Creative Evolution and Interspecies Modernism

4:20-4:40 Discussion

9 February 2017 – French Institute in Prague

French Institute in Prague, Štĕpánská 35, 5^th floor

Panel V Human-Animal History

Chair: Kari Weil

9:00-9:20 Quentin Montagne (University of Rennes 2): Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly ? The Blurring of the Boundary Between Humans and Animals

9:20-9:40 Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala): Visualising Human-Animal Bond during the Flood 1997/2010 in Poland

9:40-10:00 Discussion

10:00-10:20 Coffee Break

Panel VI Visual Lines II

Chair: Clara Royer (CEFRES)

10:20-10:40 Concepción Cortés Zulueta (Autonomous University of Madrid): Cameras that Pose as Animals: Imagining Non-human Animals through the POV Shot

10:40-11:00 Discussion

Lecture

11:20-12:30 Lecture by Éric Baratay (Jean Moulin Lyon III University): Writing Biographies on Animals (in French, with simultaneous translation)

12:30-1:30 Lunch

Panel VII Literary Lines II

Chair: Richard Müller (Czech Academy of Sciences)

1:30-1:50 Anita Jarzyna (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań): Laika’s Lullaby

1:50-2:10 Nicolas Picard (University of Paris III): Hunt Practices: In Quest of Animal Existences

2:10-2:30 Eva Beránková (Charles University, Prague): Animals As Victims and Monsters at the Age of Decadence

2:30-2:50 Discussion

2:50-3:10 Coffee Break

Panel VIII Animals in Pop Culture

Chair: Anne Simon (CNRS / EHESS)

3:10-3:30 Lenka Svobodová, Ondřej Krajtl (Masaryk University): Animal Monster as a Representation of Contemporary Culture

3:30-3:50 Catherine du Toit (University of Stellenbosch): It is not for the Pig to Call the Sheep Pen Dirty. Identity and Animality in Multiethnic Crime Fiction

3:50-4:10 Discussion

Session IX Literary Lines III

Chair: Jan Matonoha (Czech Academy of Sciences)

4:10-5:30 Jana Gridneva (Charles University, Prague): Liminal Creatures: Representing Animals in Ulysses

4:30-4:50 Jonathan Pollock (University of Perpignan): From Becoming-Animal to Being a Beast. Literary Experiments in Crossing the Species Divide

4:50-5:10 Enrico Riccardo Orlando (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice): Between Silence and Effusiveness: Garnett’s Fox and Bacchelli’s Tuna

5:10-5:30 Discussion

Closing

Scientific committee

Éric Baratay (Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University), Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala), Jakub Čapek (Charles University), Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES – Charles University), Anne Simon (CNRS/EHESS), Petr Urban (Czech Academy of Sciences)

See the call for papers here

Ethnology in the 3rd Millenium: Topics, Methods, Challenges

International Conference organised on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Institute of Ethnology SAS under the auspices of the European Commission Representation to the Slovak Republic.

Where: SAS Congress Centre, Smolenice Castle, Slovakia

Organizers: T. Podolinská, G. Kiliánová, M. Vrzgulová, K. Popelková (Bratislava, Slovakia), Z. Uherek (Prague, Czech Republic), G. Bárna (Szeged, Hungary), T. Smolińska (Opole, Poland), C. Royer (CEFRES, Prague, Czech Republic)

See the complete program on the SAS Institute of Ethnology website

Panels:

Thematic and methodological challenges in current ethnology and anthropology
Applied anthropology – How to cope with current social and societal challenges? (migrants, poverty, unemployment, the ageing of Europe, marginalised communities, intercultural communication)
Ritual as a social practice in present-day society (private and public celebrating as a form of establishing personal or group/nation/state identity
Communication and memory: inter-generational transfer (focus on shifting sets of values and behaviours – generation-based focus)
Rumours and their functions in relationships between groups
Cultural heritage
Young Scientist Forum (PhD students´ poster presentation)
V4-Networking Panel (presentation of the recent research of all partners and creating a new platform for further cooperation and networking)

Form and energetics in Aby Warburg’s work

Lara BONNEAU (CEFRES & Université Paris I)
will hold a conference in the frame of the Seminary Collegium historiae artium of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of sciences

Where: Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Husova 4, Prague 1, room 117
Language: English

The work of the Art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929) was elaborated within a philosophical and theoretical corpus that tends to be neglected. His esthetics was part of a more general project : elaborating a Psychology based on the relationships of the different symbolic forms forged by human beings. His method thus oscillates between an extreme attention to the details of the works of Art, and the general ambition to build a « Science of Culture ». We will focus on the notion of « energy » and relate it to the use Warburg makes of the concept of « polarity ». This way, we will try to understand the role philosophical influences played in the developpement of his work.

The Popularization of Entertainment, from the Enlightenment to Modernism: from West to East?

An international conference organized by CEFRES and EUR’ORBEM research center (Paris-Sorbonne University & CNRS).

Where: conference room – Na Florenci 3, building C, 4th floor.
Languages: English, French.

Program

9:30 – Welcome.

Panel 1: From Genres to Practices of Entertainment

Moderator: Stanislaw Fiszer (Lorraine University/ CERCLE)

9:45-10:10 – Olga Granasztói (Debrecen University) – Languages and Genres of Entertainment According to the Hungarian Library’s Sources.

10:10-10:35 – Diana Grgurić & Svjetlana Janković-Paus (Rijeka University) – Mediterranean Culture in Processes of Cultural Mobility – Rijeka’s Canzonette fiuman.

10:35-11 – Discussions.

– Coffee Break –

11-11:25 – Myriam Truel (Lille 3 University/ CECILLE) – Le Sonneur de la cathédrale and Les Marins, or How Russian Lubok Seizes Victor Hugo.

11:25-11:50 – Blanka Hemeliková (Academy of sciences in the Czech Republic) – On Cultural Transfer and Circulation in the Field of Popular Humour and their Limits: on the Material of Czech Satirical Magazines of the 19^thcentury.

11:50-12:15 – Discussions.

– Lunch break –

Panel 2: Popularizing Entertainment in Practice

Moderator: Markéta Theinhardt (Paris-Sorbonne University Paris-Sorbonne / EUR’ORBEM)

2-2:25 – Claire Madl (CEFRES): Reading rooms and Lending Libraries: How They Fostered Reading As an Entertainment Practice.

2:25-2:50 – Veronika Čapská (Charles University) – Whose Laughter? What Subjects? Diversion and Entertainment in the Circles of Silesian Nobility Between Enlightenment and Romanticism.

2h50-3h10 : Discussions.

– Coffee Break –

3:30-3h55 – Dalia Pauliukevičiūtė (Vilnius University) – Melodramatic Reading and Promises of Serial Fiction at the End of 19^th Century Lithuania.

3:55-4:20 – Jakub Machek (Charles University) – Adapting Global Patterns of Sensational Press to Local Audiences: The Examples of Illustrirtes Prager Extrablatt (1879-1882) and Pražský Illustrovaný Kurýr (1893-1918).

4:20-4:40 : Discussions.

– Coffee Break –

5-5:30 – Xavier Galmiche et Clara Royer – A Few Conclusions and a Discussion about the Future.

The Popularization of Entertainment from the Enlightenment to Modernism: From West to East?

An international conference organized by EUR’ORBEM and CEFRES

Where: Maison de la Recherche – 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris.

See the program.

See the summaries.

This international conference aims at shedding light on the circulation of “classical” forms of the entertainment culture prevailing since the Renaissance. It encompasses literary and artistic genres (mock epic, parody, satire, epigram, and so forth; cartoons, drawings, and so forth), media (periodicals, satirical prints, leaflets, books, theatre, cabaret, photography, cinema), and modalities (canonized cultures, fortuitous cultures, fashion phenomena and so forth). Often related to antic sources and updated by Western European cultures (Italian, Spanish, English or French), this culture was usually spread in East Central Europe through the German culture, and turned into homegrown cultural patterns. To what extent were these forms copied, readjusted, travestied and mocked?

We would like to assess this passage: does it pertain to reception in line with the Constance school’s reader-response theory, in which, according to Ingarden and Iser, the reader takes part in creating the object (s)he appropriates? Does it relate to cultural transfers which, according to Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, are not only supported by the circulation of cultural items, but also by cultural practices and a network of institutions and sociabilities (schools and universities, reading circles and libraries, associations)? Or should we rather speak in terms of acculturation of dominant cultures’ patterns, in line with postcolonial studies applied to the reappraisal of the trans-European cultural field?

Scholars can be committed to one of these approaches or seek to accommodate them. In any case, they are invited to apprehend the networks and patterns of circulations through which such forms were spread, and to single out the culture they got confronted with: which was it? Was it a “local”, a “popular” culture intended to remain as a “substratum” as it met with these new forms? Did elite cultures seek legitimacy as they claimed a classical, and even more so an antic legacy, may that have been to stand out from the Western canon? How could such forms spring from the reception or integration of disparate sources? Take the case of Sterne-like (or Diderot-like) self-referential narratives that turn the narrator’s irony into a key feature of the text: are they combined with figures, topics, and rhetorical devices stemming from Eastern and Central European canon, folklore and oral culture? What are the paths through which these patterns were spread? (One can think about the so-called “Russian model”, which became quite influent in return in the second half of the 19th century.)

This international conference is designed to be the first step of a research program on “Cultures of Entertainment: Circulation of Patterns and Practices. Another History of Europe from West to East, from the Enlightenment to the World Wars.”

This program aims at assessing the part played by entertainment within European modern cultures. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the program is based on the exploration of the semantic scope of the French concept of divertissement: a scope comprised between a theological and metaphysical meaning and a more frivolous one. In English though, for lack of a better word, two notions are relevant to better explain the parameters of our inquiry: diversion, as in a worldly standpoint against the Heavens, and entertainment, with its idle connotations and its variety of pleasures. Between these two poles a whole range of synonyms can be embraced (distraction, subversion, leisure, idleness), along with various social strategies, practices and institutions. To what extent do these cultures of divertissement show the other side of European history, and of the great narratives that were made of it?

Our hunch is that such cultures of entertainment have acquainted societies with the transgressing of norms and conventions. Such transgression would have applied to taboo images that were representative of order (as within the institutions of power and control). We believe they initiated social practices, which in turn generated alternative sociabilities. Transgression can oscillate between various figures–irony, mockery, blasphemy–and is a trial for a given society: both a challenge and a touchstone for the contemporaries.

We hope this first conference may give rise to an ambitious research program examining such cultural transfers in its whole European scale. Participants of the conference would be asked to gather within a European research team designed to answer a call for projects (such as ANR or H2020).

Contacts : Xavier Galmiche – Xavier.Galmiche@paris-sorbonne.fr; Clara Royer – clararoyer@cefres.cz.

Actors between Dispositions and Context of Action: how to think the Unity of Social Sciences and Humanities

Prof. Bernard LAHIRE’s public inaugural lecture for CEFRES Platform

Place: Carolinum’s Patriotic Hall

Prof. Bernard Lahire teaches sociology at École Normale Supérieure in Lyon and is the vice-director of the Max Weber Center. He wrote on school failure and success in the working classes, popular appropriation modes of written culture, on the history of illiteracy, on French cultural practices, on life and creation conditions of writers, on Franz Kafka’s work, and on the historical relations between art and domination in the West. He conceptualized a theory of action, both “dispositional” and “contextual”, aiming at specifying and qualifying Bourdieu’s field theory and the related notion of habitus, thanks to his concept of “social game”. Bernard Lahire thus engages in an epistemological reflection on social sciences and their social functions. He also strove to show that social sciences should be taught from primary school upward (L’Esprit sociologique, 2005).

Bernard Lahire published about twenty books, among which:

L’Homme pluriel (Nathan, 1998)

La Culture des individus (La Découverte, 2004)

Franz Kafka. Éléments pour une théorie de la création littéraire (La Découverte, 2010)

Monde pluriel : penser l’unité des sciences sociales (Le Seuil, 2012).

The conference will be held in French, with simultaneous translation in Czech.