“Grand Entretien” with Boris Cyrulnik

“Grand entretien” with Boris Cyrulnik

This “grand entretien” is organized in partnership with the French Institute in Prague and the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Date: Wednesday, June 12, 2024, at 6:00 PM
Location: French Institute in Prague, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Langue: French with simultaneous translation into Czech
Moderator: Alice KOUBOVÁ (Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Abstract

Since the advent of neuroimaging, it has become evident that environmental deficiencies lead to brain dysfunction. When the environment is impoverished, the corresponding brain areas atrophy, causing individuals to perceive the world differently, often as hostile. All mammals can suffer from such disrupted development.

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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.

“Grand entretien” with Antoine Compagnon. “If you don’t innovate, you die”

Grand entretien with Antoine Compagnon : « If you don’t innovate, you die »

CEFRES and the French Institute in Prague invited Antoine Compagnon to give a “Grand Entretien” on the occasion of his participation in the conference Proustian perspectives organized by the Departement of Czech and Comparative Literature and the Department of Romance studies of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University (ÚČLK & ÚRS FF UK) in partnership with CEFRES.

Where: French Institute in Prague
When
: Wednesday, March 22nd 2023, 6pm
Language: Czech and French (simultaneous interpretation)
Contact 
: cefres[@]cefres.cz

Antoine Compagnon (Collège de France / Académie française)
Modération: Eva Voldřichová-Beránková (UK)

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“Grand Entretien” with Ghassan Hage: Bourdieu and the Politics of Viability

On the occasion of the publication, in Czech language, of Pierre Bourdieu’s Pascalian Meditations (Karolinum Press; translated by  Jan Petříček) and within a series of workshops dedicated to Pierre Bourdieu’s legacy organized by CEFRES, Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Professor Ghassan HAGE will give a “Grand Entretien” at the French Institute in Prague.

Date: Thursday 1 December 2022, 17:00
Location: French Institute in Prague, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Organizers: CEFRES in partnership with the French Institute in Prague
Language: English
Moderation : Yasar Abu Ghosh (Faculty of Humanities, Charles Universities)

Ghassan Hage is a Lebanese-Australian anthropologist, professor at the University of Melbourne and currently visiting professor at Max Planck Institute in Halle. After graduating at Macquarie University and the University of Nice, he collaborated with Pierre Bourdieu at EHESS.

Specialized in comparative studies on nationalism, racism and multiculturalism, he devoted his fieldwork to Libanese diaspora, Middle East and Australia, and is renowned for his analyses of the construction of white populations’ social and cultural identity.
His conceptual work on the political dimension of critical sociology draws on Bourdieu’s oeuvre.

Among his publications:

  • The Diasporic Condition, University of Chicago Press, 2021.
  • Decay, Duke University Press, 2021.
  • Is Racism an Environmental Threat?, Polity Press, 2017.
  • Alter-Politics: Critical Anthropology and the Radical Imagination. Melbourne University Press,  2015.
  • White Nation: fantasies of White supremacy in a multicultural society, Routledge, 1998.

A Golden Rhinoceros. Africa in the Middle Ages

On the occasion of the publication, in Czech, of the Golden Rhinoceros, and his invitation by the French Institute in Prague and Charles University in partnership with CEFRES, François-Xavier FAUVELLE presents his book at the French Institute in Prague.

Where: French Institute in Prague, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Date: Wednesday 12 October 2022, at 6 pm
Language: in French with simultaneous translation into Czech
Organizers: CEFRES, French Institute in Prague, Charles University

The discussion will be moderated by Irena Jirků, journalist.

Presentation
The description of a city with twelve mosques in an Arabic story about the Sahel regions; a letter from a Jewish merchant about a caravan from the “Land of the Blacks”; the discovery, in the middle of the Sahara, of shells from the Indian Ocean; the effigy of a Malian king on a Catalan map; the ruins of cities built of salt and coral blocks. And gold: a gold shield in a tomb in Senegal; gold coins found in a Christian monastery in Ethiopia; a golden rhinoceros looted and found in South Africa. All these documents testify to the diversity and richness of Africa in the Middle Ages. In his book Le Rhinocéros d’or, François-Xavier Fauvelle reconstructs, with the help of these fragments, a “stained glass window” that reveals forgotten kingdoms, from the savannah empires of West Africa to the coastal principalities of Kenya and Tanzania. An Africa that participates in the great trade with the Islamic world, India and China, reexamining the places and actors of a global Middle Ages.

François-Xavier Fauvelle is professor at Collège de France in Paris, first holder of the chair entitled History and archeology of African worlds. He has taught at Princeton University, led international research programs in South Africa, Ethiopia and Morocco. Among more than twenty books translated into a dozen of languages, he is the author of A Golden Rhinoceros. Histories of African Middle Ages that has been published in Czech in 2021: Zlatý nosorožec: příběhy o africkém středověku (Karolinum, 2021, transl. Alena Lhotová, Helena Beguivinová).