A lecture by Sabine Arnaud (Centre Alexandre Koyré, EHESS)
Date: Wednesday 3 May, 6:30-8 pm
Venue: French Institute in Prague, 5th floor, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Language: English
Abstract
The fascination for the invention of a speaking machine lay at the intersection of two important topics for the eighteenth century: articulation as a sign of civilization, and the polemic of man as machine. As the teaching of speech for so-called “deaf and mute” pupils developed, some saw the machine as that which would complete the work of nature and provide mankind with new means of communication. Others went so far as to present the machine as a model that could teach articulation and the workings of the human voice. As such, the speaking machine represented, on the one hand, a source of enchantment and awe: if machines could speak, could language still be considered an exclusively human characteristic? On the other hand, if articulation was mechanical, what distinguished humans from animals? My paper will analyze how eighteenth-century French philosophers, engineers, men of letters, and pedagogues mused upon language acquisition and articulated the relationship between body, machine, and language in relation to their ideas about humanity as such.
Illustration: Poster of Abbé Mical’s Talking Heads (Têtes parlantes)
Lecture by Laure Teulières on “Foreigners from Here: Migrants and Migrations in France through Films from Toulouse Cinematheque
When: Wednesday 26 April, 6:30-8 pm
Venue: French Institute in Prague (5th floor), Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Language: French
An invitation to review a part of the history of immigration in France through a commented screening. The Toulouse Cinematheque, one of the main film archives in France, has led innovative research on migrants and migrations thanks to its collections. “Foreigners from Here” (as a book and as a program) is a way to share our findings with the public. Rather than quoting excerpts of famous films, the lecture will highlight rarely screened documents: some fiction, others news reports, institutional or activist fims, as well as family films.
Check Laure Teulières’s program in Warsaw and Prague in the frame of CEFRES Visegrad Forum on our calendar.
Program
Tuesday 25 April – Warsaw
Immigration in order to repopulated: measures, narratives and migrant social paths in France post-WW1. A workshop around Laure Teulières organized by the Center of French Civilization and Francophone Studies.
Language: English
Wednesday 26 April – Prague
6:30-8:00 PM
“Étrangers d’ici”: migrants et migrations en France à travers des films de la Cinémathèque de Toulouse. A lecture by Laure Teulières organized by CEFRES.
Where: French Institute (5th floor), Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Language: French
Thursday 27 April – Prague
2:00-7:00 PM
Around the migrations in the middle of the 20th century – prospects from the two sides of the Channel. A workshop around Laure Teulières and Simon Gunn.
Organizer: World History Department, FF UK
Where: Hybernská 3, Prague 1 (room 303)
Language: English
Book launch:
“À vous de cœur” André Spire et Otokar Fischer 1922-1938
a collection of texts edited and presented by Marie-Odile Thirouin,
Prague: Museum of Czech Literature (Depozitář/Dokumenty), 2016.
For French and Czech readers.
The book will be presented by Marie-Odile Thirouin (University of Lyon 2) and Marie-Brunette Spire.
An odd story of friendship between two poets that everything seemed to separate: borders, political commitments, and poetic conceptions. Yet, André Spire (1868-1966) and Otokar Fischer (1883-1938) developed in the course of their 16 year-old epistolary correspondence an almost brotherly relationship. Their differences opened up a dialogue that fed their friendship and their reflection on the most pressing issues. Through these warmly felt letters a more unknown dimension of the interwar relationship between Czech and French culture can be uncovered.
Organizers: Museum of Czech Literature (PNP) in cooperation with the French Institute of Prague and CEFRES
Time and Venue: 12.1.2016 at 7:00 pm at the French Institute, Štěpánská 35, 5th floor
Language: French with simultaneous translation in Czech
Read more on the French Institute website.
A conference by Benedetta Zaccarello, new researcher at CEFRES
Language: English
Venue: CEFRES library, Na Florenci 3
Though a philosopher is commonly seen as a thinker, philosophy is with no doubt a matter of writing – if not of literature – as well. No concepts without words, no ideas without a process of self-clarification in vocabulary, codes and style, no theory without an implicit dialogue with a tradition, or a polemic target tout court. These dynamic processes of composition, address and use of the sources, can be revealed through the study of philosophical manuscripts and archives, and understood as examples of living practices of thought as well as tools for exegesis.
A lecture by Laurent Thévenot
(École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
Where: FSV UK – Hollar (Smetanovo nábřeží 6), room 212
While the city gave birth to detached polis and public, it is still built as a space of places which human beings are personally attached to by familiarly dwelling and inhabiting them. Instead of the reductive public/private opposition, we need to explore ways human being engage with their urban environment at various scales, working their way from close familiarity up to commonalities in the plural.
Based on transcultural empirical research – in Europe, Russia and America – which argues for extended comparative categories, the lecture proposes an analytical framework to cope with arts of human cohabitation and urban composition.
A lecture in the frame of the workshop on French Pragmatism and the Renewal of Contemporary Sociology.
