Geopolitics of sisterhood.
Framing global feminism within the UN women’s conferences (1975–1995)

Fourth session of the 2023–2024 CEFRES Francophone Interdisciplinary Seminar The map and the border
This year, we would like to start by questioning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory), in short, through the interdisciplinarity of our perspectives, to question the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Dates: Friday, February 23rd, 10–11.30 am
Language: French

Speaker: Ioana CÎRSTOCEA, CNRS / CEFRES
Discussant: Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė (Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Abstract Continue reading Geopolitics of sisterhood →

Chisinau: The Making of a Neoliberal City.
Identities, Memories and Aspirations after the post-Socialist Transformation

3rd session of CEFRES in-house seminar
Through the presentation of works in progress, CEFRES’s Seminar aims at raising and discussing issues about methods, approaches or concepts, in a multidisciplinary spirit, allowing everyone to confront her or his own perspectives with the research presented.

Location: CEFRES Library
Date: Tuesday, 6th of February, 2024
Language: English
Contact / To register: cefres[@]cefres.cz
Discussant: Valeriya Korablyova (CEFRES / Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University)

Kateřina Fuksová (CEFRES / Charles University)

Continue reading Chisinau: The Making of a Neoliberal City →

Cartography and art history in dialogue. Reflections on the functions of maps in Warburgian iconology

Seventh session of the 2023-2024 CEFRES Francophone Interdisciplinary Seminar The map and the border
In 2023, we would like to start by beginning by questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory), in short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, to question the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Dates: Friday, June 14th, 10 – 11.30 am
Language: French

Speaker : Lara BONNEAU, Institute of Philosophy of Czech Academy of Sciences (FLÚ – AV ČR), associate researcher at CEFRES
Discussant : Danièle COHN, Université Paris 1

Has the tendency towards ornamentation in the graphic gesture been an obstacle to the scientific development of cartography? In other words, has cartography had to liberate itself from the artistic dimension, which is too imbued with a sensitive end emotional life, to become a planimetric abstraction? These were central questions for the German art historian Aby Warburg, who saw the cartographic gesture as one of the ways of distancing oneself psychologically from the senses. By giving contours to what is presented as moving, changing, even chaotic in perceptual experience, by assigning it a place within an order (kosmos), and by presenting it in space rather than in time, mapping has a psychological function: it gives the subject points which help him to anchor himself and distance himself from reality. Nevertheless, as the demon-populated astrological natal charts demonstrate, cartography cannot totally abolish the dimensions of fear and desire of our relationship with the world and the universe. Maps have a sensitive “cosmetic” dimension, which is perhaps not directly opposed to the ambition to bring cosmic order. In order to study how these demons moved historically, providing lasting fertile ground for the iconographic tradition as much as for scientific attempts to conquer the space of thought, Aby Warburg was led to draw… maps. Maps of the migratory routes of motifs and styles, of the “formules of pathos” from Athens to Babylon, from Babylon to Southern and the Northern Europe. Drawing in particular on the recent work od Phillipe Despoix (2023), we shall try to present the function of cartography in Warburgian iconology.

From Beauty to Duty: Urban Aesthetic Environmentalism in the Late 19^th Century

2nd session of CEFRES in-house seminar
Through the presentation of works in progress, CEFRES’s Seminar aims at raising and discussing issues about methods, approaches or concepts, in a multidisciplinary spirit, allowing everyone to confront her or his own perspectives with the research presented.

Location: CEFRES Library
Date: Tuesday, 7th of November
Language: English
Contact / To register: cefres[@]cefres.cz
Discussant: Stanislav Holubec (Institut of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Júlia Čížová (CEFRES / Slovak Academy of Sciences)

Continue reading Urban Aesthetic Environmentalism in the Late 19th Century →

A “Common Memory” of Yugoslav Wars?
The Case of Four Female Writers from the Balkan Diasporas

1st session of CEFRES in-house seminar
Through the presentation of works in progress, CEFRES’s Seminar aims at raising and discussing issues about methods, approaches or concepts, in a multidisciplinary spirit, allowing everyone to confront her or his own perspectives with the research presented.

Location: CEFRES Library
Date: Tuesday, 10th of October
Language: English
Contact / To register: cefres[@]cefres.cz

Discussant: Chiara Mengozzi (Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Associate at CEFRES)

Lola Sinoimeri (CEFRES / Université Paris 8 / Sorbonne University)

Abstract

My thesis explores the links between self-writing and collective experiences – those of war, immigration, diaspora and gender violence. The question of the “common” or the “we” that these literatures bring into existence across borders is therefore central to my research. After drawing up an overview of the different types of “we” experienced and/or reappropriated in post-socialist, post-Yugoslav and migratory contexts, I will show how a “common memory” can be created in the works of immigrant women authors dealing with the wars in Yugoslavia. In particular, I will be exploring the deconstruction of a ‘national memory’ (Assmann 2006), the representation of diasporic communities, the treatment of silences and the links between fictional and documentary writing.