Prague and Its Myths

Prague and Its Myths

Date: 5 April, 2024
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague
Language: English and French

Sponsor institutions

  • CEFRES (Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales)
  • Institute of Sociological Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University
  • The Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Scientific and organising committee

  • Mateusz Chmurski
  • Michèle Baussant
  • Alessandro Testa

Participants

  • Jean Boutan, Eur’ORBEM, CNRS-Sorbonne Université
  • Tomáš Bubík, Palacky University Olomouc
  • Stanislav Holubec, Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Michèle Baussant, ISP CNRS-Paris Nanterre-ENS/CEFRES
  • Richard Müller, Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Marco PASI, University of Amsterdam
  • Jiří Pelán, FF Charles University
  • Alessandro Testa, FSV Charles University

Program

10.00: Introduction

10.15-11.15: Magical Prague

Marco PASI (University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities), Prague: The City of Magic and Occultism
Alessandro TESTA (Charles University, ISS FSV UK/CEFRES), Praga Magica: The Late Modern Evolutions of a Cultural Myth

11.15-11.30: break 

11.45-12.45: Religious Prague

Tomáš BUBíK (Palacký University Olomouc, KSAKA FF UPol), Religious’ Prague : Scenes from selected Public Spaces (a Cemetery, a Square, a Museum)
Michèle BAUSSANT (Institut des sciences sociales du politique, ISP CNRS-Paris Nanterre-ENS/CEFRES), Une Prague des absent.es ? Entre renaissance de l’héritage juif et recréation d’une vie cultu(r)elle

12.45-13.00: Discussion

13.00- 14.30: Lunch break

14.30-16.00: Modern Prague

Jean BOUTAN (Cultures d’Europe orientale, balkanique et médiane, Eur’ORBEM, CNRS-Sorbonne Université), Libuše reine de Cacanie: la postérité d’un mythe d’un autre temps après 1918
Richard MÜLLER (Czech Academy of Sciences, ÚČL AVČR), Kafka, Simmel, and Writing the Metropolitan Mind
Stanislav HOLUBEC (Czech Academy of Sciences, HIÚ AVČR), The Myth of Working Class Prague: Between Communist Sacralization and Postcommunist Forgetting

16.00-16.15: Final discussion 

Abstract

The workshop will explore the various declensions of the idea of Prague in modern and late modern times, with a focus on literature, social practices, religious phenomena, and heritage-making processes. These motifs or tropes are hereby defined as “myths”, borrowing from forms of both high and popular culture. They refer to specific images and traces of the contrasting and multifaceted pasts of Prague and its history. In particular, the city’s religious and esoteric heritage and its multicultural and ‘hinternational’ background, to use Urzidil’s phrase, now find renewed value as symbols of a shared Czech identity and history, with some places dignified as places of memory (“lieux de mémoire”) and others ignored or silenced (“lieux de l’oubli”), and their historical meanings partly recast.

Some of these myths provide an important platform for mass tourism, too, which, somewhat paradoxically, revives Jewish sites, but also other religious or legendary places as romanticised or “Disneyfied” spaces, consumed and partly disconnected from the living environments of memory.

The workshop aims to revisit these mythified pasts and their revival in Prague, with a particular focus on:

  • The myth of “Praga magica” the mystic city
  • The myth of Prague the “Traumreich” (Kafka, Meyrink, Ajvaz, Kubin, Crawford, etc.)
  • The myth of Prague the Jewish city
  • The myth of Prague the city of confrontation between Catholicism and its dissidents
  • The myth of Prague the multicultural and cosmopolitan city
  • The myth of Prague as a literary trope
  • The myth of Prague the post-communist city of mass tourism

What cultural trends have led to the valorisation of a mystical and esoteric past in a country that claims to be the most atheist in Europe? Or of a Jewish past in a place where there are very few Jews? Or of a cosmopolitanism that was partly eradicated after the Second World War? Using Ripellino’s renowned book Praga Magica, which was published 50 years ago, at the peak of the Soviet-imposed normalizace, as a starting point, we intend to revisit the often ambivalent social and cultural dynamics and transformations of Prague as reflected in literature, art, identity politics, old and new forms of religiosity and spirituality, and heritage making. We intend to explore these aspects and dynamics against the backdrop of the city’s communist past and neoliberal present.

Ancient Kings – Contemporary Politics

Ancient Kings – Contemporary Politics. Medievalism in Central and Eastern Europe

A workshop organized and supported by CEFRES, in collaboration with the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Leipzig Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe (GWZO).

Convenors : Olga Kalashnikova (CEU / CEFRES), Jan Kremer  (PedF UK, CEFRES associate)

Date : March 20, 2024
Location  : CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1, and online. To register
Language : English
Contacts : Olga Kalashnikova, kalashnikova_olga@phd.ceu.edu; Jan Kremer, kremer@flu.cas.cz

Program

9:00 – 9:10 Greeting word by Mateusz Chmurski (CEFRES) and Václav Žůrek (GWZO Prague)

9:10 – 9:20 Introduction by the organizers (Jan Kremer, Olga Kalashnikova)

9:30 – 10:20 Keynote lecture: Dina Khapaeva, Political Neomedievalism in Putin’s Russia and Beyond

10:20 – 10:30 Coffee break

10:30 – 11:50 First Session

Cordelia Heß, Are Vikings Still a Thing? Popular and Far Right Use of the Nordic Middle Ages

Christoph Dartmann, Uses of the Middle Ages by the German ‘Alt Right’ in the 21st c.

Karin Reichenbach, Popular Paganism and Malicious Medievalism. Early Medieval Reenactment as Part of Radical Right-Wing Subculture in Central Europe

11:50 – 12:00 Coffee break

12:00 – 13:20 Second Session

Ferenc Kanyó, Pseudohistorical Theories about Medieval Hungary in the Services of the goverment

Tatyjana Szafonova, The Hungarian Big Kurultaj: Diplomatic Negotiations amid Medieval Reenactments

Gábor Klaniczay, Orbán Descendant of Attila? The Theory of Hun-Hungarian Kinship Reloaded

13:20 – 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 – 15:00 Third Session

Martin Šorm, “New Neutral”? Political Medievalism in Contemporary Czechia

Matej Harvát, Great-Moravian Tradition as an Anti-Progressive Banal Medievalism in Slovak Contemporary Public Discourse

15:00 – 15:20 Coffee break

15:20 – 16:40 Fourth Session

Cristian-Nicolae Gaspar, In the Long Shadow of National Communism: Traditions of Officially-sponsored Political Medievalism in Romania

Gustavs Strenga, Is There no Contemporary Political Medievalism in the Baltics? Baltic Medieval Legacy between Oblivion, Consumerism and Geopolitics

Nikita Bogachev, Neo-medievalism, Fantasy Literature, and Chronopolitics in Modern Russia

16:40 – 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 Conclusion

Abstract

Continue reading Ancient Kings – Contemporary Politics

Workshop: Care of the habitat

Care of the Habitat. Between Infrastructure Maintenance and Attention to Living Beings

Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague
Date: 19–20 October 2023
Language: English

Organized by :

CEFRES (UMIFRE 13, UAR 3138, CNRS-MAEE), Prague

Scientific Committee :
Chloé Mondémé (Triangle, CNRS / CEFRES)
Petr Gibas (Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences / CEFRES)
Mateusz Chmurski (CEFRES)
Ange Pottin (University of Vienna / CEFRES)

Please see the program here below and download the program here.

Continue reading Workshop: Care of the habitat

In the interstices of European citizenship (2)

In the interstices of European citizenship. The transnational political mobilization of intra-European migrants in the European Union. II.

The multidisciplinary research workshop is organised in partnership between the Marc Bloch Centre in Berlin and CEFRES in Prague. It aims to bring together specialists in migration, European citizenship and transnational political practices to discuss the question of the ordinary relations of intra-European migrants to the policies of diaspora implemented, according to very different modalities, by their country of origin.

Session 2 (22.06.2022): CEFRES, Na Florenci 3 – Prague

When: Wednesday 22nd June, 14:30–18:30
Where: CEFRES Library, Prague & online on Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85421454854
Language: English
Organised by:
CEFRES,
 Prague                                                                                                                     Cédric Pellen (University of Strasbourg/Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin)

You can download the updated program here.
See the description & program below.

Continue reading In the interstices of European citizenship (2)

In the interstices of European citizenship (1)

In the interstices of European citizenship. Intra-European migrants and national diaspora policies in the European Union. I.

The multidisciplinary research workshop is organised in partnership between the Marc Bloch Centre in Berlin and CEFRES in Prague. It aims to bring together specialists in migration, European citizenship and transnational political practices to discuss the question of the ordinary relations of intra-European migrants to the policies of diaspora implemented, according to very different modalities, by their country of origin.

Session I (15.06.2022): Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191 – Berlin

When: Wednesday 15th June, 14:30–18:00
Where: Salle Germaine TillionCentre Marc Bloch, Berlin & online on Zoom : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88064656797
Language: English
Organised by:
Cédric Pellen (University of Strasbourg/Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin)                                                                                                           CEFRES, Prague

You can download the updated program here.
See the description & program below.

Continue reading In the interstices of European citizenship (1)

The EU Environmental Policy

The EU Environmental Policy under the French and Czech Presidencies of the Council of the European Union


International Workshop c
o-organized by Palacký University, Olomouc (CZ), University Clermont Auvergne, and CEFRES, under the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union

When: Friday 20th May, 9:0015:40
Where: Faculty of Law, Palacký University, Olomouc & online : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89812295559
Language: English
Organisation:
Arthur Thevenet
(Clermont Auvergne University)
Valentin Bayeh
(Clermont Auvergne University)

See the program below.

Continue reading The EU Environmental Policy