International Workshop

Venue: Prague. Online.
Date: November 6, 2020
Organizer: Jakub Střelec (FSV UK/CEFRES)
Partner institutions: CEFRES, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Collegium Carolinum – Research Institute for the History of the Czech Lands and Slovakia

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82321134974?pwd=L09iMWF0VzJsOVFUUDJxMDZPc3Zidz09 
(823 2113 4974)
Password: 111784
Streaming: https://www.facebook.com/cefres

This workshop aims to bring together researchers dealing with the history of psy-sciences in communist Europe. The main aim is to (1) discuss contemporary approaches, topics and themes in current research about the role of psy-sciences in the communist states of the Eastern Bloc and to (2) outline possible questions and issues relevant for future research in this field.

Read the call for contributions.

Program:

9.00     Conference Opening

Producing Psy-expertise in the Eastern Bloc

Chair: Martin Schulze Wessel (Collegium Carolinum)

9:30     Ana Antic (University of Copenhagen)
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Beyond the Hospital in Socialist Yugoslavia

9:50     Melinda Kovai (Eötvös Lorand University)
From a Movement to the Privatization of Psychotherapy – Group Psychotherapy in Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s

10:10     Sarah Marks (Birkbeck, University of London)
From Pavlov’s Dogs to Cybernetic Tortoises: The Psy-Professions and the New Science of Cybernetics in Communist Czechoslovakia

10.30 – 11.15     Discussion

11.15 – 11.30     Break

 

Defining (Ab)normality

Chair: Adéla Gjuričová (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences)

11:30     Cristiane Brenner (Collegium Carolinum)
Judging the Anti-Socialist Element: The Role of Psychiatric Experts in Trials Against “Parasitic Women” in Socialist Czechoslovakia

11:50     Kate Davison (University of Melbourne)
From Prague to Sydney: Rethinking Psychiatry, Sexology and ‘Sexpertise’ in the Cold War

12:10     Jakub Střelec (Charles University in Prague)
Psychopaths as ‘New Danger‘ to the Socialist Society. Forensic Psychiatry, Criminology and Crime in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s

12:30 – 13:15     Discussion

13:15 – 14:15     Lunch break

 

Shaping the ‚Socialist Self’

Chair: Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)

14:15     Verena Lehmbrock (Erfurt University)
Psychological Leadership Training in East Germany – A Transnational Technology of the Self?

14:35     Frank Henschel (Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel)
Bowlby vs KPČ: Knowledge Transfer, Psychology and the System of State Childcare in Socialist Czechoslovakia

14:55     Lisa Dittrich (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
Partnership and the Socialist Personality: Marital Coping Strategies in the GDR between Empowerment and Subjection

15:15 – 16:00     Discussion

16:00 – 16:30     Closing remarks

International Workshop 

Date & Venue: 26^th -27^th February 2020, Institute of  Art History, CEFRES, Lower Hall, Prague
Organizers: Institute of Art History (CAS) & CEFRES
In partnership with: Institute of Contemporary History (CAS), Université Paris-Nanterre, within the Strategy AV21 framework
Language: English

This international workshop examines the legacy of worker photography as museum object, cultural heritage and history in East-Central Europe from 1945 until today. How was worker photography preserved, historized, and mediated in East- Central European museums?

Program

Wednesday 26 February 2020
Institute of Art History, Husova 4, Prague 1

16.30-17.30 Keynote Lecture
Christian Joschke (Université Paris-Nanterre, Paris)
“How German Communists Invented French Radical Photography. Regards and Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (1928-1936)”

17.30 Discussion

Thursday 27 February 2020
CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1

9.45-10.00 Registration

10.00-10.30 Welcome and Introduction
Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES, Prague)
Petra Trnková (PHRC, De Montfort University, Leicester / Photography Research Centre, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
Fedora Parkmann (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences / CEFRES, Prague)

Panel 1: Photographs in Changing Contexts
Chair: Christian Joschke (Université Paris-Nanterre)

10.30-11.00
Lucia Almášiová (Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava).
“From Amateur Social Criticism to Institutional Art” 

11.00-11.30
Katalin Bognár (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest)
“Uses of Interwar Worker Photographs in post-1945 Hungarian Public Collections”

11.30-11.45 Coffee break

11.45-12.15
Fedora Parkmann (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences / CEFRES, Prague)
“The Family Photographs of Antonín Zápotocký: between Private and Public Memory”

12.15-12.45
Anna Hejmová (Arts and Theatre Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences / Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague)
Continuity and Discontinuity in the Iconology of Physical Culture Photography in the Interwar and Postwar Period

12.45-13.00 Discussion

13.00-14.30 Lunch break

Panel 2: Institutional Practices
Chair: Petra Trnková (PHRC, De Montfort University, Leicester / Photography Research Centre, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)

14.30-15.00
Andreas Ludwig (Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam)
“Contemporary Collecting in History Museums: Material Evidence or Cultural Memory as Concurring Conceptions – GDR, Sweden, West-Germany”

15.00-15.30
Tomáš Kavka (National Museum, Prague) – Čeněk Pýcha (Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Prague)
“Museum of the Working Class Movement for the 21^st Century”

15.30-16.00
Françoise Mayer (Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier).
“Communism in Museum: What Kind of Challenge?”

16.00-16.15 Discussion and Conclusion

The workshop is supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences within the Strategy AV21 framework, the CEFRES in Prague and Université Paris-Nanterre (HAR EA 4414).

Workshop with Tanya Luhrmann

Date: 1st November 2019, 9:00-18:30
Venue: CEFRES Library
Organizers: Charles University (Institute of sociological studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences), Barbora Spalová in collaboration with CEFRES
Language: English

The workshop “GODTalks” is intended for researchers and students who would like to consult their work with Tanya Luhrmann.

Program

10:00-11:00: Zdeněk Konopásek, Charles University Prague
Religion in action: How private apparitions may become true/real

11:15-12:15: Marek Liška, Charles University Prague
How does the Relationship with God come to being in the Christian Community?

12:30-13:30: Samuel Dolbeau, UC Louwain / EHESS Paris
Translating God´s closeness into a catholic language: The case study of a French catholic charismaic community

13:30-15:00 Lunch break

15:00-16:00: Taťána Bužeková, Comenius University in Bratislava
Spirituality, purity and health: What is “right” and what is “wrong” about altered states of consciousness

16:15-17:15: Jan Tesárek, Charles university of Prague
Messengers of Light: Semiotics of Multiple Subjectivities in Czech Angelic Spirituality

17:30-18:30: Joanna Lipinska, University of Warsaw
Transplanting Wicca – an anthropological perspective on how the Polish Wicca develops and does it differ from its British origin?

……………………………………………………………..

Tanya Marie Luhrmann (Watkins Professor in the Anthropology Department at Stanford University). Her work focuses on the edge experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. She uses a combination of ethnographic and experimental methods to understand the phenomenology of unusual sensory experiences. Her very appreciated books are Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (1989); When God Talks Back: Understanding the American evangelical relationship with God (2012); Our Most Troubling Madness: Schizophrenia and Culture (2016) and others.

During her stay in Prague, she will also deliver a lecture “How Gods (and God) Become Real for Men: Drives a Feeling of Presence”, on 31st October 2019 at 18:30 at Hollar, FSV UK (Smetanovo nábřeží. 6, room 4).

Workshop

Venue:  CAS, “Lower Hall” (Na Florenci 3, Prague 1)
Date: 10-11 September 2019
Organizers: Institute of Ethnology and Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences and CEFRES, with the support of the program “Strategy AV21”
Language: English

Check the program of the workshop here.

Argumentary

In 2018, Polish authorities announced a plan to build one of Europe’s longest fences to protect the country’s Eastern border from unwanted migrants and a highly contagious disease they might be carrying. At the first glance, the plan is reminiscent of president Trump’s design for a wall along the US Mexican border, or the already built Hungarian fence at the Serbian and Croatian borders. However, there is an important difference: the disease that Polish and other European authorities fear is African Swine Fever (ASF), and the unwanted migrants are not humans but wild boars from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The Polish plan has since been dropped, yet similar fences, such as one between Denmark and Germany, are already being built. It seems that the “Trojan boar”, the feared virus carrier, is contributing toward the resurrection of the old-new borders just as human refugees have, eroding the Schengen space of free movement. This account of foreign boars, biosecurity, and border walls is just one example of the interesting parallels between human and nonhuman animal movement and how the state organises in response.

Noting the unfolding conceptual exchange between mobility studies and animal studies, the objective of this workshop is to further the dialogue and bring together scholars of human migration and non-human animal migration. At the intersection of these two fields of study we expect a range of engaging questions to emerge. Migration often involves the destabilisation of established orders of belonging and the triggering of processes of othering and protectionism. What are the potential empirical and analytical synergies between studying the movement of people and that of non-human animals across geophysical, symbolic and biopolitical borders? In many contexts, human migrants are derogatively described with the use of animal metaphors (e.g. as cockroaches) while animals, often equally derogatively, are described with the human qualifiers (e.g. as invaders). What should we make out of those analogies? Can we still speak about the flow of  “metaphors” between accounts of human and non-human migration if we refuse to see the two as belonging to ontologically disparate domains (one exclusively human, the other exclusively non-human)?

We invite participants to share empirical research on, and conceptualizations of, migration in relationally complex multispecies world. Focusing on ongoing, historical and anticipated movements of humans and non- human animals we wish to explore the changing meaning and analytical utility of such concepts as belonging, precarity, (bio)security, prosperity, invasiveness, climate refugees, ecosystem, native, nation or state.

You can download the abstracts here.

Workshop

Date: 20 and 21 May 2019
Place: Academic Conference Center (AKC, Husova 4a,
Prague 1) et Faculté des Lettres de l’Université Charles, salle 104 (FF UK, náměstí Jana Palacha 2, Prague 1)
Organized by: Martin Pjecha (CEU / CEFRES)
Organized in partnership with: CEFRES, Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS), Central European University (CEU)
Language: English

Keynote speakers

• Phillip Haberkern (Boston University) : When did Christians Become Revolutionary? A Reflection on Hannah Arendt
  
• Matthias Riedl (Central European University, Budapest) Apocalyptic Platonism: The Thought of Thomas Müntzer

Report to the call for contributions.

20th May 2019

 

10:00 – Introductory comments

10:30-12:00 – Panel 1: Urban and noble rebellion in the 17^th century

• Rik Sowden (University of Birmingham): Religion and rebellion in Nottingham during the British Civil wars – (discussant: Vladimír Urbánek)
• Márton Zászkaliczky (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Literary Studies, Budapest): Calvinist Political Theology in the Bocskai Rebellion (1604-1606) – (discussant: Vladimír Urbánek)

12:00-13:00 – Lunch

13:00-14:20 – Panel 2: 20^th century interpretations

• Behrang Pourhosseini (University Paris 8): From Christian Victimary Politics to Shi’ite Messianism : A Debate around the Iranian Revolution – (discussant: Thomas C. Mercier)
  
• Giacomo Maria Arrigo (KU Leuwen/University of Calabria): Gnosticism and Revolution: Towards an Explanatory Pattern – (discussant: Matthias Riedl)

14:20-14:40 – Coffee break

14:40-16:00 – Panel 3: Imperial and Soviet Russia

• Anastasia Papushina (CEU, Budapest): Martyrs and heroes: revisiting religious patterns in revolutionary times – (discussant: Hanuš Nykl)
• Daniel García Augusto Porras (Universitat Ramon Llull (Barcelona)/Universidad Pontificia Comillas ):  Revolution as political religion in Russia: Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and its interpreters in Russian religious thought – (discussant: Hanuš Nykl)

16:00-16:20 – Coffee break

16:30-18:00 – Keynote 1

• Matthias Riedl (CEU, Budapest): Apocalyptic Platonism: The Thought of Thomas Müntzer
  

21st May 2019 

 

10:00-11:20 – Panel 4: The French Revolution

• Mathias Sonnleithner (MLU, Halle-Wittenberg) : Robespierre’s Belief to Be God’s Chosen – A Key Element of the Political Theology of the Terror – (discussant: Jakub Štofaník)
• Amirpash Tavakkoli (EHESS, Paris) : French revolution, a Christian reading – (discussant: Jakub Štofaník)

11:20-11:50 – coffee break

11:50-13:10 – Panel 5: Violence and bliss in medieval Bohemia

• Pavlína Cermanová (CMS, Prague): The Theology of Hussite Innocence – (discussant: Phillip Haberkern)
• Martin Pjecha (CEU, Budapest/CEFRES, Prague): “Cosmic” revolution in radical Hussitism – (discussant: Phillip Haberkern)

13:10-14:30 – Lunch

14:30-16:30 – Panel 6: Intellectual transfers and comparisons in early modernity

• Sam Gilchrist Hall (Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Budapest): “But I do not doubt the people”: Thomas Müntzer and King Lear – (discussant: Matthias Riedl)
• Luke Collison (Kingston University London): Hobbes and ‘Religion’ on the Threshold of Modernity – (discussant: Matthias Riedl)
• Benjamin Heidenreich (University of Würzburg): Huldrich Zwingli´s influence on the “Peasants´ War” of 1525 – (discussant: Phillip Haberkern)

16:30-16:50 – Coffee break

17:30-19:00 – Keynote 2

• Phillip Haberkern (Boston University): When did Christians Become Revolutionary? A Reflection on Hannah Arendt
  FF UK, salle 104 (náměstí Jana Palacha 2, Prague 1)

19:00 – Closing remarks