War in Ukraine and exile

The scientific workshop “War in Ukraine and exile” will bring together European researchers to present the preliminary results of their interviews and observations conducted after 24 February 2022 among exiles from three countries: Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The presentations of papers will address the following themes: trajectories of exiles (mobilised networks, successive displacements), exile experiences (emotions, intimacy), forms of politicisation (ordinary and institutional), interactions between different exiled communities, relations between exiles and host societies/states, relations with relatives left at home, representations and imaginaries associated with the war and its consequences. The workshop is organised in the framework of the BIELEXIL research project. The latter is financed by the flash grant dedicated to Ukraine from the French Collaborative Institute on Migration (Institut Convergences Migrations, ICM).

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Roundtable: “The Politicization of Xenophobia in Transatlantic Contexts”

This roundtable discussion takes place within a conference organized by the Prague Forum for Romani Histories.

Today, many people have become resigned to the fact that xenophobia is a central feature of the transatlantic political landscape. From the United States to France to Eastern Europe, political movements centered on the rejection of “the other” (immigrants; racial and sexual minorities, and so-called “internal enemies”) have garnered mass followings and have entered governments that were until recently seen as immune to the sorts of populism that marked the first half of the twentieth century. The roundtable will sum up a conference organized by the Prague Forum for Romani Histories (18-19 May, Villa Lanna) where participants will discuss politicized xenophobia in the past and today. How, we ask, did past xenophobic movements speak to each other across the Atlantic in the past centuries? How have European and American xenophobia and racism in the past informed movements today? What was and is the role of historical memory in the politics of xenophobia? What are the benefits and risks of drawing parallels between the past xenophobic movements and present ones?

Date: Friday 19th of May 2023, 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Location: CEFRES Library
Organizers: the Prague Forum for Romani Histories (at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences) in partnership with University of Alabama at Birmingham and Romani Studies Program at the CEU in Vienna
Language: English
Convenors: Jonathan Wiesen (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Angéla Kóczé (Romani Studies Program at the Central European University in Vienna), Kateřina Čapková (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences).
Chair: Angéla Kóczé
Speakers: Ann Ostendor, Jonathan Wiesen and Vita Zalar

18 May

1:30 p.m. WELCOME

1:45 – 3:15 p.m.  KEYNOTE SESSION
Chair: Kateřina Čapková
Angéla Kóczé: Anti-Roma Racism as a Socio-Historical Consensus: 2008–2009 Neo-Nazi Murders of Roma in Hungary
Jonathan Wiesen: US Racial Violence in the German Imaginary

Break: 3:15 –3:45 p.m.

3:45-5:30 p.m. PANEL I: Transnational Xenophobia
Chair: Jonathan Wiesen
Ann Ostendorf: Anti-Romani Political Racism in the Nineteenth Century United States
Tayla Myree: Remembrance to Reparations: A Study of the Strategies towards the Recognition of Atrocities by Roma and African Americans
Tina Magazzini: Racism or Xenophobia? Tracing the Category-making of Racialized Minorities across the Atlantic and their Consequences

Dinner: 6:00 p.m.

19 May

9:00 – 11:15 a.m. PANEL II: The Holocaust and Holocaust Memory
Chair: Helena Sadílková
Christopher Molnar: Holocaust Memory, Racism, and the Roma Refugee Panic in Reunified Germany
Cristina Teodora Stoica: The Politics of Antiziganim and its shaping of Romania’s Holocaust Historical Memory
Mariana Sabino Salazar: The Politics of Memory: Romanies in Mexican and Brazilian Holocaust Museums
Justyna Matkowska: Pogroms on Roma and Sinti in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II

Break: 11:15-11:45 a.m.

11:45 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. PANEL III: Discrimination and its Legacies
Chair: Martin Fottta
Sunnie Rucker-Chang:The Enduring Impact of School Segregation in the United States and Europe
Michelle Kahn: USA From Nebraska to Berlin, Zagreb, and Beyond: How American Neo-Nazis Shaped the European Far-Right (1970s-1990s)
Dezso Mate: Roma LGBTI Movement – The Politics of Alliance

5:00-6:30 p.m. – Roundtable Discussion hosted by CEFRES, Na Florenci 3
The Politicization of Xenophobia in Transatlantic Contexts
Chair: Angéla Kóczé
Speakers: Ann Ostendor, Jonathan Wiesen and Vita Zalar

See the website of the conference.

Ivan Blatný, Langston Hughes: Translation, Transnationality, and the Blues

What were the intertextual relationships between the African American poet Langston Hughes and the Czech poet Ivan Blatný? How did Blatný employ English in his poetry, how did Hughes use references to Czechoslovakia? How do poets and poems move across languages and power blocs and what were other literary relationships between the Czech lands and the African American cultural community? And what roles does translation play here? These are some of the questions we will be discussing with Julie Hansen, Charles Sabatos, and Justin Quinn. The discussion, co-organized by the Institute of Czech Literature and CEFRES, will take place in English (or rather, it will move between English and Czech) and will be moderated by Františka Schormová. Continue reading Ivan Blatný, Langston Hughes: Translation, Transnationality, and the Blues

A French Perspective on Czech History. Svět knihy 2023

Presentation of the book: Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux Proměny společnosti ve střední Evropě v 17. a 18. století. Nakl. Karolinum, 2023 organized by the French Institute in Prague, Karolinum Publishing and CEFRES.

With the participation of the auteur, the scientific editors and the translator of the book.

  • Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux (EHESS), the author
  • Ivana Čornejová (Charles University), scientific editor
  • Zdeněk Hojda (Charles University), Scientific editor and moderator
  • Adéla Stříbrná (PhD student at Charles University & Université Paris-Nanterre), translator

When: Friday 12 May 2023, 3 pm
Where: Svět knihy, Výstaviště, Prague 7, Hall “Mluvného slova”
Langauge: Czech

Continue reading A French Perspective on Czech History. Svět knihy 2023

“Imagined territory” and community: the construction and uses of the nation in 14th-century Bohemia and Brabant

Second session of the CEFRES 2023 Francophone Interdisciplinary Seminar. The map and the border
In 2023, we would like to start 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, May 12th, 10 am – 11.30 am.
Language: french

Eloïse ADDE (CEU), discussant Jan ZDICHYNEC (Charles University)

Territory is one of the fundamental markers defining a nation; it is even an essential support of it, alongside the State and the population to which it is attached. Often corresponding to natural phenomena that can be identified spatially, such as mountain ridges or river lines, the territory is generally taken for granted and is therefore rarely questioned. Nevertheless, like the nation it materialises, it is a construction, a production that is fluid and changing depending on the uses that are made of it, and its display is much more contingent than it seems. Territory is closely linked to political practice; it is what unifies a “political community”, but the latter also gives it its shape. In this communication, Eloïse Adde will decipher the function of territory and the way it was perceived and constructed within two projects aimed at founding and consolidating the nation in Bohemia and Brabant in the early 14th century.

 

See the complete program of the seminar here.

The rhetoric of Good Friday sermons in 14th-century Bohemia

The rhetoric of Good Friday sermons in 14th-century Bohemia: Defining norms, commonplaces, and discrepancies

8th session of CEFRES in-house seminar 2022-2023.
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 and online
Date
: Tuesday 9th of May 2023, 16:30
Language
: English
Contact
: cefres[@]cefres.cz

Olga Kalashnikova (PhD candidate at CEU /  associated with CEFRES)
Discussant: Eloïse Adde (CEU)

Abstract

Holy Week – and Good Friday in particular – represents a crucial period of the Lenten season, as it marks the peak of Christian devotion. During Holy Week, charismatic preachers of the Middle Ages sought to profoundly influence the daily life and religious behavior of the people. Bohemian preachers retold the story of Christ’s Passion to evoke an emotional response from listeners (and sometimes readers) and invite them to repent and confess their sins. In some instances, preachers experimented with available sources and theological and rhetorical approaches to the topic to reflect on the growing devotion to the Passion and sacraments in the region and even criticise moral decay of the Bohemian laity and clergy.

My presentation will focus on intellectual background and shared discourse on Christ’s Passion that surrounded fourteenth-century Bohemian preachers while composing their Good Friday sermons at desk. In addition, I will discuss the rationale, structure, methodology, and goals of my PhD project, which ultimately aims to critically examine Good Friday preaching in Bohemia in 1330-1380, identify the peculiarities (transgressions) – of the Bohemian corpus in the broader European context, and classify some theological, hermeneutical, pastoral, and rhetorical “commonplaces” (norms) typical for the genre.

See the complete program of the seminar here.