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Samuel Beckett in Central Europe

Samuel Beckett in Central Europe. Stagings and reception beyond censorship

Researchers working on Beckett or on theatre in Central Europe are invited to meet in April  at the CEFRES and at Charles University. The aim will be to examine the political and aesthetic, and sometimes legal and social, issues that certain dramatic texts may embody, taking Beckett’s theatre as a case study. 

Date: Thursday 20th and Friday 21st April 2023
Location: CEFRES library and Charles University
Organizers: CEFRES in partnership with Sorbonne University, Paris, Bordeaux University and Charles University
Language: English
Convenors: Alice Clabaut, Charles Guillorit
Deadline for sending propositions: 31st January 2023

A summary of the conference and the call for papers is available here.

Program:

Thursday 20 April 2023
at CEFRES Library (Na Florenci 3 Prague 1)
16h- Opening Talk – Octavian Siu [online]
16h30 – Panel 1 : poetics of politics in the work of Samuel Beckett
Vanesa Cotroneo : Breaking the Iron Curtain: Media and Technology in Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe (1982) and Nacht und Träume (1982)
Luciana Peycere : A post-pandemic operatic adaptation of Film (1965): the political and aesthetic potential of performing Beckett at a fringe venue in London.
[break]
17h30 – Roundtable: Staging Beckett today – testimonies of contemporaries stage directors (1h30)
Jan Bosse & Olena Zavhorodnya

Friday 21st April
at Charles University (Faculty of Arts, Room P104, nám. J. Palacha 1/2)
9h30- Welcoming coffees
10h – Keynote Speaker – Marek Kedzierski – Beckett in Perspectives. Discussing with Beckett, staging Beckett, reflecting upon Beckett
[break]
11h 15 – Panel 2: Overview of Beckett reception and stagings in Central Europe
Matthieu Protin – Samuel Beckett Stage Director of his own Theater in Germany: Influence and Consequence.
Tomasz Wiśniewski – “Beckett on the Baltic” and other research experiments in Gdańsk
Anita Rákóczy – A Director’s Apology – Beckett in Hungaria
[lunch break]
14h30 – Panel 2 bis: Overview of Beckett reception and stagings in Central Europe
Miloš Mistrík – Godot has finally come – to Slovakia
Martin Pšenička – Post-1989 stage productions of Beckett in the Czech Republic: a focus on Jan Nebeský’s 1996 production of Endgame
[break]
15h45 – Panel 3 : The question of censorship in and of Beckett’s theatre: a legal or a personal issue?
Alexander Hartley – Beckett’s Legal Scuffles and the Interpretation of the Plays [online]
Matthew Rimmer – The Legal Endgame of Samuel Beckett [online]
Concluding remarks – Alice Clabaut & Charles Guillorit

See more at the conference’s website.

Samson Seminar: Nature(s) & Norms #3 – Eugenics

The third session of the seminar “Nature(s) & Norms” (NANO), carried out within the framework of the research program SAMSON (Sciences, Arts, Medicine and Social Norms), developed by Sorbonne University (Paris), the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University (Prague), Warsaw University and CEFRES welcomes two participants: Vojtěch Pojar (CEFRES / CEU) and Alicja Urbanik-Kopeć (IHN PAN)

When: Friday 16. December 2022, 17:00–19:00
Where: CEFRES Library and online
Language: English
Contact: cefres[@]cefres.cz

Part 1
Eugenics in Austria-Hungary: Social Functions and Imperial Circulation of an Ambiguous Body of Knowledge, 1900–1914

Vojtěch Pojar (CEU / CEFRES)

The notion of the circulation of knowledge poses new questions to the scholarship on eugenics in the Habsburg Empire. Focusing on imperial networks and the cognitive management of imperial diversity, my presentation will analyze four cases of imperial circulation of eugenic knowledge. It will show that the actors, institutions, and geographies of such circulation varied substantially, depending on the practices out of which the particular type of eugenic knowledge grew and on the social function it was envisaged to serve.

Part 2
Eugenics and social health
Alicja Urbanik-Kopeć (IHN PAN)

The role of criminal antropometry and early eugenics movement on the organization of state control of sex workers in the Kingdom of Poland, 1890-1915. In my presentation, I will show the influence of criminal anthropology on the organization of state run Medical Police Committees, set up by the Russian state officials to find, track, control nad. punish real and assumed sex workers in the cities.The official reasons for the tightening control on the disenfranchised urban population (mostly single, poor women) were care for public health and combating the pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases. However, they were used as a pretext to attempt an administrative control of life, health and reproduction of socially vulnerable women.

More on the whole seminar here.

Image: https://archive.org/details/ldpd_11497246_000/page/n25/mode/2up

SAMSON Seminar: Nature(s) & Norms #1

This session will bring together two presentations:

Astrid Greve KRISTENSEN (PhD candidate Sorbonne University – CEFRES)
E(co)schatological Entrypoints: The Abject and the Anthropocene in Bianca Bellová’s novel Jezero [The Lake]

Matylda SZEWCZYK (University of Warsaw)
On Darkness and Light: Images of Nuclear Power and Reproduction

Location: CEFRES Library and online
Dates: Friday 21 October 2022, 16:30–18:30
Language: English
Contact: cefres[@]cefres.cz

Abstracts

Part 1: E(co)schatological Entrypoints: The Abject and the Anthropocene in Bianca Bellová’s novel Jezero [The Lake] – Astrid Greve KRISTENSEN

The 2016 Czech coming-of-age novel Jezero [The Lake] by Bianca Bellová conjoins the drying up of a life-giving lake with an obscene amount of bodily fluids bursting from its teenage protagonist. Together, this ecocritical subject combined and a rather literal interpretation of the abject, form a basis for my interpretation of this orphan narrative.

Part 2: On Darkness and Light: Images of Nuclear Power and Reproduction – Matylda SZEWCZYK

The seemingly counterintuitive juxtaposition of nuclear energy images – power plants, atomic tests, nuclear apocalypses – with visions of reproduction (biological fertilization, parenthood, symbolical figures of parents and children) returns in the history of culture with puzzling frequency. It brings along the questions about the social attitude towards technology, science and the fundamental “facts of life” and has already been a subject of academic discussions, from the feminist analysis of Evelyn Fox Keller to historical reconstructions of Spencer R. Weart. The contemporary and historical functioning of these motives in visual culture will create the background for my presentation, concentrating on the images of nuclear apocalypse and parenthood/reproduction in the novels Sakhalin Island by Eduard Verkin (2018) and Brightness by Maja Wolny (2019).

See the complete program of the SAMSON Nature(s) & Norms Seminar 

Featured image : P. Christopher Staecker.

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.

Ritualization of transgressions and normativities in the European Mediterranean public space

Workshop : Ritualization of transgressions and normativities in the European Mediterranean public space

When: Monday 28 February 2022, 10:30–17:00
Where: CEFRES and online (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87924365313)
Languages: French and English
Convenors: Michèle Baussant (CNRS, CEFRES), Yoann Morvan (CNRS, MESPOLHIS) and Alessandro Testa (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, associated at CEFRES),

This workshop focuses on the ritualization of transgressions and ‘normativities’ in Euro-Mediterranean public spaces. It aims to adopt an anthropological approach to contemporary European religious phenomena and rituals, both as factors of cultural, symbolic, and spatial sharing and division in Euro-Mediterranean spaces. In particular, the discussions will question the processes of secularism and secularization, of “de-secularization” or “re-enchantment,” or of political and/or social maintaining of the religious. The focus will also encompass the logics of encounters, hybridizations, tensions, and transgressions between different religious actors and practices, both in the case of majority groups and those in minorities, within public spaces that are often pluralistic and pluricultural, in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe.

Program

10:30–12:00 – Roundtable (in French)
Ritualization of transgressions and forms of normativities in Euro-Mediterranean public spaces: anthropological approaches
With:

  • Dionigi Albera (CNRS, IDEMEC)
  • Alessandro Testa (Charles University)
  • Yoann Morvan (CNRS, MESPOLHIS)
  • Ronan Hervouet (CEFRES / University of Bordeaux)
  • Viola Teisenhoffer (Charles University / Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)

Moderators:

  • Michèle Baussant (CNRS, CEFRES)
  • Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES / Paris Dauphine University)

14:00–15:30 – (in English)
Ritualization of transgressions and forms of normativities in public spaces in Central Europe
With:

  • Martin Pehal (Charles University)
  • Viola Teisenhoffer (Charles University / Eötvös Loránd University)
  • Agata Ładykowska (Charles University / Polish Academy of Sciences)

Discussant:

  • Dionigi Albera (CNRS, IDEMEC)

16:00–17:00 – (in English)
Presentation of Alessandro Testa’s book,
Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe (Routledge, 2020)
Discussants:

  • Alessandro Testa (Charles University)
  • Dionigi Albera (CNRS, IDEMEC)
  • Martin Pehal (Charles University)

Illustration: Martin Pehal

Ritual Change in South Asia: Circulations, Transfers, Transgressions

Where: CEFRES, Národní 18, conference room, 7th floor.

Organizers: Cécile Guillaume-Pey (CEFRES & FMSH) and Martin Hříbek (FF UK).

Language: English

A workshop organized by CEFRES and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, with the participation of researchers from the Heidelberg University (Germany), of University College Cork (Ireland), of Wageningen (Netherlands) and of Charles University.

Program

Panel 1 – Discussant: Barbora Spalová (Assistant Professor, Charles University, Prague)

9:45 AM – Max Stille (Ph.D. student, University of Heidelberg) : Bengali Islamic sermons between ritual and non-ritual frames of interpretation

10:20 AM – Alexis Avdeeff (Maître de Conférences, Université de Poitiers) : Chanting destiny: the commercialization of a traditional “divinatory art”

10:55 AM – Break

11:25 AM – Martin Hříbek (Assistant Professor, Charles University): Animating images of Durga: Art, ritual and technologies of enchantment on the streets of Calcutta

Break

Panel 2 – Discussant: Luděk Brož (Institute of Ethnology, The Czech Academy of Sciences)

2 PM – Lidia Guzy (Assistant Professor, University College Cork): From ritual music to stage, museums and politics. Ritual transfers in Western Odisha, India

2:35 PM – Rhadika Borde (Ph.D. Student, Wageningen University): Politicized rituals of worship: Activist involvement in the Dongaria Kondhs’ worship of the Niyamgiri Mountain in Odisha, India

3:10 PM – Break

3:30 PM – Soňa Bendíková (Assistant Professor, Charles University) : The Kota funeral: change of rituals in time

4:05 PM – Cécile Guillaume-Pey (Postdoctoral research fellow, IIAC, Paris): Drinking letters or talking with spirits? Ritual change in a Sora religious movement

Outline

Rituals are not atemporal, infallible devices that always “work” regardless of the performers’ motivations and social contexts in which they are embedded. Rituals are social and historical constructs sometimes considered to be unsatisfying or useless by the participants. They might even “fail” and are then recast, abandoned or replaced. Highlighting the flexibility and polysemy of rituals, recent studies have emphasized the relevance of a diachronic approach that considers the experience of the actors engaged in the performance, how they criticize and reinvent it, and the ways in which they appropriate alternative ritual models.

This workshop aims to investigate the processes of transformation, circulation and transfer of rituals in South Asia. Whether adjusting a “traditional” ritual form in a new social, political or religious context, or integrating new media – writing, audio or video – to diffuse a religious message, the papers will highlight the different ways in which actors reshape their ritual practices and invent new liturgical forms.