Archives

Historical Approaches to Technical Creativity

Historical Approaches to Technical Creativity and Innovation

The conference aims to present historical approaches to innovative technology in many fields: from private enterprise to electrification, decolonization, locomotives, watchmaking and the ecological aspects of technology.

Date: October 3, 2024
Place: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, (Technická 2, Prague 6)
Language: French, English

Organizer: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague

Conference Programme Continue reading Historical Approaches to Technical Creativity →

Historical policy-making in Poland and the political role of historians

Historical policy-making in Poland and the political role of historians

Lecture by Valentin Behr (Warsaw University, The Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies and Centre for French Studies)

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
When: 28 March 2019, 2 pm
Organizers: CEFRES
Language: English

Abstract

This lecture will be dedicated to historical policy in Poland. I will first explain why I use the notion of “historical policy” and how it differs from the more common notion of “memory politics”. I will also illustrate my thesis by recalling the history and activities of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which is somehow similar to other institutions in postcommunist countries such as the German Gauck Institute or the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR). Then, I will show how historical policy shapes some kind of official narrative about the past, by evoking some of the IPN’s publications. Finally, I will propose a more general reflection about the role and contribution of historians to the political uses of the past, by sketching a broader historical perspective, from the end of WWII onwards.

Historical Semantics in a Transnational and Transdisciplinary Perspective: the Case of ‘Milieu’

Wolf FeuerhahnA lecture by CNRS researcher Wolf Feuerhahn, co-director of the Alexandre Koyré Center and the editor-in-chief of Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, in the frame of the CEFRES Platform Lectures.

Language: English.

Venue : CEFRES, Národní 18, Prague 1, conference room, 7th floor.

Transnational History is nowadays a flourishing field of research. In the last ten years, history of concepts has been impacted by this historiographical turn. It lays much more focus than before on problems of transnational and transcultural resemantization of concepts. The emergence and success of new expressions like « traveling concepts » (Mieke Bal), « nomadic concepts » (Olivier Christin) are a good indicator of this situation

In my presentation, I suggest to go a step further in this direction. My methodological proposition will be based on the transnational history of the term milieu. Traveling from France to Germany, from history of literature to biology and sociology, the word milieu came to be identified as a French theory. It was seen as an expression of determinism, of the connection between the rise of the natural sciences and the rise of socialism. The vast majority of German academics rejected it ; they coined the term Umwelt  in strict opposition to the French word. But Umwelt was precisely retranslated into French as « milieu », becoming the flag of an antideterminist and postmodern philosophy (Deleuze). Through this case study, I would like to promote what I would term “transnational historical semantics” as opposed to the Koselleckian history of concepts and its a priori distinctions between words and concepts, and to reflect on how words are semantically affected by their transnational and crossdisciplinary destiny.

 

 

 

History of sensibilities with Hervé Mazurel

LECTURE: History of sensibilities, with Hervé Mazurel.
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague
Date: September 21, 2023, 5:30 pm
Convenor: Ondřej Matějka (Faculty of Social Sciences Charles University)
Language: French (with translation into Czech provided by Ondřej Matějka and Josef Fulka)

On the occasion of his stay in Prague, Hervé Mazurel will hold a lecture about his book L’inconscient ou l’oubli de l’histoire. Profondeurs, métamorphoses et révolutions de la vie affective (La Découverte, 2021). Professor at the University of Burgundy, he is one of the most eminent specialists of the history of the body, sensibilities and the imaginary, specialising in nineteenth-century Europe. He is also co-director of the review Sensibilités. Histoire, critique et sciences sociales. As an epistemologist, he is also involved in revitalising the relationship between history, the social sciences and the disciplines of the psyche.

Link : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88202130264

A round-table discussion will follow this lecture:

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION : Exposing psychoanalysis to history.

Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague
Date: September 22, 2023, 10 a.m.
Language: English

On Friday, September 22, a round-table discussion will be organized from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. This exchange will be held in English.

With the participation of Ondřej Matějka (FSV UK) and Josef Fulka (FHS UK).

In order to participate, please contact Mr. Ondřej Matějka (ondrej.matejka@fsv.cuni.cz).

History serves the Motherland. Medievalisms in public discourse in Russia

History serves the Motherland:
Medievalisms in contemporary public discourse in Russia (2018–2023)

4th 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, March 5, 2024 at 4:30 pm
Language: English
Contact / To register: cefres[@]cefres.cz
Discussant: Martin ŠORM, Center for Medieval Studies, FLÚ, Czech Academy of Sciences

Olga Kalashnikova (CEFRES / CEU)

Continue reading History serves the Motherland. Medievalisms in public discourse in Russia →

Holocaust Memory, Jewish Life, and Generational Dimensions. Czechoslovakia in the 1980s

A lecture by Peter Hallama (EHESS, Paris) in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History of the Institute of Contemporary History (AV ČR) and CEFRES in partnership with the Masaryk Institute (AV ČR).

Where: CEFRES library, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: from 5 pm to 6:30 pm
Language: English

Abstract

This lecture will reconsider the growing interest in Jewish culture, religion, and history in the last decade of State Socialism in Czechoslovakia. It will focus on three aspects: generational conflicts within the Jewish community and the younger generation’s questioning of their families’ pasts and religiousness; the dissident appropriations of Jewish history and culture; and the beginning of nostalgia for “Mitteleuropa”, as opposed to the homogenizing tendencies of the Communist régime to an ideal of cultural, national, and religious heterogeneity. This lecture will therefore discuss some of the principal ways that Czech Jews and non-Jews re-defined Jewishness, and will seek to avoid a normative assessment of “virtual” Jewish identity as opposed to “authentic.”