In the frame of IMS and CEFRES’s common seminar “Between Areas and Disciplines”, Mátyás Erdélyi (CEU, Budapest & CEFRES) will present a chapter of his PhD work on The Making of a Productivist Middle Class in the Habsburg Monarchy. His presentation will be discussed by CNRS researcher Wolf Feuerhahn, co-director of the Alexandre Koyré Center and chief-editor of the Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines.
Where: CEFRES library, Na Florenci 3.
Language: English.
Date: Wednesday 3 May, 6:30-8 pm
Venue: French Institute in Prague, 5th floor, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Language: English
The fascination for the invention of a speaking machine lay at the intersection of two important topics for the eighteenth century: articulation as a sign of civilization, and the polemic of man as machine. As the teaching of speech for so-called “deaf and mute” pupils developed, some saw the machine as that which would complete the work of nature and provide mankind with new means of communication. Others went so far as to present the machine as a model that could teach articulation and the workings of the human voice. As such, the speaking machine represented, on the one hand, a source of enchantment and awe: if machines could speak, could language still be considered an exclusively human characteristic? On the other hand, if articulation was mechanical, what distinguished humans from animals? My paper will analyze how eighteenth-century French philosophers, engineers, men of letters, and pedagogues mused upon language acquisition and articulated the relationship between body, machine, and language in relation to their ideas about humanity as such.
Illustration: Poster of Abbé Mical’s Talking Heads (Têtes parlantes)
Eleventh session of IMS / CEFRES epistemological seminar of this semester led by:
Felipe K. Fernandes (EHESS / CEFRES)
Topic: Markets (Re-)observed
Where: The session will be conducted over a videoconferencing platform. Registration: adela.landova@cefres.cz
When: Wednesday 13 May 2020, from 4:30 pm to 6 pm
Language: English
Text to be read:
Mátyás Erdélyi is a post-doctoral fellow at CEFRES, cofinanced by Charles University
Title of his contribution: « Bank and Insurance Clerks in Budapest, Prague, and Vienna (1848-1918) »
Conference: Borders
Organised by István Hajnal, Circle – Hungarian Social History Association
Where: University of Pécs (Hungary)
When: 27-29 August 2020 (the contribution scheduled for 29 August)
Venue & time: Marc Bloch Center (Germaine Tillion room, 7th floor, Friedrichstr. 191, Berlin), from 10 to 5:30 pm
Organizers: Catherine Gousseff (Marc Bloch Center – CMB), Sylvie Robic (Nanterre University), Clara Royer (CEFRES), Dominique Treilhou (French Institute in Berlin)
Partenaires : CMB, French Institute in Berlin, Paris-Nanterre University and CEFRES
Languages: French, German and English
This conference takes place within the May 68 Cycle taking place in Nanterre, Berlin and Prague, which centers around conferences, round tables, exhibitions and screenings dedicated to the year 1968.
From the Berlin February demonstration against US involvement in the Vietnam War, through the March student protests in Poland and the student unrest in Italy, to Prague Spring or French May ’68, a insurgent spirit swept across the European continent in 1968. The chronicle of the events that shook in different ways European societies, suggests the existence of a rebellious impetus that ignored the Iron Curtain and defied the various political regimes in place. The 1968 new generation held a common ground as they dared asserting their aspirations, upsetting the established order. Still, the diversity of protest configurations, whether speaking of the actors engaged in them or of the political answers prompted by the events, calls for a confrontation of these historical moments which, caught between celebration and tragedy, have become engraved in collective memory.
On the 15th of May, witnesses of 1968 from various parts of Europe will speak about the expectations they had then.
The next day, on the 16th of May, the conference will propose a reflection between East and West through the gathering of specialists on three major topics: violences in 1968, the emergence of women’s movements and the birth of alternative cultures.
What disparities, what common trends can be perceived in the rebellious spirit of 1968?
Continue reading May 68 Cycle Prague/Berlin – West Winds, East Winds
Gellner Seminar
Jane Desmond ( University of Illinois ) will give a lecture within the Gellner seminar organized by the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA– Česká Asociace pro Sociální Antropologii), the Czech Society of Sociology, in cooperation with the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and CEFRES.
When: 16 May 2019, 4:30 pm
Where: Institute of Ethnology, conference room, 5th floor (Na Florenci 3, Prague 1)
Language: English
Although the anthropological study of human medicine is a well developed field, research by anthropologists and sociologists on the structures and practice of medicine for animals around the world is a nascent field of inquiry. Yet, whether caring for cherished pets or working to contain the spread of zoonoses, or monitoring a nation’s food supply, veterinarians play a central role in most countries. In this presentation, based on preliminary fieldwork in two U.S. colleges of veterinary medicine, I map the relationships between client, patient, doctor, and technology, and the intersections of affect, species, money, scientific knowledge and cultural value when the patient is a dog… or a horse, or a cow, or even a snake. I conclude by raising questions about how the medical humanities and social sciences will have to expand to accommodate new notions of subjectivity, agency, narrativity, and ethnography in analyzing a more-than-human medicine.
Jane Desmond is Professor of Anthropology and of Gender and Women’s Studies, and Co-founder and Executive Director of the International Forum for U.S. Studies: a Center for the Transnational Study of the United States, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A.
Her primary areas of interest focus on issues of embodiment, display, and social identity, as well as transnational U.S. Studies. Her areas of expertise include performance studies, visual culture, the analysis of the U.S. in global perspectives, and the political economy of human/animal relations. She is the Founding Resident Director of the international Summer Institute in Animal Studies at UIUC, and Founding Editor of the _Animal LIves_ Book Series at the University of Chicago Press. In addition to academic publications, she has written about human-animal relations for a number of public venues such as CNN.com, The Washington Post.com, and the Huffington Post. The author or editor of five scholarly books, she holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale, and most recently published the monograph _Displaying Death and Animating Life: Human-Animal Relations in Art, Science, and Everyday Life_ (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Her current book project is called Medicine Across the Species Line: Cultural Dimensions of Veterinary Medicine.
