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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

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A Golden Rhinoceros. Africa in the Middle Ages

On the occasion of the publication, in Czech, of the Golden Rhinoceros, and his invitation by the French Institute in Prague and Charles University in partnership with CEFRES, François-Xavier FAUVELLE presents his book at the French Institute in Prague.

Where: French Institute in Prague, Štěpánská 35, Prague 1
Date: Wednesday 12 October 2022, at 6 pm
Language: in French with simultaneous translation into Czech
Organizers: CEFRES, French Institute in Prague, Charles University

The discussion will be moderated by Irena Jirků, journalist.

Presentation
The description of a city with twelve mosques in an Arabic story about the Sahel regions; a letter from a Jewish merchant about a caravan from the “Land of the Blacks”; the discovery, in the middle of the Sahara, of shells from the Indian Ocean; the effigy of a Malian king on a Catalan map; the ruins of cities built of salt and coral blocks. And gold: a gold shield in a tomb in Senegal; gold coins found in a Christian monastery in Ethiopia; a golden rhinoceros looted and found in South Africa. All these documents testify to the diversity and richness of Africa in the Middle Ages. In his book Le Rhinocéros d’or, François-Xavier Fauvelle reconstructs, with the help of these fragments, a “stained glass window” that reveals forgotten kingdoms, from the savannah empires of West Africa to the coastal principalities of Kenya and Tanzania. An Africa that participates in the great trade with the Islamic world, India and China, reexamining the places and actors of a global Middle Ages.

François-Xavier Fauvelle is professor at Collège de France in Paris, first holder of the chair entitled History and archeology of African worlds. He has taught at Princeton University, led international research programs in South Africa, Ethiopia and Morocco. Among more than twenty books translated into a dozen of languages, he is the author of A Golden Rhinoceros. Histories of African Middle Ages that has been published in Czech in 2021: Zlatý nosorožec: příběhy o africkém středověku (Karolinum, 2021, transl. Alena Lhotová, Helena Beguivinová).

A Little Something in Yiddish. Conceptual Framework(s) for the Study of Yiddish Polish cultural contact in the 20th century

A lecture by Karolina Szymaniak (Wrocław University) 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

When in 1988 poet Marcin Świetlicki formulated in the now famous poem his sharp criticism of the rhetorics of cultural opposition and its possession by history, he wrote: „Instead of saying: I have a toothache, I’m/ hungry, I’m lonely (…)/ they say quietly: Wanda/ Wasilewska, Cyprian Kamil Norwid,/ Józef Piłsudski, the Ukraine, Lithuania/ Thomas Mann, the Bible, and at the end a little something/ in Yiddish” (trans. W. Martin). As Eugenia Prokop-Janiec has shown, in the 1980s Yiddish came to be treated as a part of the code of independent culture, and investment with it became a form of resistance. But what was this undefined „little something” and what tradition was underlying its presence in the Polish discourse? What meaning and content was it endowed with? How does this tradition bear on contemporary representations of the Jewish Polish past and the way we write the history of culture in Poland?

The talk is a discussion of existing and possible approaches to the study of Yiddish Polish cultural contacts in the 20th century, their limits, and ramifications. It is a working presentation of an on-going project. By turning to the history of Yiddish Polish cultural relations and their discourse, and interpreting them through a different lens of cultural studies, the study also seeks to think other ways of conceptualizing history of culture in Poland. An approach that includes the minority perspectives and respects their independence, and create a space where the „little something” turns into a complex polyphonic phenomenon in its own rights.

A religion of nature? Anthropology of sacred artefacts and cyborg gods in Afro-Brazilian religions

Gellner Seminar

Giovanna Capponi (CEFRES/FSV UK) 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: 1st April 2019, at 4:30 pm
Where: CEFRES Library (Na Florenci 3, Prague 1)
Language: English

Abstract

A religion of nature? Anthropology of sacred artefacts and cyborg gods in Afro-Brazilian religions

Afro-Brazilian Candomblé, the worship of the West African deities which spread around Brazil as a consequence of the Atlantic Slave Trade, is often described by its followers and by the anthropologists who studied it as a “religion of nature”. Indeed, Candomblé deities (called orixás) are closely associated with natural elements in the landscape; but they are also associated with human temperaments and with different stages of life and matter. In the attempt to problematize and understand what kind of “nature” is implied in this context, I will analyse the sacred artefacts that constitute a central part of the ritual practice, the so called assentamentos.

The rules of fabrication of these mysterious factishes, using Latour’s neologism, are often surrounded by secrecy and sacredness as they constitute the physical “bodies” and “mouths” of the orixás where sacrifices and offerings are performed. Involving animal blood, vegetable substances, and other materials like wood, iron or copper in the making, the assentamentos are made by humans as a means of condensing and manipulating axé, the sacred force that is infused in natural elements. Trying to escape the colonial narrative that long described these practices as “fetishism”, I would argue that these artefacts can be understood as powerful “technological” devices and channels of communication between the visible and the invisible world. Moreover, these receptacles mirror both the deity and the heads of the novices who undergo the initiation ritual, which starts a lifelong bond between the orixá, the artefact, and the human.

Using Haraway’s metaphor of the cyborg, I analyse how these artefacts transcend and challenge the dichotomies of Western thought. Being it at the same time alive and inert, natural and technological, human and animal, infused with life force and mere vessel, the assentamento subverts these categories and sheds a light on the ways in which humans, gods, animals and elements of the landscape are made and perceived.

A Subaltern That Sings

A Subaltern That Sings.
From Sound Resistance to Musical Diplomacy in Wartime Ukraine

Kick-off meeting of a research project developed within CU-CNRS TANDEM Program supported by Charles University, CNRS and CEFRES.

Date: April 9, 2024, from 2 pm to 3:30 pm CET
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Language: English
Project Coordinators:
Valeria KORABLYOVA (CEFRES / Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University) and
Louisa MARTIN-CHEVALIER (CEFRES / Sorbonne University)

The meeting will be opened by:

  • Mr. Stéphane CROUZAT, Ambassador of France to the Czech Republic
  • Mr. Ladislav KRIŠTOUFEK, Vice-rector for Research, Charles University
  • Mr. William BERTHOMIÈRE, director for European and international affairs at CNRS Sciences humaines et sociales

Abstract

Valeria Korablyova and Louisa Martin-Chevalier will present this research project dedicated to the musical dimension of Ukrainian resistance as a vehicle for escaping the subaltern position of a double periphery in the blind spot between the EU and Russia. The project brings together two academic subfields – cultural diplomacy and postcolonial studies – to reveal how Ukrainian musicians and activists use musical means to increase their visibility on a global level and to raise their country’s geocultural status on the mental maps of international audiences. From the European opera scene to the Eurovision Song Contest, Ukrainians deploy their soft power to manifest their country’s agency and garner international support for their cause.

Since 2018, the TANDEM program endeavors excellency in social sciences and humanities by bringing together Czech and French colleagues to intensify scientific collaboration between our countries in the frame of European Research Area. The program is a joint initiative of CEFRES, CNRS SHS, CU & the Czech Academy of Sciences (AV ČR) in the frame of the CEFRES Platform of scientific collaborations. Its former members have obtained two ERC grants, including the BOAR project.

A view from abroad: Czechoslovaks in World War II and the early Cold War

Discussion around Paul Lenormand’s book Tchécoslovaques en guerre (Passés composés 2023)

Date: 7 December, 2023, from 4 p.m.
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3
Language: English

Organizors: CEFRES; University Paris-Nanterre / Institut des sciences sociales du politique (ISP); Research Center „Postwar(s). Political and Social Changes during and after the Second World War“ at the Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (IMS FSV UK)

Chair: Jakub Štofaník, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences (MÚA AVČR)

Discussant: Václav Šmidrkal, Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (IMS FSV UK)

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