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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.

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

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.

Sándor Ferenczi and the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis

Sándor Ferenczi and the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis

2nd session of the Seminar “Rethinking Psychoanalysis in Central Europe: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives”

When: Tuesday, May 17, 2022, 4:00-6:00 pm
Where: At CEFRES and online (to register please contact claire@cefres.cz)
Language: English

Coordinator and discussant : Agnieszka Sobolewska (University of Warsaw/Sorbonne Université/CEFRES)

Guest-speakers : 

  • Judit Mészáros (Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society/Eötvös Loránd University)
  • Mónika Takács (Sándor Ferenczi Society/International Sándor Ferenczi Network)

Sapphic Empire

Sapphic Empire: Transnational History of Lesbian Writings in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian Modernisms and beyond (1848–1933)

6th 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, May 13, 2024 at 4:30 pm
Language: English
Contact / To register: cefres[@]cefres.cz

Speaker:   Anna Dżabagina (CEFRES / Charles University)

Chair: Libuše Heczková, FF UK Continue reading Sapphic Empire →

Secularisms in crise(s): Turkey and France in parallel?

Honoré Banidje, CEFRES

will be taking part in the seminar called Current Issues. Reflection on Crises organised by CEFRES.

Date: Wednesday 24th 2021, 12h30 à 13h50
Where: Online on Zoom.
Organisators:  Maria Kokkinou (post-doc at CEFRES / Charles University), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)
Language: French

To join the Zoom meeting, please click on this link:

For more information about the programme and the seminar,  see the website: http://cefres.cz/fr/seminaires/penser-les-crises.