Archives

Im Feuer vergangen. East German Holocaust Memory, Cold War Propaganda, and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw

A lecture by Stephan Stach (Institute of Contemporary History, AV ČR) in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History of the ÚSD AV ČR and CEFRES in partnership with the Jewish Museum.

Language: English

Abstract:
During the 1950s and 1960s a number of books on the Holocaust appeared in the German Democratic Republic. They had their origins in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the only Holocaust research center in the Eastern Bloc. Among them was Bernard Mark’s Der Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto (The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1957; originally published in Polish in 1953), the collection of memoirs and diaries Im Feuer vergangen (Lost in the Fire, 1958) and the volume of documents Faschismus-Ghetto-Massenmord (Fascism, Ghetto, Mass Murder, 1960). These books constituted a considerable part of the literature on the Holocaust at the time. They were widely discussed in the press, where authors often used them as evidence of Nazi war criminals holding public office in West Germany at that time. Though their propaganda potential certainly increased the popularity of these publications, their impact went far beyond that. The publications were praised for their literary quality, for instance by the East German critics Victor Klemperer and Arnold Zweig, and met with the interest of the general reading public in East Germany. In my talk, I analyze the reception and perception of these books – and thus the Jewish Historical Institute – between Cold War propaganda and the emergence of an East German Holocaust memory.

The Human-Animal Line Interdisciplinary Approaches

This international conference will bring together in Prague researchers from different European countries. One of its main purposes is to create a Central European network of scholars dealing with the topic of the human-animal relations across disciplines.
Organizers: Dr. Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES & FF UK) & Dr. Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala in Poland)
Language: English

Program

7 February 2017 – French Institute in Prague

French Institute in Prague, Štĕpánská 35, 5th floor

5:00-5:30 Welcome speech by the organizers, Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES & Charles University) and Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala) 5:30-7:00
Lecture by Anne Simon (CNRS/EHESS): Literature and Animal Expressiveness: of the Cognitive and Ethic Aspects of Zoopoetics

8 February 2017 – CEFRES

Na Florenci 3, 3rd floor, conference room

Panel I Animals’ Biography, History and Microhistory

Chair: Lucie Storchová (Charles University)

9:00-9:20 Maria Gindhart (Georgia State University): Animals and Humans in Belle Époque Postcards from the Jardin des Plantes Menagerie

9:20-9:40 Violette Pouillard (Wiener-Anspach Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Oxford): Nonhuman Animals as Objects or Individuals? A History of Primates at the London Zoo from 1828 to the Present Time

9:40-10:00 Discussion

10:00-10:20 Coffee Break

Panel II Literary Lines I

Chair: Alice Flemrová

10:40-11:00 Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES-Charles University, Prague): The Blind Spot of the Plot: Thinking Beyond Human with Karel Capek 

11:00-11:20 Matilde Accurso Liotta (University of Pisa): The Renegotiation of the Human-Animal Line in Anna Maria Ortese’s L’iguana

11:20-11:40 Discussion

Lecture

11:40-12:50 Lecture by Kari Weil (Wesleyan University): Animal Magnetism and Moral Dressage: Horses and Their Humans in 19th Century France

12:50-2:00 Lunch

Panel III Philosophical and sociological narratives

Chair: Ondřej Švec (Charles University)

2:00-2:20 Kári Driscoll (Utrecht University): ‘Une langue ou une musique inouïe, assez inhumaine…’: Narrative Voice and the Question of the Animal

2:20-2:40 Michał Krzykawski (University of Silesia): Animal, Number

2:40-3:00 Tereza Vandrovcová (University of New York in Prague): Moral Evolution Toward the Earthlings: A Sociological Approach

3:00-3:20 Discussion

3:20-3:40 Coffee Break

Panel IV Visual Line I

Chair : Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala)

3:40-4:00 Olivier Vayron (Paris-Sorbonne University): From Frémiet to Kipling: the Orangutan on the Fringe of Mankind 

4:00-4:20 Fae Brauer (University of East London): Becoming Simian: Creative Evolution and Interspecies Modernism

4:20-4:40 Discussion

9 February 2017 – French Institute in Prague

French Institute in Prague, Štĕpánská 35, 5th floor

Panel V Human-Animal History

Chair: Kari Weil

9:00-9:20 Quentin Montagne (University of Rennes 2): Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly ? The Blurring of the Boundary Between Humans and Animals

9:20-9:40 Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala): Visualising Human-Animal Bond during the Flood 1997/2010 in Poland

9:40-10:00 Discussion

10:00-10:20 Coffee Break

Panel VI Visual Lines II

Chair: Clara Royer (CEFRES)

10:20-10:40 Concepción Cortés Zulueta (Autonomous University of Madrid): Cameras that Pose as Animals: Imagining Non-human Animals through the POV Shot

10:40-11:00 Discussion

Lecture

11:20-12:30 Lecture by Éric Baratay (Jean Moulin Lyon III University): Writing Biographies on Animals (in French, with simultaneous translation)

12:30-1:30 Lunch

Panel VII Literary Lines II

Chair: Richard Müller (Czech Academy of Sciences)

1:30-1:50 Anita Jarzyna (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań): Laika’s Lullaby

1:50-2:10 Nicolas Picard (University of Paris III): Hunt Practices: In Quest of Animal Existences

2:10-2:30 Eva Beránková (Charles University, Prague): Animals As Victims and Monsters at the Age of Decadence

2:30-2:50 Discussion

2:50-3:10 Coffee Break

Panel VIII Animals in Pop Culture

Chair: Anne Simon (CNRS / EHESS)

3:10-3:30 Lenka Svobodová, Ondřej Krajtl (Masaryk University): Animal Monster as a Representation of Contemporary Culture

3:30-3:50 Catherine du Toit (University of Stellenbosch): It is not for the Pig to Call the Sheep Pen Dirty. Identity and Animality in Multiethnic Crime Fiction

3:50-4:10 Discussion

Session IX Literary Lines III

Chair: Jan Matonoha (Czech Academy of Sciences)

4:10-5:30 Jana Gridneva (Charles University, Prague): Liminal Creatures: Representing Animals in Ulysses

4:30-4:50 Jonathan Pollock (University of Perpignan): From Becoming-Animal to Being a Beast. Literary Experiments in Crossing the Species Divide

4:50-5:10 Enrico Riccardo Orlando (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice): Between Silence and Effusiveness: Garnett’s Fox and Bacchelli’s Tuna

5:10-5:30 Discussion

Closing

Scientific committee

Éric Baratay (Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University), Anna Barcz (University of Bielsko-Biala), Jakub Čapek (Charles University), Chiara Mengozzi (CEFRES – Charles University), Anne Simon (CNRS/EHESS), Petr Urban (Czech Academy of Sciences)

See the call for papers here

“Heartfelt Sympathies” – André Spire & Otokar Fischer’s Correspondence

Book launch:
“À vous de cœur” André Spire et Otokar Fischer 1922-1938
a collection of texts edited and presented by Marie-Odile Thirouin,
Prague: Museum of Czech Literature (Depozitář/Dokumenty), 2016.
For French and Czech readers.

The book will be presented by Marie-Odile Thirouin (University of Lyon 2) and Marie-Brunette Spire.

An odd story of friendship between two poets that everything seemed to separate: borders, political commitments, and poetic conceptions. Yet, André Spire (1868-1966) and Otokar Fischer (1883-1938) developed in the course of their 16 year-old epistolary correspondence an almost brotherly relationship. Their differences opened up a dialogue that fed their friendship and their reflection on the most pressing issues. Through these warmly felt letters a more unknown dimension of the interwar relationship between Czech and French culture can be uncovered.

Organizers: Museum of Czech Literature (PNP) in cooperation with the French Institute of Prague and CEFRES
Time and Venue: 12.1.2016 at 7:00 pm at the French Institute, Štěpánská 35, 5th floor
Language: French with simultaneous translation in Czech

Read more on the French Institute website.

CEFRES Review of Books

The third edition of CEFRES Review of Books will take place on Wednesday 5 December at 5:30 at CEFRES library.
Join us for a discussion around the latest publications in humanities and social sciences from France.

This informal meeting, which gathers CEFRES team, the library readers, and professionals from libraries and publishing, will give an opportunity for celebrating the beginning of the year. The aim of our Review of Books is to make better known the publishing landscape in humanities and social sciences. Each book is presented in no more than 10 minutes, so to stress its originality and stakes.

The following books will be presented:
Jacques BOUVERESSE: Nietzsche contre Foucault (Argone éd.) by Petr Horák
Catherine KLEIN-GOUSSEF: Échanger les peuples (Fayard) by Florence Vychytil
Jean-Jacques NATTIEZ: Wagner antisémite (Bourgois) by Josef Fulk
M. RIOT-SARCEY: Le procès de la liberté. Histoire souterraine du XIXe   (La Découverte) by Hana Fořtová
Gisèle SAPIRO: Les contradictions de la globalisation éditoriale  (Nouveau Monde éd.) by Chiara Mengozzi
Christian TOPALOV: Histoires d’enquêtes (Classiques Garnier) by Mátyás Erdélyi

You can peruse and download the list of the library’s latest acquisitions and book a book at the following address: claire@cefres.cz.

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3
Language: French

The Expression of Philosophy: Genesis, Traditions, Intersections

A conference by Benedetta Zaccarello, new researcher at CEFRES

Language: English
Venue: CEFRES library, Na Florenci 3

Though a philosopher is commonly seen as a thinker, philosophy is with no doubt a matter of writing – if not of literature – as well. No concepts without words, no ideas without a process of self-clarification in vocabulary, codes and style, no theory without an implicit dialogue with a tradition, or a polemic target tout court. These dynamic processes of composition, address and use of the sources, can be revealed through the study of philosophical manuscripts and archives, and understood as examples of living practices of thought as well as tools for exegesis.