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Around the migrations of the 20th century – prospects from the two sides of the Channel

When and where: 27 April 2017, 2:00 – 7:00 pm, Hybernská 3, room 303
Languages: English & French
Organizers: Luďa Klusáková and Jaroslav Ira (Institute of World History, FF UK)

Invited speakers

Laure Teulières (FRAMESPA, Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès): Representations of the foreigner in France after the First World War

Abstract
After the First World War, France experienced an unprecedented wave of immigrants and the topic appeared in numerous public discourses (press, studies and essays, public reports, political declarations, etc.). In order to understand the operating representations at the time, that were confronted by such a phenomenon, one needs to understand a set of complex cultural references and cross them with different scales of analysis. This presentation aims to discuss the typological approach and to seize the social and cultural framework that explains them. The regional dimension being one of the parameters to be taken into account, the French South West region will therefore be mentioned in particular. The foreigner, thus, is not just he or she with a different nationality or ethnic group – moreover differently perceived depending on reputations and customary stereotypes. One must also take into account the distinctions that are not regularly mentioned: between townsfolk and farmers, sedentary or itinerant, isolated or in a family … A diachronic perspective that stretches on till the Second World War which allows to better distinguish within this domain what has more to do with permanence and circumstance.

Simon Gunn (Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester): From Workers to Communities: Migration and the Politics of Ethnicity in Bradford, England, c.1945-1980

Abstract
In the two decades after the Second World War a host of different groups from Europe, the Caribbean and South Asia came to the northern English city of Bradford to work in the woollen mills. The result was to create one of Britain’s earliest and most distinctive postcolonial cities, in which Pakistanis represented the single largest ethnic minority. This paper traces the changing identities of Asian migrants in Bradford, from the category of ‘workers’ in the 1950s to that of ‘communities’ in the 1960s and 1970s. In this process, ‘culture’ became increasingly important as a means of identifying Asian populations in the city and of the public self-identification of those populations. I argue in the paper that this process of ‘culturalization’ was double-edged, bringing with it problems which were to become visible in the Bradford ‘race riots’ of 1995 and 2001.

2/ Comparative perspective from Central Europe

Tereza Horáčková: Diversity of a diaspora integrated through economic strategies: Vietnamese in the Czech Republic since the 1950s

Nóra Abdel-Salám: Diverging Migratory Tendencies of the Youth in Central Europe – Case Studies of the Hungarian and Czech Models

 

 

Armenian Chronicles from Ukraine

Between Poland and the Ottoman Empire: Armenian Chronicles from Ukraine during the Thirty Years’ War

Fifth session of the 2024-2025 CEFRES Francophone
Interdisciplinary Seminar The Map and the Border
Already in 2023, we  started questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory). In short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, we began inquiring into the question of the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Date: March 28, 2025, from 10am to 12pm
Language: French

Speaker: Petra Košťálová (Institute of Ethnology , Czech Academy of Sciences)
Discussant: Radu Paun (CERCEC/CNRS) & Laurent Tatarenko (CCFEF, Warsaw)

Abstract Continue reading Armenian Chronicles from Ukraine →

Archives

The seventh session of IMS / CEFRES epistemological seminar of this year will be hosted by

Raluca Muresan (U. Paris-Sorbonne / associated at CEFRES)
Benedetta Zaccarello (CNRS / CEFRES)

Archives

Where: CEFRES Library – Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
When: Wednesday 3 April 2019 from 4:30 pm to 6 pm
Language: English

Texts

  • Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz: “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”, Diacritics, 25-2 (1995), p. 9-11.
  • Mbembe, A.: “The Power of the Archive and its Limits”, in: Refiguring the Archive, C. HAmilton, V. Harris, G. Reid (eds), 2002, p. 19-26. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=FZ8oBgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&hl=cs&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
  • Filippo de Vivo, Maria Pia Donato, « Scholarly Practices in the archives, 1500-1800 : Introduction », Storia della Storiografia, 68, 2/2015, p. 15-20.

Architecture and Art as Historical Sources: On the Borders of Humanities and Social Sciences

A session led by Monika Brenišínová

In various theoretical discussions on architecture, we may notice that there is not a singular way of approaching it. From the classical perspective of the history of art classical art historical perspective, it is possible to identify at least three basic methods of inquiry: archaeological building survey („Bauforschung“, A. von Gerkan, in Czech “SHP”, D. Líbal); style-critical and style-historical analyses (H. Wölfflin, H. Focillon, M. Dvořák); semantic analysis (G. Passavant, E. Hubala). When we consider art in general, things however get even more complicated. If we take into account the fact that even among historians of art a consensus about the definition of art as such does not exist, what will happen when we will look at art from the perspective of another scientific discipline? When we conceive art as an historical source, traditional art historical categories such as the aesthetic point of view, the author’s fantasy, the styles or commonplaces (loci communes) quickly lose their significance. Moreover, historical work with visual sources is largely interpretative and requires a significantly critical approach. Thus we suddenly find ourselves on the borders of humanities and social sciences. And it is exactly such space, outside the frontiers of clearly defined disciplines, where the space and time change their shapes and where other disciplines – such as anthropology – can be brought into play.

Readings:

  • Clifford Geertz. ‘Art as Cultural System.’ MLN 91(6): 1473–1499, 1976.
  • George Kubler. ‘History: Or Anthropology: Of Art?’ Critical Inquiry, 1(4): 757-767, 1975.

Architecture and Art as Historical Sources: On the Borders of Humanities and Social Sciences

Session led by Monika Brenišínová.

Readings

  • Clifford Geertz. ‘Art as Cultural System.’ MLN 91(6): 1473–1499, 1976.
  • George Kubler. ‘History: Or Anthropology: Of Art?’ Critical Inquiry, 1(4): 757-767, 1975.

In various theoretical discussions on architecture, we may notice that there is not a singular way of approaching it. From the classical perspective of the history of art classical art historical perspective, it is possible to identify at least three basic methods of inquiry: archaeological building survey („Bauforschung“, A. von Gerkan, in Czech “SHP”, D. Líbal); style-critical and style-historical analyses (H. Wölfflin, H. Focillon, M. Dvořák); semantic analysis (G. Passavant, E. Hubala). When we consider art in general, things however get even more complicated. If we take into account the fact that even among historians of art a consensus about the definition of art as such does not exist, what will happen when we will look at art from the perspective of another scientific discipline? When we conceive art as an historical source, traditional art historical categories such as the aesthetic point of view, the author’s fantasy, the styles or commonplaces (loci communes) quickly lose their significance. Moreover, historical work with visual sources is largely interpretative and requires a significantly critical approach. Thus we suddenly find ourselves on the borders of humanities and social sciences. And it is exactly such space, outside the frontiers of clearly defined disciplines, where the space and time change their shapes and where other disciplines – such as anthropology – can be brought into play.

 

Approaching the Borderlands: Cultural Intimacy as Theory and Practice

Third session of the 2018 common epistemological seminar of CEFRES and IMS FSV UK led by

Katerina Zheltova (IMS FSV UK)
Approaching the Borderlands: Cultural Intimacy as Theory and Practice

Where: CEFRES library – Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: Thursday 22.03.2018 from 3:30 pm to 5 pm
Language: English

Text:

  • Michael Herzfeld, “Introducing Cultural Intimacy”, in Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, New York and London, Routledge, 2004, pp. 1-33.