Archives

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 →

The normalized, the normalizers and their cinemas

The normalized, the normalizers and their cinemas: Czechoslovak and Soviet Films of the 1970s

Created and moderated by Anastasia Mamaeva, PhD student at UMR Eur’ORBEM (Sorbonne University/CNRS, Paris), this webinar is organized with the support of Eur’ORBEM, CEFRES (Prague) and Charles University (Prague).
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1 and online (to get the link, please register at cefres@cefres.cz)
Date: May 13, May 27, June 4, 2024 at 4:30 pm (CET)
Language: English

Program

Every session will take place from 4.30 to 6 PM Prague/Paris time and will include a presentation and a discussion.

Monday, May 13

The Squalid Charms of the Stagnation Cinematic Aesthetics
Igor GULIN (independent cultural historian, critic, poet)

Monday, May 27

Visitors and Insiders: The Normalisation-Era Career of Jindřich Polák
Jonathan OWEN (independent scholar of Eastern and Central European cinema, avant-gardes, and cult film; author, Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties, 2011)

Tuesday, June 4

Czechoslovak public relations films for export
Lucie ČESÁLKOVÁ (editor-in-chief, Iluminace magazine; Charles University, Prague)

Abstract

Continue reading The normalized, the normalizers and their cinemas →

The End of the Five Solitudes?

The End of the Five Solitudes? Towards a Linguistic and Cultural Map of Contemporary Montreal

Sixth session of the 2023-2024 CEFRES Francophone Interdisciplinary Seminar The map and the border
In 2023, we would like to start by beginning by questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory), in short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, to question the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Date: Friday 10th, May 2024 from 10am to 12pm CET
Language: French

Speaker: Eva Voldřichová-Beránková  (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)
Discussant: Mateusz Chmurski (CEFRES)

Abstract

In 1945, Hugh MacLennan’s renowned novel Two Solitudes explored the cultural alienation between Quebec’s French-speaking and English-speaking populations. Over three centuries, language, religion and socioeconomic factors have traditionally acte as barriers between these communities, fostering coexistence rather than integration. Since the 1980s, a revived academic interest in Montreal’s Yiddish culture had led to discussions of a “third solitude” characterizing certain Jewish diasporas in Canada. Simultaneously, a cultural and political renaissance among First Nations and Inuit peoples has been decribes as the “fourth solitude”, reflecting their unique life experiences. Today, authors of migrant literatures frequently evoke a “fifth solitude”, encompassing immigrants, their descendants, and native Quebecers who explore themes of exile and cultural adaptation. Montreal emerges as a historical nexus of these “five solitudes”, each shaping the city’s landcape and narrative. By examining specific neighborhouds, insights can be gained into how diverse linguistic and cultural communities have become ingrained in Montreal’s urban fabric, expanding across space and time. Through their literary contributions, they offer distinctive perspectives on the Canadian metropolis, contributing to its intricate linguistic, cultural and mental map. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commits to addressing the “trauma of historical solitudes”, consideration is given to the practical tools available to realize this aspiration.

View the complete seminar program for 2023-2024 here.

‘Post-’. The Past in the Present. CEFRES–CETOBaC Workshop

In 2024, the French Center for Research in Humanities and Social Studies (CEFRES) together with the institution reunited by its Platform – Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences will be CETOBaC’s guest during a one-day workshop.

Date: April 26 2024, 9 am–7 pm CET
Location: CETOBaC, Campus Condorcet, 14 cours des Humanités, Aubervilliers (Bât. recherche Nord, room 0.010)
Language: English, French
Organizers: Mateusz Chmurski (CEFRES), Lucie Drechselová (CETOBaC, EHESS), Fabio Giomi (CETOBaC, EHESS)
Partner Institutions: CETOBaC, EHESS / CEFRES

Program

9:00 – 9:15 – Greeting word

09:15 – 09:30 – Introduction

Marc Aymes, Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central Asian Studies (CNRS / EHESS, CETOBaC)

Mateusz Chmurski, French Center for Research in Social Sciences (CEFRES)

09:30 – 11:00 – ‘Post-’. Thinking the Present Through the Past

Moderator: Emmanuel Szurek (EHESS, CETOBaC)

  • Adrian Brisku (Charles University / Ilia State University), Imperial Political-Economic Legacies in New (Inter)national Economic Order: Albania, Czechoslovakia, and Georgia’s Foreign Trade Discourse and Policy after the Great War
  • Václav Šmidrkal (Czech Academy of Sciences / Charles University), ‘Post-’ and ‘Trans-’: the Legal Status of World War II veterans in Czechia after 1989
  • Jelena Božović (CEFRES / Charles University), Languages in a post-conflict multiethnic society: The interplay of official and unofficial policies in Bosnia and Herzegovina

11:00-11:30 – Break

11:30-13:00 – Memories. Reflecting on the Past in the Present

Moderator: Lucie Drechselová (CETOBaC, EHESS)

  • Marie Černá (Czech Academy of Sciences), The Czechoslovak Prague Spring of 1968 from the point of view of local communist actors
  • Anna Huláková (Charles University), Situated Knowledge, Feminist Frameworks of Analysis and Women’s Representation in the Post-Soviet Central Asia
  • Camille Leprince (EHESS, CETOBaC), La guerre d’Espagne comme représentation de l’escalade de violence en Syrie

13:00-14:30 – Lunch break 

14h30-16h00 – Reflecting on Genocidal and Mass Violence: Yesterday, Today

Moderator: Xavier Bougarel  (CNRS, CETOBaC)

  • Elif Karakaya (Rochester University / CETOBaC), Unfinished Empire: Place and Memory in Post-Ottoman Visual Art
  • Kateřina Králová (Charles University), Holocaust Ruins: Ethnography of Hirsch quarter in Thessaloniki 
  • Özgür Sevgi Goral (Gerda Henkel Stiftung / CETOBaC), Our Wound Runs Deep: Colonial Aphasia and the Memory Field in Turkey

16:30-18:00 – Behind the Scenes of Political Documentaries 

Moderator : Ilshat Saetov (EHESS, CETOBaC)

Screening of Robert Mihály, The Best Corner in the World (2022), 25’, and screening and discussion with the director Sibil Çekmen, On the Trail of Missing Documentaries (in preparation in 2024), 14’.

18:00 – Closing cocktail

Abstract

The Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central-Asian Studies (CETOBaC) at the Parisian Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) examines the past and present situations of Turkish speaking people throughout the geographical area of Turkey, the regions that once formed part of the Ottoman Empire, and Central Asia. The Center’s work concerns not only this population group but also their relationships with their neighbors, and social, cultural, and political questions. For certain research questions, the Center extends its reach towards the east to include Iran, Afghanistan, and China, and, to the west, towards Central and Eastern Europe. CETOBaC brings together historians, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, linguists, and political scientists in 6 research areas: History of the Ottoman Empire; Contemporary Turkey; Balkans in the Contemporary Period; Central Asia and the Caucasus; Languages, Culture and Societies in the Turkish region; Islam and Sufism.
Each year, CETOBaC organizes an annual meeting with a research institution sharing similar scientific interests: these exchanges between researchers and provide a platform for discussing our research on the Balkans, Turkey, the Ottoman Empire and Central Asia in all disciplines.
The 2024 CEFRES-CETOBaC workshop will be structured around three main themes:

  1. Post-Ottoman, post-Habsburg, post-socialist. Thinking the past in the present.
    We will jointly explore the legacies left by the great imperial configurations that had such a profound impact on Central and Eastern European in the 19th and 20th centuries. Particular attention will be paid to how these configurations not only influenced social structure, but also organized the field of social sciences. How do we think about the categories of the multiple “post-“? How do we construct them? By looking at the situated production of knowledge, this first section will address through concepts the institutionalization of “cultural areas” in France and Central and Eastern Europe. This section continues in a successful collaboration launched by Lucie Drechselová during her fellowship at CEFRES in September 2023, that resulted in a doctoral workshop entitled “Dynamics of Political Participation: Disciplinary knowledge through the prism of ‘area studies’”.
  2. Memory studies.
    Closely related to the first section, the second part of the day will explore memory studies. memory studies. The aim is to stimulate dialogue on current research devoted to the formation, preservation, transmission, contestation and forgetting of individual and collective memories. We will also address practices of commemoration and interpretation and interpretation of the past, as well as strategies for reconciliation and healing in post-conflict societies. This section will also examine from several angles the recurring theme of “nostalgia” that animates a multiplicity of the contexts in the post-Soviet and post-Ottoman spaces, as well as – to a lesser extent – in former Czechoslovakia.
  3. Social sciences in danger.
    The third part of the day will take the form of a round-table discussion, focusing on the difficulties facing our disciplines, both in France, in Eastern Europe and in Turkey. We will discuss the combined effects of funding cuts and government decisions restricting academic freedom, controlling research subjects, as well as limiting the dissemination of the dissemination of potentially politically disturbing results. This debate will be followed by the screening of a documentary.

Contested Energy Transitions

Contested Energy Transitions.
Conflicts and Social Innovations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and France

Kick-off meeting of a research project developed within AV ČR–CNRS TANDEM Program by the Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University and CNRS, at CEFRES.

When: Tuesday 23 April 2024, 2 pm–3:30 pm
Where: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1 and online (to get the link, please register at cefres@cefres.cz)
Language: English

With the participation of the project coordinators:

et de

The meeting will be opened by:

  • Mr. Tomáš KOSTELECKÝ, Member of the Academy Council, Czech Academy of Sciences

Presentation

Gilles Lepesant, Martin Durdovic, and Krzysztof Tarkowski will present this project in energy social research. The project aims to better understand transition resistance and stakeholder conflicts arising from the adoption of EU energy transition policies and to identify new patterns in energy governance that will help overcome these challenges. The research is based on a comparative approach between countries and focuses on case studies at the local or regional level. 

Social space, geographical space, representation of space and literature

Social space, geographical space, representation of space and literature

Fifth session of the 2023-2024 CEFRES Francophone Interdisciplinary Seminar The map and the border
In 2023, we would like to start by beginning by questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory), in short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, to question the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Dates: Friday, April 12th, 10–11:30 am
Language: French

Speaker : Josef Šebek, Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, associate researcher at CEFRES

Discussant: Yasar ABU GHOSH (FHS UK)

The talk will focus on the forms of space in Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, looking in particular at the way they relate to one another and at the spatial aspects of the literary field. The first of these forms is the social space and social field, referring to a structure of positions that exists objectively yet does not exist (primarily) in physical space or real (physical) interactions between social agents. In order to make this structure intelligible, Bourdieu creates various spatial schemata that range from simple diagrams to visualisations based on multiple correspondence analysis. His followers come with even more sophisticated representations of social space. The relationship between this structure and geographical/physical space is complicated since relations in the social space or social fields do not necessarily coincide with actual spatial distances and proximities. Nevertheless, Bourdieu demonstrates – especially in the last period of his career – that it is necessary to study the relations among agents and the objectified forms of capital as they play out within physical/geographical space… The talk will then move to the question how the relations of the three forms of space can be applied to the literary field. In the spatially most interesting part of The Rules of Art, the “Prologue”, the representation of space has the competing forms of a diagram and a map. Bourdieu’s thinking on space thus guides us through the intriguing problem how to actually map literary fields as well as the social and geographical space represented in literary works.