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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 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 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

Continue reading A French Perspective on Czech History. Svět knihy 2023 →

A European Middle Ages | Doctoral Workshop

A European Middle Ages. Circulation of Objects, Practices, and Techniques between Central and Western Europe (1000–1600)

Fourth PhD Students Workshop organized within the cooperation agreement signed by EHESS, CEFRES, Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Date: April 24, 2025
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1 (and online, to get the link, register at the address cefres@cefres.cz)
Language of the workshop: English

Convenors:

  • Lise Saussus, Center of historical research, UMR 8558, School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences
  • Jakub Sawicki, Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
  • Tomasz Cymbalak, National Heritage Institute, Prague
  • Nicolas Thomas, National Institute of Preventive Archeological Research, Laboratory of Western Medieval Studies, Paris
Program Continue reading A European Middle Ages | Doctoral Workshop →

A cartographic perspective on Northern Africa and Middle East

A Cartographic Perspective on Northern Africa and Middle East after Arab Revolutions

Second 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, November 3rd, 10 am
Language: French

Speaker : Maher BEN REBBAH, CNRS
Discussant : Clément Steuer, IIR, Prague; associate at CEFRES

“Plus de dix ans après les révoltes populaires dans les pays arabes, comment le printemps arabe a redessiné le “Monde Arabe” ? L’objectif de cet essai de cartographie est loin de faire un bilan des révolutions. Il s’agit tracer la nouvelle géopolitique multiscalaire de la région au prisme de ces révoltes.”

Maher Ben Rebbah is geographer, member of CNRS research institute Ladyss (UMR7533)

31st Summer School of the Jan Hus Foundation 

THE VAGUENESS.
31st Summer School of the Jan Hus Foundation 

Organizers: the Institute of Philosophy of Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Department of Romance and Slavic Languages of the Faculty of Applied Languages of the University of Economics of  Bratislava
With the support of: the French Embassy in Slovakia, the French Institute in Slovakia, the CEFRES, the IUFS / SFUI and FrancAvis
Date : 24th August – 28th august 2023
Location:  Krahule

Provisional program 

Jeudi 24 août

Après-midi : arrivée des participants

19h : dîner

Vendredi 25 août

8h – 9h : petit-déjeuner

9h – 9h15 : ouverture

9h15 – 10h15 : Colas DUFLO (Université Paris Nanterre) –Conférence plénière – titre à préciser

10h15 – 10h45 : pause-café

10h45 – 11h45 : Bertrand PRÉVOST (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) – Conférence plénière – titre à préciser

12h – 13h : déjeuner

13h – 14h : André SCALA (IDBL Digne-les-Bains) – Conférence plénière – titre à préciser

14h – 15h : Josef FULKA (Université Charles) – La naissance du langage selon Condillac
Petr KYLOUŠEK (Université Masaryk de Brno) – Le flou – la septième fonction du langage ?

15h – 15h30 :  pause-café

15h30 – 18h : Florence BOULERIE (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) –  Dans le vague des sentiments : l’expression du flou comme spécialité des romancières d’une période esthétiquement indéfinie, 1780-1820 ?
Katia HAYEK (Université Masaryk de Brno) –  Du flou à la société : le roman du romantisme dit noir
Vasile SPIRIDON (Université d’Économie de Bratislava / Université de Bacău) – Le flou chez Nerval
Sunil KUMAR (Université Charles) – Une image féministe floue de Gustave Flaubert en Inde
Barnabé PIRET (Université de Liège) – Le faubourg Saint-Germain : floutage et brouillage d’un lieu dans la littérature. Étude de cas chez Rutlidge, Balzac et Barbey d’Aurevilly

19h : dîner

Samedi 26 août

8h – 9h : petit-déjeuner

9h – 10h30 : Sylviane COYAULT (CELIS Université Clermont Auvergne) – Le flou générique dans Autoportrait en vert de Marie Ndiaye
Zuzana MALINOVSKÁ (Université Comenius de Bratislava) – Noëlle Revaz : du flou au précis
Eva VOLDŘICHOVÁ BERÁNKOVÁ (Université Charles) – Le flou transgressif chez Didier Eribon

10h30 – 11h : pause-café

11h – 12h30 : Jan BIERHANZL (Université Charles) – L’heure bleue et le rêve éveillé chez Ernst Bloch
Róbert KARUL (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – Archi-événement dans les écrits de Claude Romano
Alžbeta KUCHTOVÁ (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – Le flou insaisissable et la pensée environnementale

12h30 – 13h30 : déjeuner

13h30 – 15h30 : Ján ŽIVČÁK (Université de Prešov) – Nouvelles perspectives sur les pièges d’un discours poétique flou de la fin du Moyen Âge : Jozef Felix face à François Villon
Jaroslav STANOVSKÝ (Moravská zemská knihovna) – Les écrits de Maximilian Lamberg à la frontière des genres et des styles
Dóra SZÉKESI (Université de Szeged) – Jacques le Fataliste et son maître de Denis Diderot, un flou artistique
Andrea TUREKOVÁ (Université d’Économie de Bratislava) – Le flou des sentiments dans le roman libertin

15h30 – 16h : pause-café

16h – 18h :  Anna LUŇÁKOVÁ (Université Charles) – Image rémanente
Jon STEWART (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – La technique de la caméra tremblante en cinématographie : une
exploration du flou de la perception
Tetyana SERGIENKO (Université Charles) – Le flou en musique : une rétrospective historique
Daniel VOJTEK (Université Šafárik de Košice) – Flou terminologique en grammaire : le cas du français et du slovaque

19h : dîner

Dimanche 27 août

8h – 9h : petit-déjeuner

9h – 10h30 : Erzsébet FENYVESINÉ PROHÁSZKA (Université de Szeged) – Les représentations de l’incertitude dans la peinture française au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle
Zsófia IVÁN-SZŰR (Université de Szeged) – La touche de Jean Siméon Chardin et la vision trompée
Katalin KOVÁCS (Université de Szeged) – « Les nuages qui passent » : contribution à la peinture des nuages aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles
Luca RAUSCH-MOLNÁR (Université de Szeged) – Watteau : artiste mélancolique ou œuvre mélancolique ?

10h30 – 11h : pause-café

11h – 12h30 : Kateřina SEGEŠOVÁ (Université Masaryk de Brno / Université de Sorbonne) – Le flou de Bohuslav Reynek
Michaela RUMPÍKOVÁ (Université Charles) – Pour une nouvelle ontologie des corps : « gender/genre blurring » au
sein de l’espace littéraire
Silvia RYBÁROVÁ (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – à préciser
Dalibor ŽÍLA (Université Masaryk de Brno) – Mémoire floue à travers Les Années d’Annie Ernaux

12h30 – 13h30 : déjeuner

section anglaise
13h30 – 15h30 Ivana KOMANICKÁ (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – Negative Capability and John Keats : Thinking in writing
Katalin STEWART (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – The Ambiguity of Perception: The Turn of the Screw as an Aporetic
novel
Dagmar KUSÁ (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – à préciser
Lukáš SIEGEL (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – The Relative Individual: Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy in the Age of Modern Technologies

15h30 – 16h : pause-café

16h – 17h30 : Michal LIPTÁK (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) –Fleeting promise of happiness: phenomenological reading of Adorno’s philosophy of avant-garde music
Marcel ŠEDO (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – French meditations on the concept of event (according to Heidegger)
Michal ZVARÍK (Académie Slovaque des Sciences) – The Dead In And Among Us. Jan Patočka’s Concept of After-Life

19h : dîner

Lundi 28 août

8h – 9h : petit-déjeuner

matinée : départ des participants