Third International Workshop:
Central European Masculinities in a Comparative Perspective

The international conference is organized by the Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences, within the framework of the Central European Masculinities research project.

Date: September 29 – October 1, 2025
Location: University Library, Michalská 1, Bratislava
Language: English

Program

DAY 1

8:30 Registration
8:50 Opening

9:00 – 10:00
Panel 1: Constructing National Man
Panel chair: Martin Braxatoris (Institute of Slovak Literature SAS, Bratislava)

Filip Mazurkiewicz (University of Silesia in Katowice)
Does the Concept of Hegemony Still Explain Anything?

Václav Smyčka (Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Crying men

Ivana Taranenková (Institute of Slovak Literature SAS, Bratislava) Male Bonding in 19th Century Slovak Literature

10:00 – 10:10 Coffee break

10:10 – 11:40
Irena Bilińska (Institute of Slovak Literature SAS, Bratislava)
Jánošík as a Transgressive Realization of the Topos of the Social and National Defender

Ľubica Schmarcová (Institute of Slovak Literature SAS, Bratislava)
The Masculine Ideal of the Cultural Saint in Romantic Biography

11:40 – 12:30 Lunch break

Panel 2: Jewish Masculinities in Central Europe in the Age of Nationalism and Modernization
Panel chair: Filip Mazurkiewicz (University of Silesia in Katowice)

12: 30 – 14:30
Gergely Kunt (University of Miskolc)
Narrating Coming-of-Age Heterosexuality in the Diary of a Jewish Young Man in Budapest

Miklós Konrád (HUN-REN, Budpest)
Duelling Jews. Male Code of Honour, Assimilation and Jewish Identity in Hungary During the Dualist Period

Mariusz Kałczewiak (University of Potsdam; University of Wrocław)
Male Jewish Bodies – Discourses about Beauty, Disease and Masculinity

Galia Hasharoni (University of Haifa)
Aging Masculinity in Migration: From Central Europe to Palestine in the 1930s

14: 30 – 14: 40 – Coffee break

14:40 – 15:40 Keynote Anne Tomiche (Sorbonne University)
Dandyism as Gender Norm/Transgression in the Early Twentieth Century Avant-gardes

15:40 – 15:50 Coffee break

Panel 3: The Male Body in Central European Turn of Century: Beauty, Health, Disease, Crisis
Panel chair:  Josef Šebek (Charles University, Prague)

15:50 – 17:50
Jan Pezda, PhD. (University of Ostrava)
Apollo versus Hercules. Sport Stars, Physical Culture and Hegemonic Masculinity in Bohemian Lands around 1918

Michał Narożniak (European University Institute)
Galician Men between Moral Panic and Fantasies of Delight: Negotiating Masculinity in the Prostitution Discourse

Darko Ilin (University of Nova Gorica)
Contagious Desires: Medico-Literary Discourses of Masculinity and Sexuality in Lojz Kraigher’s Young Love (1917–18)

Gergely Magos, PhD (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)
Masculinity and the Degeneration of the Hungarian Nation. Male Mental Disorders in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century

19:30 Dinner

DAY 2

9:00 – 11:00
Panel 4: Forging Modern Masculinities: Work, Culture, and Identity in 20th Century Central Europe
Panel chair: Richard Müller (Institute of Czech literature CAS, Prague)

Marcin Szymczyński (University of Silesia in Katowice)
Mining Work as an Experience of Masculinity in Upper Silesia: A Literary Perspective

Tereza Jiroutová-Kyčlová (Charles University)
Messy Democracy: Boyhood, Masculinity, and Leadership in The Minor Theater’s Staging of Jaroslav Foglar’s Canonical Work

Wojciech Smieja (University of Silesia in Katowice)
Krzysztof Varga and his Hungarian HIStories

Elisa-Maria Hiemer (Freie Universität Berlin)
Constructing Fatherhood in Court: Divorce, Law, and Gender Norms in Socialist Europe

11:00 – 11:15 Coffee break

Panel 5: Transgressive Masculinities: Desire, Alterity, and Non-Normativity in Central Europe I.
Panel chair: Mateusz Chmurski (Sorbonne University / CEFRES)

11:15 – 12:45
Agnieszka Sobolewska Alsberg (University of Illinois at Chicago / CEFRES)
Wild Masculinities and Psychoanalytic Heterodoxies: From Vienna and Paris to Prague and Back

Nicolas Aude (Sorbonne University): Men Under the Whip: Deleuze, Sacher-Masoch and the Galician Context

Luca Baruffa (Sapienza, University of Rome): Forests of Desire. Discipline and Dissent in the Twentieth-Century. Homoerotic Naturecultures: from Hans Blüher to Heinz Rutha

12:45 – 13:45 Lunch break

Panel 6: Transgressive Masculinities: Desire, Alterity, and Non-Normativity in Central Europe II.
Panel chair: Marcin Bogucki (University of Warsaw)

13:45 – 15:15
Slaven Crnić (University of Rijeka, Croatia)
A Peculiar Undoing: Male (Non)Normativity and Cultural (Non)Belonging in Ivo Andrić’s Omer Pasha Latas

Josef Šebek (Charles University)
Topography of Masculine Desire: Queering the Metropolis in Czech Literature of the 1980s and early 1990s

Šimon Čižmár (Institute of Slovak Literature SAS, Bratislava)
Queer Masculinity in Slovak literature

15:15 – 15:30 Coffee break

Panel 7: Forging Modern Masculinities: Dissent and Liminal Spaces in 20th Century Central Europe
Panel chair: Wojciech Smieja (University of Silesia in Katowice)

15:30 – 17:30
Richard Müller (Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences)
The Condemned Men’s ominous Bonds in Kafka, Nabokov (and Beyond)

Jan Matonoha (Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
Central European Masculinities in Extreme Liminal Topoi: from the Critique of Václav Havel to Appraisal of Bruno Schulz and Miron Białoszewski

Judit Acsády, PhD (HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences)
De-heroizing Masculinities: Narratives of Male Dominance in Dissident Circles under Kádárism in Hungary

Martin Pavlov (Institute of Slovak Literature SAS, Bratislava)
Nature as a Space of Masculinity Formation in Ivan Laučík’s Poetry

19:00 Dinner

DAY 3

09:30 – 11:30
Panel 8: Central European Masculinities in Transition and Contemporary Global Challenges
Panel chair: Ivana Taranenková (Institute of Slovak Literature SAS, Bratislava)

Ludmiła Janion (University of Warsaw)
Responsibilization of Masculinity in Poland the Transition Era: Sexuality, Pregnancy, Violence

Rafał Majerek (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Wounded Masculinity in Contemporary Slovak Prose (Based on Selected Texts by Márius Kopcsay)

Andrija Golubović (University of Belgrade)
Masculinity Hidden in Plain Sight: Dominant Social-scientific and Sedia Portrayals of the First Two Mass Shootings in Serbia

Ruslana Koziienko (Central European University)
Masculinities at the Home Front: Ukrainian Civilian Men and (Im)mobility Under Martial Law

 13:00 Farewell

The conference is organized as part of the research project VEGA 2/0031/24 Between Norm and Transgression: “Contact Zones” in 19th-Century Slovak Literature and Central-European Masculinities in a Comparative Perspective.