Enlightenment in Moravia and French Culture (1750–1820): continuity or discontinuity?

Research Area 1 – Displacements, « Dépaysements » and Discrepancies. People, Knowlege and Practicies

The aim of my project is to examine the various manifestations of French culture in Moravia from the turn of the Baroque, during the age of Enlightenment and until Romanticism.

The project will identify general trends in the reception of French culture in Moravia, the impact of the cultural and philosophical impulses of the Enlightenment and their development over time.

I am thus interested in the reception of French culture (through the importation of books) but also in the use of French in Moravian society, through the production of books (published or not) and private communication (correspondence). I also explore the relatively few, but not insignificant, networks of contacts between Moravia and the French milieu and thus examine the status of French as a means of communication for the elites of the time. The essential theme of the project is the book culture of this period and therefore I examine the noble libraries and their French holdings. Particular emphasis will be placed on the period after 1789, on revolutionary and counter-revolutionary literature and its distribution.

This theme is part of a larger research framework of the Department of Early Printed Materials of the Moravian Library in Brno lead in collaboration with other institutions, among which is CEFRES.

CV

Positions

Since 2020: researcher at the Moravian Regional Library, Brno, Department of Old Prints

Since 2016: Teaching assistant at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno (seminar “Narration au XIXe siècle entre la fiction et l’histoire, Balzac et la Comédie humaine”)

Education

2021 – PhD in Lettres modernes, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno/Université Paris-Est (cotutelle, title of the thesis: La fonction esthétique et l’image de l’histoire – les guerres de Vendée et de Bretagne dans la littérature du XIXe siècle)

2017 – Master in French language and history instruction, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno

2016 – Master in French Philology and History, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno/Université Paris-Est

2013 – Bachelor in French Philology and History, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno

Publications

• „Un roman historique minoritaire. La Bataille de Kerguidu de Lan Inisan“, in: Carmen González Menéndez, Daniel Santana Jügler and Daniel Hofferer (eds.): Literature in a globalized context. : 11th International Colloquium in Romance and Comparative Literature (Universities of Brno, Halle and Szeged). Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Promotionsstudiengang an der Internationalen Graduiertenakademie, 2020, p. 75-86.
• „La guerre de Vendée comme un « mémoricide » ? Point de vue littéraire sur un différend historique.“ Svět literatury : časopis pro novodobé literatury. Univerzita Karlova, 2020, XXX, 62, p. 80-91.
• „Temný stín brněnského vězení. Obraz Špilberku ve francouzské literatuře 19. století.“ Sborník muzea Brněnska, 2019, p. 22-39.
• „Chouan dans la littérature du XIXe siècle comme une figure de l’ancien monde.“ In: Homme nouveau, homme ancien : autour des figures émergentes et disparaissantes de l’humain. Szeged: Jate Press, 2019.
• Roman au XIXe siècle et (re)construction de l’Histoire : Les Bleus et les Blancs d’Etienne Arago. Acta Romanica Quinqueecclesiensis, Pécs, 2019, VI, p. 213-239.
• “Plus quam civilia bella” (Victor Hugo): Animalité et cruauté dans le roman de l’Ouest. Ostium: časopis pre humanitné vedy, Bratislava: Ostium, 2018, roč. 2018, n. 2, p. 110-125.
• Tableau de la France de Jules Michelet: espace géographique, historique ou poétique? Echo des études romanes, Gallica o.s., 2018, XIV, 1-2, p. 59-69.

Contributions to conferences and seminars

• „L’histoire manque aux Chouans (Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly): l’enjeu historique des Romans de l’Ouest“, Conference „Vers un dépassement de la dialectique de l’histoire et de la fiction“, université Lille 3, 9-11 October 2017
• „Fiction et histoire à l’époque romantique : le roman de la Vendée au XIXe siècle“, XXVIIth Conference AFUE „La recherche en études françaises : un éventail des possibilités“, Universidad de Sevilla, 9-11 May 2018
• « Le Roman de l’Ouest sous la Restauration : entre la littérature, l’histoire et la philosophie contre-révolutionnaire », seminar; Laboratoire „Lettres – idées – sociétés », Université Paris-Est, 11 March 2019
• « Œuvre littéraire comme une structure dynamique. Pour une analyse fonctionnelle de la fiction historique », Workshop “Roman francophone et Histoire. Renouvellement des formes d’écriture littéraire de l’événement historique”, EA 1337 (Strasbourg) et EA 3945 (Metz), 23 March 2019
• “Sous la hache, un roman vendéen exemplaire ?” Workshop on French19th-century literature, conference « Elemir Bourges », université Paris-Sorbonne, 19 April 2019
• „Le roman de l’Ouest républicain au XIXe siècle : une contre-mémoire de la Guerre de Vendée ?“, Conference « Mémoire des guerres civiles », Cholet, (coorganisé par les universités de Nantes et d‘Angers), 11-12 June 2021
  

  Scientific Awards

  • 2016 – Award of the Dean, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, for the best MA thesis : „Jules Michelet : narration historique ou narration littéraire ?“.
  • 2019 – Prix Gallica for the best MA thesis : „Dimension médiévale des recueils ésopiques : les Fables de Marie de France“.
  • 2021 – Award of the Rector, Masaryk University, Brno, for the best PhD thesis.

A Socio-Historical Reflection on Everyday Life and Everyday Politics in Post-War Communist Europe (1945–1991)
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Investigation of the various modalities of politicization in contemporary Belarus, in a context of protest and mass repression

Research area 2 – Norms and Transgression

Contact: ronan.hervouet(@)cefres.cz

Ronan Hervouet is a Professor of sociology at the University of Bordeaux and a member of the Centre Émile Durkheim (UMR 5116), of which he was Deputy Director from 2016 to 2019. Holding an “Agrégation” in economics and social sciences (1998), and a PhD in sociology from the University of Bordeaux (2004), he defended his HDR (higher doctorate with accreditation to supervise research) in social sciences at ENS-Paris Saclay in 2018. In Belarus, he taught at the Franco-Belarusian Faculty of Political Science and Administrative Studies of the European Humanities University in Minsk (1999-2001), and was co-director of the Franco-Belarusian Centre for Political Science and European Studies (from 2009 to 2012). In Bordeaux, he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bordeaux from 2005 to 2020. He also carried out teaching assignments at the French University College in St Petersburg (2018) and Moscow (2019).

His research focuses on the everyday life of authoritarian regimes. Adopting an ethnographic approach, he has published two surveys on contemporary Belarus: Datcha blues. Existences ordinaires et dictature en Biélorussie (Belin, 2009), and Le goût des tyrans. Une ethnographie politique du quotidien en Biélorussie (Le Bord de l’eau, 2020) – translated into English as A Taste for Oppression. A Political Ethnography of Everyday Life in Belarus (Berghahn Books, 2021).

At CEFRES, his research will focus on two aspects: a socio-historical reflection on everyday life and everyday politics in post-war communist Europe (1945-1991), and an investigation of the various modalities of politicization in contemporary Belarus, in a context of protest and mass repression.

His project is consistent with the scientific context of CEFRES, and in particular with two of the three priority focuses of the laboratory. It is linked to the questions raised within Focus 2 entitled “Norms and transgressions”. On the one hand, his work on everyday politics in communist Europe, on the displacement and modes of distancing and disengagement from the normative and normalizing ambitions of the state, resonates with the reflections carried out in this focus. On the other hand, the discussions of the reasons for the protests in Belarus call into question the performative ambition of the norms promoted by Lukashenko’s regime. The project is also linked to CEFRES Focus 3: “Objects, traces, maps: spaces of everyday life”. Everyday politics in communist Europe reveal forms of oblique attention to the political discourses disseminated on a large scale throughout the territory. These forms of political avoidance are sometimes expressed in what might be called third places, where the expression of a “quant-à-soi” (“apartness”) is more easily found: kitchens in Soviet flats, places for discreet, sometimes transgressive and oppositional discussions; gardens, vegetable gardens and dachas, which are seen by city dwellers as appropriate places for the expression of subjectivities and a sense of dignity; forests, rivers and mountains where people camp, sing, study, interact and debate, far from urban centers where people are more regularly and routinely exposed to the normalizing and disciplinary gaze of power, etc. These are examples of a specific geography of such forms of political avoidance, which could be discussed in this focus. The spatial dimension of the protests in Belarus (symbolic reversals of spaces that have become political: building courtyards, balconies; politicization of urban spaces: major roads, public squares), could also be informed by the discussions carried out within this focus

Monographs

• A Taste for Oppression. A Political Ethnography of Everyday Life in Belarus, Oxford et New York, Berghahn Books (« Anthropology of Europe ») 2021 .
• Le goût des tyrans. Une ethnographie politique du quotidien en Biélorussie, Lormont, Le Bord de l’eau (« Documents ») 2020.
• Charles-Henry Cuin, François Gresle et Ronan Hervouet, Histoire de la sociologie. De 1789 à nos jours, Paris, La Découverte (« Grands Repères / Manuels »), quatrième édition entièrement refondue et mise à jour, 2017.
• Datcha blues. Existences ordinaires et dictature en Biélorussie, Paris, Belin (« Europes centrales »), 2009. [1ère édition : 2007, Montreuil, Aux lieux d’être (« Mondes contemporains »)].

Edited Monographs

• Charles-Henry Cuin et Ronan Hervouet (dir), Durkheim aujourd’hui, Paris, PUF (« Le lien social »), 2018.
• Elisabeth Gessat-Anstett, Caroline Dufy et Ronan Hervouet (dir.), Quelles hiérarchies sociales en Europe ?, Paris, Pétra (« Europes : terrains et sociétés »), 2009.

Edited Special Issues of Scientific Journals

• Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, « Mondes ruraux et marchés dans l’Europe post-communiste » (dossier – numéro double – coordonné par Caroline Dufy et Ronan Hervouet), vol. 48, n° 1-2, 2017.
• Agora. Débats / jeunesses, « Jeunes générations en Europe : regards croisés Est-Ouest » (dossier coordonné par Pierre-Marie Chauvin, Caroline Dufy, Elisabeth Gessat-Anstett et Ronan Hervouet), n° 45, 2007.

Peer-reviewed articles

• « The Moral Economy of the Kolkhoz Worker, Or Why the Protest Movement in Belarus Does Not Seem to Concern the Collectivized Countryside», Slavic Review, vol. 80, n° 1, 2021, pp. 61-68.
• « A Political Ethnography of Rural Communities under an Authoritarian Regime. The Case of Belarus », Bulletin de méthodologie sociologique / Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, vol. 141, 2019, pp. 85-112.
• « Socialisme de marché et gouvernement des campagnes en Biélorussie », Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, vol. 48, n°1-2, 2017, pp. 85-110 (avec Alexandre Kurilo et Ioulia Shukan).
• « Des épouses dominées ? Mariages transnationaux, inégalités dans le couple et parcours de vie en France de femmes russes, biélorusses et ukrainiennes », Recherches familiales, n° 14, 2017, pp. 95-106 (avec Claire Schiff).
• « The Heritage of Soviet Paternalism in the Belarusian Countryside : The Moralization and Folklorization of the Social World », Mir Rossii [The Universe of Russia. Journal for Sociology and Ethnology – Moscou], vol. 25, n° 4, 2016, pp. 30-51 (avec Alexandre Kurilo).
• « Usages du passé et ordre social en Biélorussie. L’histoire d’un prêtre charismatique aux prises avec son passé criminel », Ethnologie française, vol. 44, n° 3, 2014, pp. 409-420.
• « Le ‘socialisme de marché’ dans la Biélorussie de Loukachenko : égalitarisme, néopatrimonialisme et dépendance extérieure », Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée, vol. 20, n° 3, 2013, pp. 97-113.
• « Travailler ‘bénévolement’ pour la collectivité : les subbotniki en Biélorussie postsoviétique », Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire, n° 78, 2010, pp. 87-104 (avec Alexandre Kurilo).
• « Datchas et mémoires familiales en Biélorussie », Ethnologie française, vol. 37, n° 3, 2007, pp. 533-540.
• « L’économie du potager en Biélorussie et en Russie », Études rurales, n° 177, 2006, pp. 25-42.

Articles

• « Portraits de Biélorusses en temps de révolution », Carnets de Terrain. Le blog de la revue Terrain, 5 août 2021 : https://blogterrain.hypotheses.org/17300
• « Les kolkhozes de Loukachenko : un regard ‘terre à terre’ sur la Biélorussie », AOC media – Analyse Opinion Critique, 8 septembre 2020 : https://aoc.media/analyse/2020/09/07/les-kolkhozes-de-loukachenko-un-regard-terre-a-terre-sur-la-bielorussie/
• « La tradition soviétique des subbotniki dans la Biélorussie de Loukachenko », La Revue russe, n° 41, 2013, pp. 25-36.
• « Authoritarianism from Below. Lessons from Ethnographic Studies in Belarus, The Anthropology of East Europe Review, vol. 31, n° 2, 2013, pp. 19-29: http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/4242
• « Dachas and vegetable gardens in Belarus. Economic and subjective stakes of an ‘ordinary passion’ », The Anthropology of East Europe Review, vol. 21, n° 1, pp. 159-168: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/374

Chapters in collective monographs

• « La postérité de l’œuvre de Durkheim (1858-1917) cent ans après», in Cuin Charles-Henry et Hervouet Ronan (dir.), Durkheim aujourd’hui, Paris, PUF (« Le lien social »), 2018, pp. 1-20 (avec Charles-Henry Cuin).
• « The Metamorphoses of the Dacha : Some Processual Thinking », in Dépelteau François et Savoia Landini Tatiana (dir.), Norbert Elias and Empirical Research, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 179-196 (avec François Dépelteau).
• « Les datchas en Biélorussie et en Russie dans les années 1970 et 1980: accès, formes et usages différenciés », in Nadège Ragaru et Antonela Capelle-Pogacean (dir.), Vie quotidienne et pouvoir sous le communisme. Consommer à l’Est, Paris, Karthala (« Relations internationales »), 2010, pp. 427-456.
• « Biélorussie. Mémoires et ruptures de vie de citoyens soviétiques », in Jérôme Heurtaux et Cédric Pellen (dir.), 1989 à l’Est de l’Europe. Une mémoire controversée, La Tour d’Aigues, Editions de l’Aube (« Monde en cours »), 2009, pp. 203-227.
• « ‘Être à la datcha’. Éléments d’analyse issus d’une recherche exploratoire », in François Dépelteau et Aurélie Lacassagne (dir.), Le Bélarus : l’état de l’exception, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003, pp. 257-317.

Book reviews

• Gouverner la vie privée. L’encadrement inégalitaire des séparations conjugales en France et au Québec d’Émilie Biland (ENS Éditions, 2019), Revue française de sociologie, volume 61, n° 3, 2020, pp. 483-486.
• Sociology in Russia. A Brief History de Larissa Titarenko et Elena Zdravomyslova (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Revue française de science politique, volume 69, n° 1, 2019, pp. 184-186.
• Une paradoxale oppression. Le pouvoir et les associations en Russie de Françoise Daucé (CNRS éditions, 2013), Le Mouvement Social, n° 260, 2017, pp. 157-160.
• On a mangé nos moutons. Le Kirghizstan, du berger au biznesman de Boris Pétric (Belin / Editions de la MSH, 2013), Revue française de science politique, volume 63, n° 6, pp. 1228-1229.
• « La Biélorussie, dernière dictature d’Europe » [lecture critique de : Brian BENETT, The Last Dictatorship in Europe. Belarus under Lukashenko, Londres, Hurst & Company, 2011 ; Valéri KARBALEVITCH, Le satrape de Biélorussie. Alexandre Loukachenko, dernier tyran d’Europe, Paris, François Bourin Editeur (« Les moutons noirs »), 2012 ; Andrew WILSON, Belarus. The Last European Dictatorship, New Haven et Londres, Yale University Press, 2011], Revue française de science politique, volume 63, n° 3-4, 2013, pp. 684-687.
• Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow d’Olga Shevchenko (Indiana University Press, 2009), Europe-Asia Studies, volume 65, n° 4, 2013, pp. 774-776.
• Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside de Melissa L. Caldwell (University of California Press, 2011), Cahiers du Monde russe, volume 51, n°4, octobre-décembre 2010, p. 740-743.
• Le troc dans le marché. Pour une sociologie des échanges dans la Russie post-soviétique de Caroline Dufy (L’Harmattan 2008), Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire, septembre 2009, n° 76, pp. 164-167.
• L’étreinte soviétique de Nicolas Hayoz (Droz, 1997), Revue Française de Sociologie, janvier-mars, volume 41, n° 1, 2000, pp. 181-183.

 

Michèle Baussant

Contact: michele.baussant(at)cnrs.fr

is a CNRS researcher appointed at CEFRES  since February 2020 within the TANDEM program. She works with Johana Wyss on the TANDEM project she initiated as its PI: “Europe: a Resentful Confederation of Vanquished Peoples? Raw and Lapsed Memories of Post-Imperial (European) Minorities”; which contributes to CEFRES’s research area 1. She is ICM Fellow.

Mátyás Erdélyi

Contact: matyas.erdelyi(at)cefres.cz

is from January 2020 a postdoctoral researcher at CEFRES benefitting from the support of the Charles University in Prague. His research project, entitled Insurance, Banking, and Capitalist Modernity in the Late Habsburg Monarchy, contributes to CEFRES’s research area 1.

Maria Kokkinou

Contact: maria.kokkinou(at)cefres.cz

is from January 2020 a postdoctoral researcher at CEFRES benefitting from the support of the Charles University in Prague within the  new TANDEM research project. She is associated at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her research project, entitled The Europe of Resentment and Rubble: A Confederation of the Vanquished? contributes to CEFRES’s research area 1.

Johana Wyss

Contact: johana.wyss(at)gmail.com

is from February 2020 a part-time researcher at CEFRES within the TANDEM program. She works with Michèle Baussant  on the TANDEM project “Europe: a Resentful Confederation of Vanquished Peoples? Raw and Lapsed Memories of Post-Imperial (European) Minorities”.

Associated researchers

Daniel Baric

Contact: daniel_baric(at)yahoo.com

is a former associate professor at the Department of German studies of Tours University. He is currently working at the Department of Slavic studies of Sorbonne University and is since January 2019 associated to CEFRES. His researches focus on cultural transfers and interculturality in Central Europe, especially within the Habsburg Empire, and contributes to research areas 1 and 3.

Ludĕk Brož

Contact: broz(at)cefres.cz

was from February 2018 until January 2020 a part-time senior researcher at CEFRES within the TANDEM program. He worked with Virginie Vaté on the TANDEM project “Bewildering Boar” as its PI. He is since January 2020 associated to CEFRES.

Paul G. Keil

Contact: paul.keil(at)cefres.cz

was in 2019 a postdoctoral researcher at CEFRES and member of the TANDEM project “Bewildering Boar“. His research focuses on human and feral pig relations in Australia. He is since January 2020 associated to CEFRES.

Chiara Mengozzi

Contact: chiara.mengozzi(at)cefres.cz

is, after two years of post-doc at CEFRES, an associate researcher at CEFRES from January 2018. She contributes to CEFRES’s research area 2.

Alexandre Met-Domestici

Contact: a_met_domestici(at)hotmail.com

is from September 2019 an associate researcher at CEFRES. His research project Fighting Money Laundering in the EU and Protecting the EU’s Financial Interests – An Attempt to Define an Integrated Approach contributes to research area 2.

Vincent Montenero

Contact: vincent.montenero(at)cefres.cz

is from September 2019 an associate researcher at CEFRES. His research project Interpersonal and inter-organizational relations within commercial and industrial organizations contributes to research area 1.

Fedora Parkmann

Contact: fedoraparkmann(at)aol.com

is from January 2019 a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an associate researcher at CEFRES. Her research project, entitled A Transnational Perspective on Czech Social Photography. A Case Study of Czech International Exhibitions from 1933 to 1934 between Germany, France and the USSR contributes to CEFRES’s research area 1.

Františka Schormová

contact: frantiska.zezulakova.schormova(@)cefres.cz

is from 2021 an associated researcher at CEFRES, and currently working on the publication of her PhD thesis defended in December 2020, which title is for now  Prague, Red and Black: Early Cold War Journeys, Networks, and Poems. Her researches contribute to CEFRES research area 1.

Clément Steuer

Contact: steuer(@)iir.cz

is  from May 2021 associate researcher at CEFRES. His research deals whith political parties systems in the Midle East and in North Africa. He contributes to CEFRES’s research area 1.

Bernhard Struck

Contact: bernhard.struck(@)cefres.cz

is from September 2020 an associate researcher at CEFRES, following his research on German, French, Polish History, the history of travel, borderlands, cartography and space. He works on the project Esperanto and Internationalism, 1880s-1920, which contributes to research area 3.

Virginie Vaté

Contact: Virginie.vate(at)cnrs.fr

is a CNRS researcher. She was appointed at CEFRES from February 2018 until August 2020 within the TANDEM program, working on a research project entitled “Bewildering Boar: Changing Cosmopolitics of the Hunt in Europe and Beyond” with Ludĕk Brož.

Naïs Virenque

Contact: nais.virenque(at)gmail.com

is an associate researcher at CEFRES fromJanuary 2020. Her research project is entitled: Diagrammatic thought in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern period and contributes to CEFRES’s research area 1.

Benedetta Zaccarello

Contact: benedetta.zaccarello(at)cefres.cz

is a CNRS researcher. After beeing appointed at CEFRES between January 2017 and August 2020, she is now associate researcher at CEFRES. She works on Hybridations of Paradigms and Circulation of Traditions in the Writing of Contemporary Philosophy looking through the manuscript archives of such philosophers as Jan Patočka and Aurobindo Ghose. She intitiated the research project Archives and Multiculturality. Her research is embedded in CEFRES research area 1.

The Digital Game as a Historical Representation – Medievalism and Czech Historical Culture 

Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces

Contact: jan.kremer@cefres.cz

My main research focuses on representations of the past in digital games, how they are constructed by developers and perceived by players. About 56% of the Czech population regularly play digital games; the average age of a player is 33 years and the share of female players is over 30%. Titles set in the past or inspired by history regularly top the sales charts. However, the content of games is not much talked about in mainstream media, and academic historians have so far ignored them. Recent research shows that the digital games have become an influential historical medium due to their interactivity, performativity and immersion. This new form of popular history actually reflects and influences our historical culture, i.e. ‘how we both collectively and individually think about, understand, negotiate and talk about that past in the present’. Continue reading Jan Kremer: Research & CV →