CEFRES Team

Chiara Mengozzi: Research & CV

Animal Matters: Challenging the Anthropological Difference and Literary Norms

Research Area 2: Norms & Transgressions

Contact: chiara.mengozzi@cefres.cz

Mengozzi - photoThe general goal of the project is to investigate the political, ethical and aesthetic questions that arise, when 20th and 21st-century literature try to represent non-human animals and to address them by adopting an approach that is both comparative (I will analyse selected works from French, English, Italian and Czech literature) and interdisciplinary (it will be necessary to draw from the recent debates about the Animal question in different fields of study, ranging from philosophy to bioethics, from law studies to sociology, from cultural anthropology to ethology).

I do not intend to compile an additional contemporary bestiary, i.e. to appraise the animal symbolism in various authors’ poetics, but rather to address a different issue: how literature (the realm of discourse, of narratives, of words) questions itself when it faces animals, their silence and their irreducible and uncanny alterity? More precisely, I will inquire how the irruption of animals into the writing subverts or undermines: a) the norms of discourse (how to represent their peculiar being-in-the-world?); b) the ethics of writing (how to speak on behalf of someone who cannot?); c) the idea of human (where to draw the line between human and non-human?).

CV

EDUCATION

2011 (April 21): PhD in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature/ Doctoral School in Humanities / University of Trieste/ Prof. Sergia Adamo (supervisor)/ Starting date:  January 2008. Title: Narrazioni contese. Pratiche e dispositivi di (auto)rappresentazione nelle scritture italiane della migrazione.

 2009 (September 22): Diploma in Archive Research, Paleography and Diplomatics at the State Archives of Trieste (Italy). Two years school. Final grade: 150/150.

2005 (October 25): Master’s degree in Modern Literature/ Faculty of Arts and Philosophy/ University of Trieste. Title: Animalità e scrittura. Animali non-umani e figure dell’alterità. Final grade: summa cum laude.

CURRENT POSITION(S)

2017-: researcher and teacher at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (French section)/ Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.

 2019-: Co-president of the international network OFFRES (Organisation Francophone pour la Formation et la Recherche en Sciences Sociales) https://offres.hypotheses.org.

2017-: Associate researcher at CEFRES in Prague (Centre Français de Recherche en Sciences Sociales)/ CNRS

PREVIOUS POSITIONS

2014-2016: assistant professor of French literature at the Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

LANGUAGES

Italian: mother tongue
French: perfect knowledge (C2)
English: proficient (C1)
Czech: proficient (C1)
Latin: professional knowledge

FELLOWSHIPS/VISITING PROFESSORSHIPS/AWARDS

2016-2017: two years fellowship at CEFRES in Prague. Title of the project: “Animal Matters: Challenging the Anthropological Difference and Literary Norms.”

2015: (April-May): Visiting Professor at Hosei University-Tokyo, Japan/ Program “Europhilosophie”–Erasmus Mundus.

2007: one year fellowship at Lumière University Lyon 2 to participate in the CICLIM’s activities and LIMAG project (database on the literature of the Maghreb), under the direction of Prof. Charles Bonn.

2006: Degree award/ best graduate of Trieste’s Faculty of Arts (all exams passed with honors).

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

2013-2015: Co-director with prof. Ondřej Švec of interdisciplinary seminars at the OFFRES’ summer schools at the Universities of Trnava (July 2013) on “The struggle for recognition between literature and philosophy,” Brussels (July 2014) on “the narrative of the sick body between objectification and metaphor,” and Warsaw (September 2015) on “Antigone’s posthumous life.”

2014-2016: “Modern and Contemporary French Literature” at the University of Hradec Králové, Department of Education (courses in French).

2017-: Director of the PhD seminar “Literary Theory and Research Methodology,” at Charles University, Department of Romance languages and literatures (course in English and Czech, see above).

2017-2019: “Inverted Canons. Italian Literature in the Era of Transnational Migrations” at Charles University (course in Italian)

2017-2019: “Introduction to Postcolonial Theories and Literatures,” Charles University (course in French, held with a PhD student, Vojtěch Šarše).

2018-2020: course “Literary Theory and Textual Analysis” (course in Italian)

2020-: course “New Approaches to Literary Theory and Comparative Literature” (course in French)

REVIEWING ACTIVITIES

2020/2019/2018: Review panel member/ PhD and post-doc entrance examination at CEFRES

2020/2019: Scientific Evaluation /PhD entrance examination at Charles University

2021-: Advisory Board of Romanica olomucensia (Olomouc, CZ)

2017-: Editorial Board of Meta. Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy (Romania)

2015-: Reviewing Board of Études romanes de Brno (Masaryk University, Brno)

2011-: Copyeditor of Between. Journal of the Italian Association for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature(COMPALIT-Italy)

Occasional reviewer for the following journals: Narrativa. Nuova serie (Paris X-Nanterre), Quaderns d’Italià (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Écho des études romanes (University of South Boemia), Socio. La nouvelle revue des sciences sociales (Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris), Scritture migranti (University of Bologna), MediAzioni. Rivista online Rivista online di studi interdisciplinari su lingue e culture (University of Bologna), Griselda online (literary blog, Italy), Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland).

CAREER BREAKS

2012-2014 (January-September)
January 2012: moving for personal reasons to the Czech Republic and starting of intensive Czech language course, 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, at UJOP, Institute of Czech for Foreigners, Charles University in Prague. End of the course: July 2013. Diploma C1.
September 2013-July 2014: lecturer in French at the high school “Božena Němcová” in Hradec Králové (Comenius teaching fellow)

2016 (August-January): maternity leave

Publications

Monographs
  • Ch. Mengozzi, Narrazioni contese. Vent’anni di scritture italiane della migrazione, Roma, Carocci, 2013, 214 pp.

(http://www.carocci.it/index.php?option=com_carocci&task=schedalibro&Itemid=72&isbn=9788843069323)

  • Ch. Mengozzi, Raccontare la Grande Guerra. Lettura di un epistolario di San Vito al Torre, vol. XIII, Mariano del Friuli, 2007, 243 pp.
Articles in peer-reviewed journals 

Under review 

  • Mengozzi, C., “Metabiography, or the evasive character of real life: from modernism to post-truth” (under review: Modern Fiction Studies).
  • Mengozzi, C. – Wacquez, J. “Re-searching Fiction. Interspecies Assemblages between Science and Fiction in the Anthropocene”  (under review: Critical Inquiry).

Published

  • Mengozzi, C. – Wacquez, J. “La défamiliarisation du monde. Trois exemples de fiction climatique française,” Modern Language Notes, vol. 135, n. 4, 2020, pp. 936-965.
  • Mengozzi, C. “Le diable est dans les périphéries (du texte). Karel Čapek et la destitution du centre”, Revue de Littérature comparée, n. 1, janvier-mars 2020, pp. 17-37.
  • Mengozzi, C. “La letteratura italiana all’epoca del riscaldamento climatico”, Narrativa. Nuova serie, 41 (2019), pp. 23-39.
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “La guerra di Flaiano, o l’etica della farsa”, Italia Studies, 74.1 (2018), pp. 57-70
  •  Ch. Mengozzi, “Aux frontières de l’humanité: (in)efficaticé de l’empathie et de l’expérience esthétique”, Romanistika Pragensia, n. 1, vol. XXII, 2018, pp. 165-78
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Les marges de l’homme en jeu aux limbes du Pacifique”, Revue romane. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures, 52.2 (2017), pp. 260-281
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Le leggi del mercato e le preferenze dei lettori. Ipotesi sulla circolazione e il successo della narrative italiana ultra-contemporanea in Repubblica ceca”, Narrativa. Nuova serie, Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 38 (2017), pp. 101-113
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Pinocchio, ragazzo di strada. Il teatro di Baliani nelle bidonville di Nairobi, Arabeschi, 10 (2017), Online journal: http://www.arabeschi.it/42-pinocchio-ragazzo-di-strada-il-teatro-baliani-nelle-bidonville-nairobi/
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Lo sguardo e la colpa: Tempo di uccidere di Ennio Flaiano e la dialettica servo-signore alla prova del colonialismo”, Modern Language Notes – Italian issue – John Hopkins University Press, 31.1 (2016), pp. 175-195
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Pinocchio migrant et postcolonial. Parcours de subjectivation entre Europe centrale, Italie et Afrique”, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 8.2 (2016), pp. 36-61
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “De L’utilité et de l’inconvénient du concept de World Literature”, Revue de littérature comparée, 3 (2016), pp. 335-349
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Scrivere la storia significa incasinare la geografia: mappe postcoloniali”, Etudes romanes de Brno, 37. 2 (2016), pp. 31-44
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “What little I know of the world I assume. Cornici nazionali e mondiali per le scritture migranti e postcoloniali“, Modernità letteraria, 8 (2015), pp. 27-42
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Minor is beautiful. Il concetto di letteratura minore come strategia di (auto)legittimazione per le scritture migrant”, Studi culturali, IX.1 (2012), pp. 28-48
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Scena interlocutoria e paradigma giudiziario nelle scritture italiane della migrazione”, Between, II.3 (2012), online journal http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/376/364
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Strategie e forme di rappresentazione di sé nella “letteratura italiana della migrazione”, Italies. Littérature. Civilisation. Société, 14 (2010), pp. 381-399
  • Ch. Mengozzi – E. Pizzinat, “Mito infranto. Il miraggio italiano e la prospettiva coloniale nel romanzo di una scrittrice etiopica”, Zapruder. Storie in movimento, 23 (2010), pp. 116-123.
  • Ch. Mengozzi – R. Kirchmayr, “Sartre e le retoriche dell’oppressione. Dall’Orfeo Negro alla Prefazione ai Dannati della terra di Fanon”, aut aut, 339 (2008), pp. 104-120
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Se focaliser sur les animaux. Une lecture de En attendant les barbares de J. M. Coetzee”, Le bateau fantôme, 7 (2008), pp. 69-91
Book chapters
  • Mengozzi, C. “Au seuil d’un autre monde. Réchauffement climatique et formes littéraires,” dans Humain, Posthumain, sous la dir. de Cristina Alvares, Ana Lucia Curado, Sergio Guimaraes de Sousa, éditions Le Manuscrit Savoirs, Exotopies, 2020, pp. 51-78.
  • Mengozzi, C. “On Recognition, Iterability and Self-Creativity in Colonial Contexts”. In Perspectives on the Self. Reflexivity in the Humanities, eds. Vojtěch Kolman and Tereza Matějčková, Berlin, De Gruyter (forthcoming – 2021).
  • Mengozzi, C. “Ways out of the Anthropological Machine, or How and Why Venturing into (De)familiarization,” Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies, London-New York, Routledge, 2020, pp. 1-23.
  • Mengozzi, C. “The Blind Spot of the Plot. Thinking Beyond Human with Karel Čapek,” Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies, London-New York, Routledge, 2020, pp.  114-128.
  • Mengozzi, C. “Il romanzo degli altri. Trent’anni di narrativa italiana postcoloniale e della migranza”, Storia del romanzo in Italia, eds. G. Alfano, F. De Cristofaro, Roma, Carocci, vol. IV, 2018, pp. 435-47.
  • Mengozzi, C. “Griot Fulêr. L’émigration/immigration à l’épreuve d’une (im)possible traduction”, Récits de migration. En quête de nouveaux regards, J. Ghidina, N. Violle (eds.), Clermont-Ferrand, Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2014, pp.257-272.
  • Mengozzi, C. “Archivio, mercato e strategie del vissuto. Su alcune scritture collaborative degli anni Duemila”, Transkurturelle italophone Literatur / Letteratura italofona transculturale, M. Kleinhans – R. Schwaderer (eds.), Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2013, pp. 37-55.
  • Mengozzi, C. “Paris est un livre toujours ouvert. Les Nuits de Paris di Rétif de la Bretonne: flâneries e narrazioni”, Metropolis, A. Masecchia, (ed.),  Quaderni di Synapsis, vol. IX, Firenze, Le Monnier, 2010, pp. 75-87.
  • Mengozzi, C. “Città e modernità. Nuovi scenari urbani nell’immaginario della “letteratura italiana della migrazione“, Moderno e modernità: la letteratura italiana, C. Gurreri et al. (eds.),  Roma, 2008, online http://www.italianisti.it/FileServices/Mengozzi%20Chiara.pdf.
Editorial works
  • Mengozzi, C. – Comberiati, D. Non solo letteratura migrante. Nuovi percorsi di analisi e approfondimento sulle migrazioni nel panorama culturale italiano, Roma, Carocci, 2021.
  • Mengozzi, C.  (ed.), Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies, London-New York, Routledge, 2020.
  • Mengozzi, P. Vurm (eds.), (E)migrations, transferts : métissages et dynamiques de la ville / Dinamiche urbane : migrazioni, dislocazioni, creolizzazioni”, special issue Études romanes de Brno, vol. 37, n° 2, 2016.
  • Mengozzi, G. Zanfabro (eds.) “Davanti alla legge. Tra letteratura e diritto”, special issue Between, II. 3 (2012).
Translations of my articles
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “A World Literature fogalmának hasznáról és káráról az irodalomtudományban”, Helikon: Transnational Perspectives in Literary Studies, n. 2, 2015, pp. 157-173 (translated from French to Hungarian by Berkovits Balázs)
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Le roman des autres: trente ans de littérature italienne de la migration”, Du Colonial au mondial. Anthologie théorique transculturelle, Silvia Contarini – Claire Joubert – Jean-Marc Moura (eds.), Mimesis France, 2019 (translated from Italian to French by Ramona Onnis – being published)
Reviews
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Paolo Vignola, La lingua animale. Deleuze attraverso la letteratura”, Between, I, 2, 2011, http://www.between-journal.it.
  • Ch. Mengozzi, Review of “Scuola e Laboratorio di Cultura delle Donne” (Duino, 25 giugno-1 luglio 2011), Archivi dei sentimenti e culture pubbliche. Un percorso di lettura, http://www.interculturadigenere.org/
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Riccardo Bonavita, Spettri dell’altro. Letteratura e razzismo nell’Italia contemporanea”, Between, I, 1, 2011, http://www.between-journal.it.
  • Ch. Mengozzi, “Franca Sinopoli, Silvia Tatti (eds.), I confini della scrittura. Il dispatrio nei testi letterari”, Semicerchio. Rivista di poesia comparata, 40 (2009), http://semicerchio.bytenet.it/articolo.asp?id=158
CEFRES Team

István Pál Ádám: Research & CV

The Spatial Control of Central European Concierges

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

Contact: istvan.adam@cefres.cz

Isti Claims PhotoIstván has been awarded the degree of PhD at the University of Bristol. His doctoral project examines the role of an understudied group of everyday Hungarians during and before the Holocaust: the Budapest building managers, concierges, or in Hungarian: the házmester. He analysed the building managers’ wartime acts in the light of their decades-long struggle for a higher salary, social appreciation and their aspiration to authority.

As he was working on his doctoral dissertation, gradually István has started to realize that it was not only the Hungarian context where building managers could play a critical role in the Jewish citizens’ survival. This is why his postdoctoral project investigates the similarities and differences among ordinary professionals working as concierges in different Central European territories in the 20th century: in Hungary, in the Czech Lands, in Slovakia and in Poland, and finally in a Western European country: France.

The comparative nature of Istvan’s postdoctoral project is useful in drawing up a European pattern of behaviour of those who belonged to the concierge profession. This could help to better understand the motivation of the general population, who witnessed the persecution of the European Jewry and who welcomed back the survivors in a transitional period. Instead of focusing on the wartime actions (or inactions) of the entire population of a specific country, or instead of drawing up righteous and less righteous realms, Istvan’s research shows that is makes more sense to choose certain groups with similar social and professional problems from various countries, and compare their long time acts and agencies.

CV

Education

2010-2015: PhD in Historical Studies, University of Bristol. Dissertation Title: “Bystanders” to Genocide?: The Role of Building Managers in the Hungarian Holocaust, written under the supervision of Tim Cole and Josie McLellan.

2008-2009: MA in History, Central European University, Budapest. Thesis Title: Post-Holocaust Pogroms in Poland and Hungary.

1998-2003: BA in Law, University of Szeged. Thesis Title: The History of Refugee Legislation.

1994-1998: BA in History, József Attila University, Szeged. Thesis Title: Polish Refugees in Hungary during World War II.

Grants and Fellowships

  • Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies, 2013–2015.
  • EHRI/European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Fellow at the Prague Jewish Museum, November 2014.
  • Junior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, March 2014 – August 2014.
  • Tziporah Wiesel Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, December 2012 – May 2013.
  • EHRI/European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Fellowship at Yad Vashem, October-November, 2012
  • J. & O. Winter Fund Grant, 2011.
  • University of Bristol, Faculty of Arts Scholarship For Postgraduates, 2010.

Selected Publications

Monography
  • Budapest Building Managers and the Holocaust in Hungary. London, Palgrave, 2017.
Articles
  • Review on Barna-Pető, Political Justice in Budapest after WWII, Hungarian Historical Review 3 (2015), p. 790-795.
  • “Tipping the Rescuer? The Financial Aspects of the Budapest Building Managers’ Helping Activity during the Last Phase of the Second World War”, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods, Documentation 2 (2015) 1, p. 4-14.
  • “Das verletzte Selbstwertgefühl des Herrn Professor” in S.I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods, Documentation 1 (2014), p. 22-27.
  • “A házmesterek szerepe a magyar holokausztban” [The Role of Building Managers in the Hungarian Holocaust], in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), Tanulmányok a holokausztról VI [Studies on the Holocaust, vol. VI], Budapest, Múlt és jövő, 2014, p. 103-137.
Calls for Papers, workshops

Private actors in politics and policy-making: Trespassers producing norms?

CEFRES Platform Workshop for Young Scholars

Deadline for Submission: 29 February 2016.
Decision notification due: 14 March 2016.
Date & Place: 12 May 2016, at CEFRES on Národní 18, conference room on the 7th floor.
Organizers: Jana Vargovčíková (CEFRES & FF UK) and Kateřina Merklová (FF UK)

Please send your CV, paper title and a 500 words-long abstract to: jana.vargovcikova@cefres.cz.

The workshop will include among its discussants Hélène Michel (SAGE, Institut d´Études Politiques in Strasbourg) and Michael Smith (CERGE-EI, Czech Academy of Sciences).

For non-Czech participants, accommodation in Prague can be provided by the organizers.

Call for Papers

Political activities of private actors have long since been an object of study in many disciplines of social sciences. In political science and sociology, the notion of “interest group” has served as a particular way of conceptualizing private actors when they try to influence public decision-making (Courty 2006; Grossman and Saurugger 2006). In the face of a growing diversity of entities undertaking such activities (e.g. individual companies, their associations, think-tanks, hybrid networks of companies and NGOs), some suggested that the definition of the term should be extended to encompass this variety of actors (Gray and Lowery 1996; Saurugger 2004) while others have highlighted the specificities of the role companies (Mclaughlin, Jordan, and Maloney 1993; Coen 1997; Hart 2008; Ciepley 2013; Landemore and Ferreras 2015) or lobbyists (Heinz et al. 1993; Kersh 2002; Michel 2005; Courty and Michel 2012) play as actors in politics. The distinction between the private and the public spheres, however, remains a common analytical ground to these works, even when they conclude by observing how the two interlock.

The interweaving relationships of public and private actors have been studied and theorized at least since the works of Arthur Bentley and later pluralist and neo-corporatist theories of state-society relationships (Truman 1959; Schattschneider 1960; Schmitter 1974), theories pointing to rent-seeking behaviour of private actors (Tullock 2005) as well as studies of transnational politics emphasizing the role of private actors in it (Mansbach and etc 1976). In recent decades however, a body of literature has emerged that documents a growth in private actors’ involvement in politics and policy at multiple levels of government, which it relates to the changes in modes of governance towards more horizontality and flexibility in creating policy-making fora (Rhodes 1997; Héritier 2002; Hall and Biersteker 2002; Stone 2013; Peters 2009), but also to the state’s changing regulatory modes and capacities (Majone 1994; Lascoumes and Le Galès 2004; Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007).

While some contend these developments testify to a “retreat of the state” (Strange 1996) or “hollowing out of the state” (Rhodes 1994), others consider that when outsourcing parts of their responsibilities, states are indeed keeping control over the process, and remain, in fine, agents of authority delegation and “accomplices” of the growing role of private actors (Wright 1994; Knill and Lehmkuhl 2002; Green 2013). Still, this rising part taken by private actors in politics and policy has to be read in the context of what has come to be labelled as a crisis of representation. As public authorities are striving to ground more firmly their legitimacy, they are opening windows of opportunity for actors still deprived of a formalized role in politics to negotiate their place in the public sphere.

As the dichotomy underpinning most of this literature suggests, when private actors develop activities in order to influence the production of norms, they can be seen as transgressing borders between the private and the public sphere.

Our workshop will focus on the management, the implications, and the meanings of such transgressions, both analytical and normative:

(1) since norm-production and oversight have been key elements of the classical distinction between the public and private spheres at least from the formation of modern state, the very foundations of such distinction may be questioned with private actors’ increasing involvement in public decision-making.

(2) the analytical distinction, however, cannot entirely be separated from a normative one, the private actors’ involvement sometimes leading to a transgression of norms of democratic decision-making founded on publicity, legitimacy, equality and accountability.

The ambivalence in the perceptions of their role also seems to be growing sharper: On the one hand, private actors are increasingly providing not only technical, but also legal and legislative expertise, be it via expert groups or through the outsourcing of legal work by parties and administrations. They are labelled as partners of public authorities in the Public-Private Partnership projects, as collaborators (Donahue and Zeckhauser 2006), stakeholders or become entrepreneurs of norm-creation themselves (Green 2013). In reaction to broader pressures for companies to take responsibility over their impacts on society and the environment, CSR strategies have become a common exercise for large firms. Growing out of the CSR concept, the notion of corporate citizenship appeared in managerial literature and debates on the purpose of multinational firms, and initiated claims of rights based on these new ways of legitimation (Champion and Gendron 2005; Gendron 2014).

On the other hand, accounts multiplied of private actors’ involvement in financing political parties, of their seeking public procurement contracts through practices of clientelism or corruption, and of their growing investments in lobbying. After decades of reluctance, the criminal liability of companies has entered criminal codes of most European countries: today, companies, and not only “deviant” individuals working for them, can be accountable for white-collar crime (Lascoumes, 1997). Correspondingly, the “fight against corruption” has been institutionalized at both transnational and national levels (Favarel-Garrigues 2009). As contextual as perceptions of corruption might be (Heidenheimer and Johnston 2001; Lascoumes 2011), countless scandals and affairs related to corruption (Thompson 2000; Offenstadt et al. 2007; Rayner 2007; Blic and Lemieux 2005) have stirred public indignation in the recent decades.

Our workshop will bring together junior researchers (advanced PhD students and post-docs in political science, law, sociology and economics) who seek to address the changing role of private actors in norm-production. We particularly welcome papers, empirical or theoretical, related to Central and Eastern European contexts.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to the following:

1. How do private actors manage these transgressions both internally (vis-à-vis their shareholders and employees), and externally (public communication, interactions with public actors)? How do they adapt their practices to the rules of the public sphere? How in turn do they transform these very rules?

2. What role do intermediaries such as consultants, lobbyists, lawyers or advisors play in managing the transgressions between the private and public spheres, both as analytical and as normative categories?

3. How do various public actors manage private actors’ transgressions in the political sphere?

4. What does the growing involvement of private actors in politics and policy mean for the very dichotomy of the public and private spheres and the associated dichotomy of public and private actors? How can we grasp the impact of such developments on our understanding of democratic governance?

Scientific Committee

Hélène Michel (SAGE, Institut d´Études Politiques in Strasbourg), Michael Smith (CERGE-EI, Czech Academy of Sciences), Zdeňka Mansfeldová (Institute of Sociology, Czech Adacemy of Sciences), Ondřej Císař (Institute of Sociology, Czech Adacemy of Sciences), Ondřej Slačálek (Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague).

References

Blic, Damien de, and Cyril Lemieux. “Le scandale comme épreuve.” Politix 71, no. 3 (September 1, 2005): 9– 38.

Champion, Emmanuelle, and Corinne Gendron. “De la responsabilité sociale à la citoyenneté corporative: L’entreprise privée et sa nécessaire quête de légitimité.” Nouvelles pratiques sociales 18, no. 1 (2005).

Ciepley, David. “Beyond Public and Private: Toward a Political Theory of the Corporation.” American Political Science Review 107, no. 1 (February 2013): 139–58.

Coen, David. “The Evolution of the Large Firm as a Political Actor in the European Union.” Journal of European Public Policy 4, no. 1 (January 1, 1997): 91–108.

Courty, Guillaume. Les groupes d’intérêt. Paris: La Découverte, 2006.

Courty, Guillaume, and Hélène Michel. “Groupes D’intérêt et Lobbyistes Dans L’espace Politique Européen : Des Permanents de L’eurocratie.” In Le Champ de l’Eurocratie. Une Sociologie Politique Du Personnel de l’UE, edited by Didier Georgakakis, Etudes politiques., 213–40. Paris: Economica, 2012.

Donahue, John D., and Richard J. Zeckhauser. “Public-Private Collaboration.” In The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, edited by Michael Moran, Martin Rein, and Robert E. Goodin, 496–525. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Favarel-Garrigues, Gilles. “Présentation.” Droit et société n° 72, no. 2 (September 29, 2009): 273–84.

Gendron, Corinne. “L’entreprise Citoyenne Comme Utopie Économique : Vers Une Redéfinition de La Démocratie ?” Lien Social et Politiques, no. 72 (2014).

Gray, Virginia, and David Lowery. The Population Ecology of Interest Representation: Lobbying Communities in the American States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Green, Jessica F. Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Grossman, Emiliano, and Sabine Saurugger. Les Groupes D’intérêt : Action Collective et Stratégies de Représentation. Armand Colin, 2006.

Hall, Rodney Bruce, and Thomas J. Biersteker. The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Hart, David M. “The Political Theory of the Firm.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, December 31, 2008. http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1406640.

Heidenheimer, Arnold J., and Michael Johnston, eds. Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts. 3rd edition. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 2001.

Heinz, John P., Edward O. Laumann, Robert L. Nelson, and Robert H. Salisbury. The Hollow Core: Private Interests in National Policy Making. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Héritier, Adrienne. “New Modes of Governance in Europe: Policy Making without Legislating?” In Reihe Politikwissenschaft, Vol. 81. Wien: Institut für Höhere Studien (IHS), Wien, 2002.

Kersh, Rogan. “Corporate Lobbyists as Political Actors: A View from the Field.” In Interest Group Politics, 225–48. Washington: CQ Press, 2002.

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Landemore, Hélène, and Isabelle Ferreras. “In Defense of Workplace Democracy Towards a Justification of the Firm–State Analogy.” Political Theory, September 18, 2015.

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Calls for Papers, workshops

Central Europe at the Crossroads

PhD Workshop in Prague co-organized by  “Passages” PhD program (Eur’ORBEM, Paris Sorbonne University), the Faculty of Arts of Charles University and CEFRES

Date and Venue: 14 April 2016 at CEFRES (Na Florenci 3) and 15 April 2016 (at FF UK).
Languages: French and English.

Call for papers

These two graduate research days in Prague aim to offer an overview of Central Europe through cultural transfers and intertextuality, considering the connections the countries of that region have shared with both Western and Eastern Europe: they thereby play a central role in the organisation of European geopolitical, literary and cultural spaces.

From this point of view, the capital of the Czech Republic holds a special place in Europe. For centuries the region has been both a laboratory and a source of inspiration for European literature and European poetic programmes. This “two-way traffic” of political, social and cultural influences characterises Central Europe as a space where many dynamics meet.

We will consider the conditions of this meeting, firstly by focusing on the exchanges which make up the transnational aspect of this crossroads and secondly in the perspective of confrontation and borders, which have greatly contributed to establishing its current geopolitical features.

The fact that the region is ill defined, and may be looked on as simply a forgotten space between the East and the West, means it should be seen as a supranational or even supra-political cultural entity.

During the Cold War, the writers and intellectuals Milan Kundera and György Konrád perceived Central Europe (Mitteleuropa) as an artistic entity which was part of a certain tradition. Arguing that there exists a specific space between the East and the West, Imre Kertész considers that the literary world’s “spiritual imagination” constitutes a genuine example of cultural continuity through its intertextuality.

Secondly, we will consider this region, whose borders have overcome many changes, with respect to the hostilities and animosities (military ones, but also ethnic and social ones) which marked its history during the modern era.

This area of friction situated at the crossroads between the Slavic worlds and other peoples inspired an original conception of the border, centre and borderlands, such as those of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

We should also mention this region’s external borders and ask ourselves about the boundaries of Central Europe and its relationship with the Eastern and Western worlds surrounding it. External transfers may be seen as a indication of the strangeness, the shifts, but also of the dialogues that take place with other European regions.

These two aspects outline the guidelines which we intend to follow during these two days, meaning firstly the internal definition of Central Europe as an autonomous cultural space and secondly, its conception as a privileged meeting point between the Western and Eastern cultural spaces.

Contacts : Jean Boutan jean.boutan@gmail.com;

Claire Delaunay claire__delaunay@hotmail.fr.

Calls for Applications, Mobility, Visegrad > France

The International Selection at Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris)

Application deadline: 01/02/2016
Starting: September 2016.
More info: http://www.ens.fr/admission/selection-internationale/
To apply (in English): http://www.ens.fr/admission/selection-internationale/article/session-2016?lang=en
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The Ecole normale supérieure of Paris holds a prestigious place within the best universities worldwide. Students are granted stimulating surroundings and a diversified offer for many formations.

International Selection is a great opportunity for excellent foreign students to join French university excellence. They prepare a Master and ENS Diploma. A personal tutor and a scholarship (1,000 euros/month for 2 or 3 years) give them the best conditions of studies.

To apply: http://www.ens.fr/?article2771.

Candidates receive a letter of acceptance (or refusal) in March 2016. Selected applicants are invited to take part in an exam session in July in Paris. After a series of written and oral tests, final results are proclaimed. The academic year starts at the begining of September 2016.

Eligibility criteria
  • Candidates must not be after their 25th birthday on December 1st.
  • Candidates must not have applied to the International Selection before.
  • Candidates must not have lived in France more than 10 months during the academic year of the selection (September 1st – August 31st) nor the previous year.
  • Candidates must justify at least one year of undergraduate studies awarded by a foreign university during the calendar year preceding the start of applications.
  • Candidates justify at least two years of undergraduate studies in a foreign university, on the 1st of September following admission.

French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences – Prague