Tag Archives: Comparative Literature

Jan Musil – Research & CV

“Thanatographies and the Modes of Literary Mourning”

Contact : me@janmusil.net 

Research Area 2 

In my research at the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Charles University, I am looking at autobiographical narratives concerned with the death of a close person and mourning, which I call thanatographies. 

In the contexts of claims that death had been made into a taboo during the 20th century (Ariès, Becker, Ohler, Jankélévitch, etc.), I understand thanatographies, emerging mainly in the second half of the period, as counter-narratives that treat death in its different forms, such as death of the other, grief, fear of own death, processes of dying, hospitalization, suicide, etc. in a sensitive and complex manner. If the norm is death that is on the one hand inexpressible or radically Other, or, on the other hand, aesthesized, objectified and medicalized, then the transgression is death, dying and grief as a subjective experience, communicated through writing, which is aware of its own performative nature (de Man) and seeks a sense of agency in the grieving process (Blumenberg). I am mainly interested in how mourning is staged using literary means, and I offer alternatives to the widespread Freudian reading of grief writing (not just thanatographies, but elegies and other commemorative genres, too) as work of mourning.  Continue reading Jan Musil – Research & CV

Representing same-sex desire

Representing same-sex desire.
Local contexts, global circulations

A project funded by the 4EU+ University Alliance, developed by Sorbonne University (Paris), the Faculty of Arts, Charles University (Prague), the Universities of Copenhaguen, Milan and Warsaw, and CEFRES.

Project coordinators:

Josef Šebek, Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Czech and Comparative Literature – principal investigator of the 4EU+ minigrant
Mateusz Chmurski, CEFRES – French Center for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, Prague / Sorbonne Université
Carlotta Cossutta, Università degli Studi di Milano Statale / FUEL – Feminist and Queer Philosophy Lab
Libuše Heczková, Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Czech and Comparative Literature / Centre of Gender Studies
Anton Juul, University of Copenhagen / Centre for Gender, Sexuality and Difference
Iwona Kurz, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Instytut Kultury Polskiej
Jean-François Laplénie, Sorbonne Université / Initiative Genre Philomel

Abstract

The project intends to develop a network of 4EU+ colleagues working on LGBTQ+ cultural and literary history around a book project for the International Comparative Literature Association series’ Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (ICLA CHLEL). Continue reading Representing same-sex desire