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Aktuality

14. 12. 2020

Online lecture by Anna Bischof (Collegium Carolinum, Munich), The First Czechoslovak Republic and its Protagonists in the Broadcasts of Radio Free Europe

Online lecture by Anna Bischof (Collegium Carolinum, Munich), The First Czechoslovak Republic and its Protagonists in the Broadcasts of Radio Free Europe

Datum konání:
14. 12. 2020, 15:00

Online conference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81765753328

Ever since Radio Free Europe (RFE) started broadcasting to Czechoslovakia in 1950 topics such as the First Czechoslovak Republic and its protagonists – above all Tomáš G. Masaryk and Edvard Beneš – played a significant role in the programming of this US-American sponsored radio station. This presentation will shed light on the use of these topics in Cold War communication as well as on the underlying broadcast policy of RFE and its function in the US-American Cold War strategy. Finally, the talk will point out how RFE got into trouble by disseminating certain narratives of Czechoslovakia’s recent history.

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28. 2. 2021
Střed | Centre, 1/2021 – výzva autorům
Střed | Centre, 1/2021 – výzva autorům

Datum konání:
28. 2. 2021, 0:00
Téma čísla: Nová data – nové otázky? Digitální dějiny střední Evropy

Redakční uzávěrka pro odevzdání studií: 28. února 2021

Kontakt: stred@mua.cas.cz

Publikační jazyky: čeština, angličtina, němčina

Webová stránka časopisu: https://www.mua.cas.cz/cs/stred-casopis-pro-mezioborova-studia-stredni-evropy-19-a-20-stoleti

Plný obsah časopisu: www.ceeol.com

Abstrakty: http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl

Indexace: ERIH+, SCOPUS, CEEEOL, CEJSH, EBSCO

Technologický pokrok v oblasti digitalizace dat a jejich počítačového zpracování neproměňuje jen technické a přírodní vědy, ale tyto přístupy se stále silněji rozvíjejí také v oblasti humanitních oborů (digital humanities). Vedle zpřístupňování dosavadních analogových dat prostřednictvím digitalizace a virtuálních prezentačních platforem dochází k vytváření nových datových souborů sestavených na míru novým badatelským otázkám a výzkumným cílům. Možnosti kvantitativních i kvalitativních zpracování velkých datových objemů, vizualizace a modelování dat, však nemění jen dosavadní způsoby práce, ale otevírají také nové epistemologické možnosti a badatelské perspektivy, díky nimž se mění dosavadní charakter těchto vědních oborů.
Také v historiografii se začínají prosazovat přístupy digitálních dějin (digital history). Mezi ty nepatří jen digitalizování původních historických pramenů knihovnami, archivy nebo muzei a jejich zpřístupňování badatelům prostřednictvím internetových platforem. Pro rozvoj oboru jsou podstatné také možnosti propojení digitálního sběru a zpracování dat s novými výzkumnými otázkami a metodologickými přístupy, které práce s klasickými historickými prameny neumožňovala. Vedle oblastí historické vědy s tradicí těchto přístupů jako je kliometrie v hospodářských dějinách, je otázkou jaké možnosti přináší digitalizace a komputerizace zpracování historických datových souborů pro další historické subdisciplíny.

Toto číslo časopisu Střed | Centre otevírá diskusi o lokalizaci a roli digitálních humanitních věd a digitálních dějin a jejich schopnosti otevírat nová badatelská témata a formulovat nové výzkumné otázky. Hledáme příspěvky, které reflektují epistemologické možnosti metod digitálních humanitních věd a digitálních dějin a analyticky je aplikují na témata z moderních dějin střední Evropy. Jsou digitální přístupy předzvěstí zásadní proměny výzkumu v humanitních vědách, nebo pouhým nástrojem pro zefektivnění již existujících postupů postrádajícím paradigmatický potenciál? Číslo časopisu zahrnuje následující tematické okruhy:

Projekty dílčí digitalizace s prezentací analytických výstupů

Interdisciplinarizace a využívání digitálních datových zdrojů napříč humanitními obory

Konzervativní a digitální přístupy humanitních věd k tezauraci zdrojů

(Dis)Kontinuita využití informačních technologií v humanitním výzkumu

Digitální humanitní vědy a prostorový obrat

Humanitní vědy a výzkum kyberprostoru

Výzva autorům (česky, PDF)

Call for papers (English, PDF)
28. 2. 2021
Střed | Centre, 1/2021 – Call for papers
Střed | Centre, 1/2021 – Call for papers

Datum konání:
28. 2. 2021, 0:00
Issue theme: New Data – New Questions? The Digital History of Central Europe

Deadline for submissions: February 28th, 2021

Contact: stred@mua.cas.cz

Publication languages: Czech, English, German

Journal website: https://www.mua.cas.cz/en/stred-centre-journal-for-interdisciplinary-studies-of-central-europe-in-the-19th-and-20th-centuries-323

Full text of the journal: www.ceeol.com

Abstracts: http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl

Indexing: ERIH+, SCOPUS, CEEEOL, CEJSH, EBSCO

Technological advances in the digitization of data and computer processing have not only transformed the technical and natural sciences, but are also increasingly used in the humanities. In addition to making existing analog data accessible, digitization and virtual presentation platforms create new data files that are tailored to the needs of the latest research topics and goals. The possibilities of the quantitative and qualitative processing of large volumes of data, visualization, and data modelling have not only changed how we work today, but have also created new epistemological prospects and research perspectives that are revolutionizing these academic fields.
Digital history approaches are starting to be applied to historiography as well. These methods include the digitization of original historical sources in libraries, archives, or museums and making them accessible to researchers through internet platforms, and connecting digital data collection and processing with new research questions and methodologies that were previously impossible. Cliometrics in economic history has been a field with a longer tradition pursuing these approaches, however, we still do not know the extent of the possibilities of the digitization, computerization, and processing of large data files in other historical subdisciplines.

This issue of Střed | Centre will discuss the localization and role of digital humanities and digital history and how they can open up new topics for investigation and formulate new research questions. We are looking for papers that reflect the epistemological possibilities of the various methods used in digital humanities and digital history and analytically apply them on topics from modern Central European history. Are digital approaches a harbinger of a fundamental change in the humanities or a mere tool to help historians streamline existing approaches that is unlikely to result in a paradigm shift? The issue will include the following topics:

Partial digitization projects with a presentation of analytical outputs

Interdisciplinarization and using digital data sources across the humanities

Conservative and digital approaches to resource hoarding

The (dis)continuity of using information technology in humanities research

Digital humanities and spatial turn

Humanities and cyberspace research

Call for papers (English, PDF)

Výzva autorům (Czech, PDF)
23. 6. 2021 to 25. 6. 2021
Workshop CfP: Humanitarian Mobilization in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century
Workshop CfP: Humanitarian Mobilization in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century

Datum konání:
23. 6. 2021, 0:00 to 25. 6. 2021, 0:00
Venue: Prague

Organisers: Doina Anca Cretu, Michal Frankl (ERC-funded project Unlikely refuge?, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Humanitarianism has become one of the defining features of our contemporary world, as governments, private associations, and international organizations are increasingly responding to human suffering across the borders of nation states. The twentieth century saw an increased institutionalization, professionalization, and direct intervention on behalf of those in need. Yet this expansion of aid also multiplied the dilemmas of humanitarian engagements.

This workshop tackles humanitarianism in Central and Eastern Europe during the twentieth century, probing the tensions stemming from engagements in nationalist and/or state socialist environments and the dilemmas or misunderstandings that arose from encounters with Western forms of providing aid. Central and Eastern Europe experienced the creation of new nation states and an escalation of nationalism. This region was moreover a site of violence and genocide during the two world wars as well as during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Centralization, political control, and persecution under state socialism also shaped but also often limited humanitarian activism through individual and social engagements. Narratives of Western humanitarianism have often treated this region as one of backwardness and of a passive reception of benevolent mobilization for those in need. However, the region was a space of amplified local action to relieve suffering at the same time as humanitarian initiatives from abroad grew in presence and capacity. Studying humanitarianism from below, against a backdrop of complex political and social contexts, is essential to understanding how solidarity was constructed and how aid was provided in this region during the twentieth century.

The workshop aims to engage with diverse facets of providing aid in Central and Eastern Europe, as this area opens up broader questions of local, national, and international scales of humanitarianism. The workshop will focus on domestic forms of humanitarianism and investigate key local actors (e.g. state institutions and their officials, formal associations, activists, and charity workers), their agendas, and practices of providing aid. It will further explore their entanglements and relationships with Western as well as non-Western actors and their relief practices in Central and Eastern Europe. It will investigate how important political, ethnic, or confessional identities were in shaping discourses and practices of solidarity. It will furthermore reflect on the ways in which humanitarians positioned and negotiated the provision of aid within local nationalist and/or state socialist frameworks. Some of the questions we aim to address are: How did local actors interpret the motivations and methods of international humanitarian organizations?How did humanitarian work operate in contexts in which aid was perceived as a tool for reconstructing nations, building a socialist society, or transitioning to democracy?

This event is organized within the ERC Consolidator Grant project “Unlikely Refuge? Refugees and Citizens in East-Central Europe in the 20th Century” at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. This forms part of a series of workshops that aim to explore this project’s thematic approaches in relation to and beyond the central theme of providing assistance and protection to refugees.

We seek papers pertaining to different disciplines (history, social and cultural anthropology, sociology, political science etc.) that address the following themes related to humanitarianism in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe:

Institutional and individual actors: This theme addresses humanitarian practices developed by states, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, activists, and workers on the ground. What were the humanitarians’ main motivations, agendas, and methods? How did political, national, and confessional identities shape humanitarian processes?

Discourses of humanitarianism: How did various actors rhetorically and visually transmit humanitarian agendas and practical efforts within public space? What does the study of discourse tell us about the power relationships between aid providers and recipients, or between transnational and local actors? What entities and identities emerged as a result of these discursive entanglements?

Methodological avenues: How can scholars methodologically engage with local experiences and how can they capture the recipients’ voices and perceptions in the Central and Eastern European context? How was the process of humanitarianism (i.e. the main actors, their agendas, and related practices on the ground) documented? What do archival representations tell us about the relationships between aid providers and their recipients?

The workshop will be conducted in English. Abstracts of up to 300 words along with a short CV should be directed to Nikola Karasová at karasova@mua.cas.cz by January 15, 2021. Applicants will be notified by February 15. Accommodation and travel reimbursement will be provided to active participants.

If the epidemic situation allows, the workshop will take place in person, while including the possibility of virtual participation as well. If this is not possible, it will be conducted in virtual format only.

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8. 9. 2021 to 10. 9. 2021
Call for Conference Papers: Local Administration during the First and Second World Wars
Call for Conference Papers: Local Administration during the First and Second World Wars

Datum konání:
8. 9. 2021, 0:00 to 10. 9. 2021, 0:00
Venue: Vila Lanna, V sadech 1, Prague

Organization: Jan Vondráček (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS, Prague)

Deadline for submission: 17. 3. 2020

The type of rational, legal administrative staff is capable of application in all kinds of situations and contexts. It is the most important mechanism for the administration of everyday affairs. For in that sphere, the exercise of authority consists precisely in administration.

Max Weber

Local administration has always played a key role in securing, implementing and stabilizing the authority of the modern state. After the outbreak of the First World War, the warring countries were confronted with a difficult supply situation, including famine, disease, refugees and labor shortages. The clerks of the local administration were responsible for implementing new policies and solving problems. They were the ones in direct contact with local populations which were often multi-ethnic and presented a broad variety of needs.

In many cases, local administrations were reorganized to deal with vast and unprecedented tasks and problems. In other cases, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary established military occupation administrations which depended on existing local administration, for example in Belgium, Serbia and Ukraine.

Not only military defeat but also the failure of overtaxed local administrations to solve substantial problems such as obtaining sufficient food supplies for the population led to revolts in the German Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy.

This drastic experience prompted Nazi Germany in particular to undertake a reorganization of local administration shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Even after large parts of Europe were under German occupation, local administrations remained largely responsible for the daily life needs of local populations, such as organizing production, distribution and rationing of food and other basic goods, such as heating fuel and clothing. Since state food allotments were often insufficient to meet basic needs, local populations reacted with the development of a variety of illegal practices. Farmers evaded compulsory levies of food and sold undocumented, illegally butchered meat. Hidden stores of products, food and ration stamps were traded for other goods as part of a comprehensive black market. Although nominally supervised by German occupiers, the actual prosecution of these new economic crimes generally fell in the responsibility of local administrations and courts. Local courts continued to hear non-political cases and disputes within local populations as well.

Recent research in Holocaust Studies have showed that local administrations not only played an important role in making the mass murder of the European Jews possible, but that it was often local administrations that took the initiative.

This conference aims to bring together scholars who work on specific aspects of local administration in the First World War and the Second World War and analyze and compare a diversity of methodologies, findings and approaches.

We are particularly interested in papers that are dealing with the following historical focuses:

The relationship between the occupying power and local administration.

Local administration and the war economy

Local courts under occupation

Continuity and change in staffing aspects of local administration under occupation

Questions of local administration and local interpretation of collaboration

Prof. Jonathan Gumz will give a keynote address on local administration and the First World War.

Prof. Dieter Pohl will give a keynote address on local administration and the Second World War.

At the moment we are able to cover accommodation and parts of the travel costs, we are still looking for funds for travel costs.

The conference language is English.

Please send your abstracts of approximately 500 words by 17 March 2020 to: Jan Vondráček, vondracek@mua.cas.cz

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