Seminar: A Cylinder for Everyone. The Czech Appropriation of Britain in Media Discourse (1939-1948)
In the period between the outbreak of the Second World War and the February coup in 1948, Czech society went through one of its greatest existential crises. Ideas about the Others and about itself as a national community were being rearranged. The seminar focuses on the thought world of Czechoslovak exiles as a specific group that had space to think about other than purely existential questions. The exiles‘ relationship to Britain as a new model other mirrors fears, hopes and visions for the post-war place of a restored Czechoslovakia in the world. The idea that it was possible to bring the ‚best‘ of Britain home from exile – both conservatism and social progressivism – proved a dangerous utopia after 1945. How did the Communist press distort the media image of Britain after the war? And how could the anglophilia cultivated by exiles make its way into the arms of the Soviet Union? This seminar presents new insights into the transnational shift to the left during the Second World War and a model type of relating to the other whose threats to socio-political development are still underestimated in the humanities and social sciences.
Main speaker: Johana Kłusek (Institute of international studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University)
Comments: Stanislav Holubec (Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences) and Jan Váška (Institute of international studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University)
Please note that an audio recording will be made of the seminar, which will be available on the Institute’s website and Spotify.