Gregor Feindt: Baťas Menschen. Rationalisierung, social engineering und Differenzierung in der tschechoslowakischen Unternehmensstadt Zlín, 1918–1948.

Gregor Feindt: Baťas Menschen. Rationalisierung, social engineering und Differenzierung in der tschechoslowakischen Unternehmensstadt Zlín, 1918–1948. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2026. ISBN: 978-3-666-37109-7

OA: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/pdf/10.13109/9783666371097

Baťas Menschen

Das Schuhunternehmen Baťa produzierte in Zlín preisgünstige Schuhe für den Weltmarkt – und leistungsfähige Menschen. Baťa lockte seine Beschäftigten mit einem Leben in Wohlstand, mit modernen Annehmlichkeiten und einem Ausblick in die weite Welt – und drang weit in ihren Alltag ein. Dabei übertrug das Unternehmen das in der Produktion eingeübte Prinzip der Rationalisierung auf die Personalverwaltung und den Alltag in Zlín, formte seine Belegschaft und differenzierte sie. Die Arbeit analysiert Sozialreform und Personalpolitik im Schuhunternehmen Baťa und stellt die Beschäftigten der Schuhfabrik in den Mittelpunkt, von der Ausbildung an der Werkbank über die Karrieren erfolgreicher Männer und einiger weniger Frauen bis hin zum Privat- und Familienleben. Dabei verfolgt das Buch die Entwicklung und Überformung des Sozialexperiments von seinen Anfängen in der Habsburgermonarchie über die demokratische Tschechoslowakei bis zur deutschen Herrschaft im Zweiten Weltkrieg und den Anfängen des Staatssozialismus.

Karin Reichenbach: Archäologie im Kontext deutsch-polnischer Beziehungsgeschichte

Karin Reichenbach: Archäologie im Kontext deutsch-polnischer Beziehungsgeschichte. Forschungsstrukturen und Deutungsdiskurse der niederschlesischen Burgwallforschung im 20. Jahrhundert. Dresden: Sandstein 2025. ISBN: 978-3-95498-885-3.

OA: https://www.sandstein-kultur.de//openaccess/FGKoeM63.pdf

Die Burgwallforschung in Niederschlesien erzählt mehr als nur die Geschichte vor- und frühgeschichtlicher Befestigungen – sie spiegelt ein Jahrhundert politischer Umbrüche, nationaler Konflikte und wissenschaftlicher Antagonismen. Die Studie untersucht archäologische Infrastrukturen und Deutungsdiskurse in einer lange Zeit umstrittenen Grenzregion und zeigt, wie das Ausgraben und Forschen in den deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen des 20. Jahrhunderts verhaftet war. Anhand der institutionellen Entwicklungen, der prägenden Akteure und zentralen Forschungsprogramme wird die Entfaltung der Burgwallarchäologie von ihren systematischen Anfängen bis 1970 nachvollzogen. Darauf aufbauend, legt die Analyse der Deutungen von Wallanlagen diskursive Muster frei, in denen Ansprüche auf die konfliktbeladene Grenze stets widerhallten. Sie offenbaren, wie eng archäologische Deutungen und nationale Geschichtspolitik verflochten waren – vom Postulat germanischer Kontinuität und Überlegenheit in der Zwischenkriegszeit bis zur slawisch-polnischen Rückeroberungserzählung nach 1945. So wird die Burgwallarchäologie zu einem Spiegel der deutsch-polnischen Beziehungsgeschichte – und zugleich zu einem Fallbeispiel für die Bedingtheit historischer Erkenntnis. Ein Buch über Archäologie, Politik und die Verantwortlichkeit wissenschaftlicher Forschung im Spannungsfeld nationaler Narrative.

Online event: Pollution and sanitizing: Imperial environmental policy, legislation and everyday life

 Online event: Pollution and sanitizing: Imperial environmental policy, legislation and everyday life

Feb 26 (Thu), 14:00–16:00 (CET)

Anna Mazanik presents her book Sanitizing Moscow. Waste, Animals, and Urban Health in Late Imperial Russia (University of Pittsburgh Press, Oct 2025)

Andrei Vinogradov presents his forthcoming book Cleaning the Empire. Industrial pollution and birth of Russia's environmental policy (CEU Press, Fall 2026)

organizer and chair: Anastasia Fedotova (St Petersburg)

Anna Mazanik is an environmental and medical historian of Russia and a research fellow at the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe. Born in Moscow, she has studied in Russia, Hungary, Germany, and the US. She holds a PhD in history from Central European University.

Sanitizing Moscow presents an environmental history of public health reforms in late imperial Moscow between 1870 and 1917. It explores the relationship between Russia’s urban modernization and the more-than-human environment in the context of the major social and political changes, triggered by the liberal reforms of the 1860s and 1870s, and the transnational rise of scientific medicine and sanitary technologies.

Andrey Vinogradov is an environmental historian whose research focuses on industrial pollution, climate change, and their social consequences in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig.

The rapid industrial growth that marked post-reform Russia pushed society toward an awareness of the environmental consequences of economic development. Challenging the entrenched view that industrial pollution and technological disasters first entered the political agenda as a result of Soviet forced industrialization, Andrei Vinogradov shows that environmental policy began to take shape much earlier, in conflicts between pre-revolutionary factory owners, peasants, city dumas, and ministerial officials in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Oil slicks on the Volga, toxic effluents from textile mills, and waste from sugar factories became forces that reshaped legislation and transformed the views of officials and the public on the environment.

Please register to get the Zoom link: https://forms.gle/qf41S5xPoSEbmhD48

The Zoom link will be sent before the meeting

Vnoučková, Kateřina: Okno příležitosti: Životní prostředí a přeshraniční vztahy na březích Dyje 1984–1995 [Window of Opportunity: Environment and Cross-Border Relations on the Banks of the Dyje River, 1984–1995].

 Vnoučková, Kateřina: Okno příležitosti: Životní prostředí a přeshraniční vztahy na březích Dyje 1984–1995 [Window of Opportunity: Environment and Cross-Border Relations on the Banks of the Dyje River, 1984–1995]. Karolinum 2026. ISBN: 978-80-246-6154-4

Životní prostředí spojuje – a to i přes uzavřenou hranici. Globální uvolnění napětí mezi Východem a Západem otevřelo na konci 80. let okno příležitosti pro regionální výměnu mezi jižní Moravou a Dolním Rakouskem a propojené životní prostředí nabídlo platformu pro spolupráci při obnově venkova, v ochraně přírody a při řešení znečištění. Kniha poukazuje na klíčovou roli lokálních aktérů, na kontinuitu vývoje před rokem 1989 a po něm i na důvody, proč se intenzivní spolupráce počátku 90. let nerozvinula v trvalé propojení regionů. Rozšiřuje transnacionální dějiny pozdního socialismu a transformace o regionální a environmentální perspektivu.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Epistemic Passages: Knowledge in Translation, 9–11 September 2026 in Prague

(Deadline extended to 28. February 2026)  The board of the Society for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology (GWMT) invites you to the 2026 annual conference in cooperation with the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University and the Prague department of the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO).

The conference will take place 9–11 September 2026 in Prague and will focus on the theme:

Epistemic Passages: Knowledge in Translation

Taking the opportunity of convening in a city that over centuries experienced has the positive as well as the negative aspects of the encounter of different cultures, confessions, ideologies, or nations, the GWMT annual conference will focus on scholarly translation practices and their consequences. While translation is usually associated with so-called natural languages, our conference will extend beyond this to include knowledge moving across time, space, ideologies, religions and confessions, technical and media environments or between scholars and laypeople.

We want to focus on the dynamics of knowledge in transit and its interrelations with the settings it traverses and/or newly creates as it travels. How does knowledge become rewritten and reconceptualized to new contexts after years of being forgotten in dusky libraries? How does it change when it is appropriated into new confessional, social or ideological contexts? How does it change while travelling from discipline to discipline (as, e.g. from medicine to the humanities or vice versa)? How do scholars rewrite the knowledge of laypeople – and how do non-academics transform academic knowledge into one that is accessible for them and their networks? How does (academic) knowledge change when it is applied into practice? How is translation of knowledge technically mediated and informed?

Not only practices, but also specific understandings of translation are consequential. Assumed universality of scholarly knowledge, that only changed its attire while in transit, with facts or theories supposedly travelling without changing their content through languages, cultures, or disciplinary dialects, has long informed the politics of science’s propagation and popularisation, prioritising the academic content of communicated science over its potential to be understood by the non-academic public. Various linear models of how knowledge travels across languages and cultures underlie the modernisation-theory-based approaches to the “spread” and “communication” of science, linking thus science’s history with its present.

Therefore, the conference equally asks about the different modes of understanding translation and scholarly thinking about translation (termed ‘translation knowledge’ by Lieven D’hulst and Yves Gambier) and their repercussions. Which different ‘translation knowledges’ exist in different disciplines and how do they change over time? Which different vocabularies of translation exist, and how do they resonate with those in other fields and disciplines? Which consequences do different ‘translation knowledges’ have for the understanding of science in science-reflexive disciplines (philosophy, history, sociology of science, etc.)? How do changes of ‘translation knowledge’ impact the politics of science, science communication, discussions on technology acceptance, or the involvement of laypeople into the knowledge production labelled as citizen science? Which new conceptual or technical tools are developed, or old tools adjusted, to accommodate the changes to ‘translation knowledge’?

We welcome applications for entire panels as well as individual contributions. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Sections consist of either four presentations or three presentations with commentary and last 120 minutes, including discussion. Applications for round-tables – a discussion-oriented format focusing on a common theme, consisting of up to five speakers and a moderator, allowing at least 60 minutes for general discussion – are explicitly encouraged. Please submit abstracts of approximately half a page in length using our submission form. For sections, a short introduction to the section should be submitted in addition to the abstracts of the individual presentations. If of equal quality, sections that span academic generations will be given preference. While the preference will be given to the applications that relate to the overall topic, we will accept applications on all topics of history of medicine, science, and technology.

Languages of the conference will be English and German.

Please submit proposals by 15 February 2026, using the online submission form on the GWMT website (www.gwmt.de). Please note: This is an in-person conference; exceptions are only possible for accessibility purposes.

Text and Image: Essential Problems in Art History, Том 2 № 20 (2025): The Soviet Utopia Through the Prism of Art History (in Ukrainian)

 Текст і образ: Актуальні проблеми історії мистецтва / Text and Image: Essential Problems in Art History, Том 2 № 20 (2025): Радянська утопія крізь призму історії мистецтва [The Soviet Utopia Through the Prism of Art History]

OA: https://txim.history.knu.ua/uk/issue/view/519/460

SOVIET UTOPIA THROUGH THE LENS OF ART HISTORY

Казакевич Г. Радянська технологічна утопія і аматорська фотографія в Україні:

погляд з перспективи соціальної історії технологій

Kazakevych G. Soviet Technological Utopianism and Amateur Photography in Ukraine:

A Social History of Technology Perspective.................................................................................... 5

Конта Р. Музика вільного світу в поневоленій країні:

переосмислення акустичного середовища в Українській РСР

Konta R. Music of the Free World in an Unfree Country:

Reassessing Acoustic Environment in Ukrainian SSR....................................................................15

Левченко І. Руїна у просторі радянської техноутопії:

дефініції, функції та розширення поняття

Levchenko I. Ruin in the Realm of Soviet Techno-Utopia:

Definitions, Functions, and the Expansion of the Concept................................................................27

Адамська І. Технологічні утопії XX століття:

методологічний і тематичний аспекти дослідження.

Огляд конференції «Переосмислення техноутопій поза бінарністю Схід-Захід.

Творці, уможливлювачі та користувачі» (25-27 червня 2025, Базель)

Adamska I. Technological Utopias of the 20th Century:

Methodological and Thematic Aspects of Research.

Conference Review of «Understanding Techno-Utopias Across the East-West Divide:

Creators, Enablers, and Audiences » (25-27 June 2025, Basel).................................................................39

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THEORY OF ART

Левицька М. Осередки мистецтвознавчих досліджень у Львові:

трансформації повоєнного десятиліття (1946-1950-ті рр.)

Centres of Art Historical Research in Lviv:

Transformations in the Post-War Decade (1946–1950s)................................................................49

Humanistyka w PRL-u [Humanities in Polish People's republic]

 Humanistyka w PRL-u [Humanities in Polish People's republic]. Thematic issue of Teksty Drugie. Teoria literatury, krytyka, interpretacja 2025.

OPEN ACCESS: https://rcin.org.pl/ibl/dlibra/publication/284353/edition/247608?language=pl#structure 

Wybór zaproponowanego tematu wiąże się z doświadczeniem kryzysu humanistyki we współczesnym świecie społecznym, a także z rolą humanistyki w kulturze, węziej zaś w nauce. O tym, że humanistyka we wszystkich tych obszarach ludzkiego świata jest w kryzysie, nie trzeba przekonywać. Choć od wielu lat prowadzone są badania w ramach krytycznych studiów nad uniwersytetem, głównie w obszarze uniwersytetów zachodnich, to jednak nie dają one nadziei na pozytywne koncepcje humanistyki. Właśnie dlatego warto zgłosić propozycję, by okrężną być może drogą próbować zarysować możliwe oraz zrealizowane wizje polskiej humanistyki powojennej. Wcielane w życie z porażkami, sukcesami lub tylko z częściowo pozytywnymi skutkami koncepcje humanistyki, które ze względu na określone warunki kulturowe i polityczne nie mogły być wdrożone, albo były, lecz zostały zapomniane lub zdewaluowane, a dziś mogłyby się okazać inspirujące ze względu na sposób ich ukształtowania i odziaływania na społeczny obieg wiedzy humanistycznej. \