Petr Kadlec and Ivan Puš: Modernisation of Commercial Education in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918. Patterns, Trends, Processes.

Petr Kadlec and Ivan Puš: Modernisation of Commercial Education in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918. Patterns, Trends, Processes. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112242698

About this book

This publication has been peer reviewed. 

Were commercial schools a natural product of the modernising society or rather a precondition for its successful development and the state's well-being? In this monograph, the authors trace the trends, processes and circumstances of the creation of modern vocational schools, specifically of various types of commercial schools.

Lying at the edge of social and business history and history of education, the book leads the reader through Imperial Austria in the years 1848–1918, providing numerous examples of school practice. It explains the social, economic and political circumstances in which the commercial schools were created, and how far this was the initiative of merchants, municipalities, provincial authorities or the state administration. It also describes the opportunities that commercial schools offered to women. The final chapter discusses the impact of the Great War on schools, their pupils and their teachers.

This book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of education and social or business history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Where possible, it draws comparisons with other European countries, opening up reflections on the modernisation of Europe at that time, especially in Germany, Hungary and France.

Author / Editor information

Petr Kadlec, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Ivan Puš, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic.

Call for Articles: “The Aesthetics of Contamination ”, 79 (2/2027)

 CFA: “The Aesthetics of Contamination ”, The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 79 (2/2027)

Submission deadline: 31 January 2027; Editors: Mădălina Diaconu (University of Vienna), Miloš Ševčík (Charles University, Prague)

The term contamination typically has negative connotations in biological, medical, and environmental contexts, while linguistics and literary studies employ it as a neutral technical term. While contamination has hitherto only exceptionally been applied to aesthetic contexts (Schneemann, Wolodzko), the planned issue aims to demonstrate that thanks to its ambivalence it can be used for a general aesthetic model that accounts for both the dynamics of complex structures (including aesthetic experience) and the negative effects of interactions. Both these aspects of a potential aesthetic model are highly relevant at the present: the theoretical paradigm of contamination can reveal covert, obscure influences in our age of global interconnectedness, when technology and new media have largely abolished physical distances, and the noxious dimension of contamination corresponds to the recent urge to elaborate a negative aesthetics (Berleant, Brady, Saito). In addition to conceptual clarifications, the issue welcomes analyses of processes of contamination in art and media, environmental experience, everyday life, and sociocultural processes.

Contamination’s ambivalence can be traced to its roots in Latin, where it literally means the neutral act of touching together and by extension came to denote staining, soiling, infecting, or corrupting through contact or mere association. Nowadays, the term contamination evokes physical and chemical processes, from heat induction and infiltration to their results – material alloys, emulsions, suspensions, and amalgams – which can be found both in artistic production and environmental processes. The figurative meaning of contamination is related to influences and by extension implies transfer, interpenetration, entanglement, coalescence, and dissemination, all processes facilitated by contiguity. Also, analysing a process in terms of contamination involves making clarifications regarding the homogeneity/heterogeneity of the interacting units, the degree of fusion, and the intensity of interaction.

The aesthetics of contamination encompasses dynamics and generativity, as well as the outcome of the interpenetration of elements. For example, the concept of contamination can shed new light on the nature of aesthetic experience, especially in relation to contemporary discussions about the atmospheric dimension of this experience. In this respect, the model of contamination revisits an aesthetic theory that endeavoured to locate the aesthetic experience in particular faculties. On the other hand, it is the object of aesthetic experience itself, be it a work of art, a non-artistic artefact, or a natural item, that takes on a dynamic, mutable character in terms of contamination. Last, but not least, a neutral understanding of contamination enables us to highlight the fluid boundaries and transitions between aesthetic and non-aesthetic experiences or art and non-art.

These advantages in applying the concept of contamination to aesthetic issues cannot abstract from the challenges posed by the concept itself: by definition, contamination involves indeterminacy and contingency. Contamination escapes intentionality and full control, both in terms of regulating interactions and anticipating their consequences; contaminations are irreducible to clear influences and deliberate imitations. On the contrary, contamination implies a diffuse spreading, confused alterations, an insidious seeping into the social fabric and creeping “below the radar”, subterranean correspondences, and accidental, even unconscious, borrowings. Processes of contamination are also characterized by accretion: contamination is transformed (often irreversibly) through the accumulation of small, long-unnoticed changes.

In general, contamination challenges analytical approaches; why contamination happens and how it works are less clear than its effects, which include internalized hybridity and transformation, the blurring of boundaries, and, eventually, the fusion (i.e., indiscernibility) of its previous elements. On the whole, the aesthetics of contamination echoes the pervasiveness of the aesthetic in late modernity and the “fluidity” of our age and resonates with contemporary philosophy’s growing interest in processes.

Possible research questions include the following:

Can aesthetic experience be described as a process of contamination and which further conceptual tools seem most appropriate for this description?

Is contamination always mutual or can it also remain unilateral? What is the relationship between contamination and the fusion of elements?

Can synesthesia be characterized as sensory contamination?

What is the relationship between contamination and atmosphere/ambiance? What role does emotional contamination play in the aesthetic experience (e.g., contagious sadness and laughter, attunement as atmospheric contagion in mass popular culture events, etc.)?

What impact does the contamination of values have on the aesthetic experience (e.g., when moral criteria influence environmental appreciation and political values, the assessment of social-aesthetic phenomena)? In particular, how can different values intermingle or collide in the appreciation of literally contaminated landscapes?

How can the model of contamination enrich theories about artistic production? Can collective artistic emulation be subsumed to contamination? What about the empathic identification of writers and actors with their characters?

In which ways can contamination shed new light on the theory of intermediality in art?

How can insights into spatial contamination (e.g., between a work of art and its environment) and temporal contamination (e.g., when authoritarianism, intolerance, and violence gradually “seep” into society) foster new approaches in aesthetics?

Submission deadline: 31 January, 2027.

Author Guidelines: We ask Authors to read our guidelines posted under the tab For Authors, as well as to double-check the completeness of each submission (please do not forget to collectively submit: the abstract, keywords, bibliography, and a biographical note about the author) before submitting.

Only complete submissions sent through the submissions page will be accepted—submission page: https://submissions.pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/index.php/PJA

All submitted articles are subject to double-blind reviews. Articles published in The Polish Journal of Aesthetics are assigned DOI numbers.

Robert T. Tomczak: Studenci z Rzeczypospolitej na Uniwersytecie w Bazylei w latach 1500–1800. Studium prozopograficzne [Students from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the University of Basel, 1501–1800. A prosopographical study].

Robert T. Tomczak: Studenci z Rzeczypospolitej na Uniwersytecie w Bazylei w latach 1500–1800. Studium prozopograficzne [Students from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the University of Basel, 1501–1800. A prosopographical study]. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University Press 2026. DOI: 10.14746/amup.9788323245278

 

Wprowadzenie (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/w/p/wprowadzenie_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Spis treści (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/s/p/spis_tresci_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Summary (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/s/u/summary_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Zusammenfassung (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/z/u/zusammenfassung_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Książka Studenci z Rzeczypospolitej na Uniwersytecie w Bazylei w latach 1500–1800 stanowi pierwsze kompleksowe opracowanie poświęcone obecności Polaków i Litwinów w jednym z najważniejszych ośrodków intelektualnych Europy nowożytnej. Autor, wykorzystując metody prozopograficzne i ilościowe, rekonstruuje sieć kontaktów akademickich łączących Bazyleę z elitami Rzeczypospolitej oraz analizuje ich motywacje, pochodzenie społeczne, wyznanie, kierunki studiów i dalsze kariery. Praca ukazuje, jak wczesnonowożytna mobilność akademicka kształtowała przepływ idei, wiedzy i książek między Polską a Szwajcarią, a także jak stereotyp „hojnego Polaka” wpłynął na integrację studentów w środowisku reformowanym. To interdyscyplinarne studium łączy historię uniwersytetów, kultury i religii, wpisując dzieje polskich peregrynantów w szerszy kontekst europejskiej res publica litteraria.

Call for Papers: Metals, Minerals, and Material Worlds: Art, Extraction, and Knowledge in Central Europe and Beyond

Call for Papers: Metals, Minerals, and Material Worlds: Art, Extraction, and Knowledge in Central Europe and Beyond

An International Symposium of the Minescapes Research Project

Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague May 19-21, 2027.

We invite proposals for papers for an international symposium, Metals, Minerals, and Material Worlds: Art, Extraction, and Knowledge in Central Europe and Beyond, to be held at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague on May 19–21, 2027. Proposals are due October 1, 2026 (see submission details below).

This symposium, organized by Tina Asmussen (German Mining Museum Bochum: Leibniz Research Museum for Georesources) and Pamela Smith (Center for Science and Society, Columbia University), with Sylva Dobalová and Martin Mádl (both Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences), is part of the ongoing series Minescapes: Socio-Natural Sites of Resource, Extraction, and Knowledge that investigates the complexity and dynamics of human-environmental interactions in mining landscapes using the concept of a “material complex.” Research on a material complex begins in a study of the natural materials and follows them through reciprocal interactions with human bodily practices, techniques, and skills into substances and objects that are given meaning, used, consumed, desired, and studied by human communities. Each of these stages—the materials; the human–material interactions via skilled practice; and the objects and subjects and their meanings in production, use, consumption, and afterlives—can and often do form self-contained sites of study and analysis. In contrast, the Minescapes events aim, through drawing upon the archives of nature (mines, forests, water systems) and society (archives, libraries, art collections), to bring together these often rich separate areas of study into a unified field in order to raise fruitful questions for individual disciplines as well as for the whole.

The Prague symposium brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine the material worlds of metals and minerals—following them from the geological and mineralogical conditions of their formation, through their extraction, smelting, processing, transport, and trade, into the objects, images, and substances they become, and on to their use, consumption, and afterlives. Central Europe—with its long and densely documented history of metal and mineral extraction, its merchant-capitalist enterprises, and its movement of materials across local and global networks—offers a rich setting for these questions, while contributions that extend the perspective beyond the region are equally welcome.

We welcome proposals from scholars in any discipline and at any career stage whose work speaks to the symposium theme. We are especially interested in contributions that bridge the disciplinary boundaries by which the study of metals and minerals has conventionally been divided. Relevant fields and approaches include, but are not limited to:

●       the history of art and art conservation, including technical art history and conservation science, with particular interest in early modern sculpture, metalwork, and the material culture of metals and minerals

●       the history of early modern science, technology, and medicine, including metallurgy, mineralogy, and alchemy

●       environmental, economic, and political-economic history, including the organization of mining, labor, capital, and trade

●       the history of mining and of mining knowledge

●       the natural sciences, including geology, geochemistry, geography, forest science, and materials science

By bringing these conventionally separate fields into conversation, the symposium aims to construct a more integrated history of art and making as human engagement with the materials of the natural environment.

Practical information

This symposium is generously supported by the Getty Foundation's Connecting Art Histories program, through the project The Material Complex of Copper in Central Europe and Beyond. In keeping with the program’s aims, the symposium seeks to bridge the historical geo-political divisions that have long separated research networks across Europe, and therefore especially encourages the participation of scholars based at Central and Eastern European institutions. Scholars from all regions and institutions are warmly invited to apply; please note, however, that the symposium's capacity to provide full financial support for travel and accommodation will be limited.

Proposals should include full name, current affiliation, and email address; a paper title; an abstract of no more than 300 words; a short CV (max. 2 pages with PhD or other terminal degree completion year or expected completion).

Submissions are due October 1, 2026, and should be sent to minescapes2027@gmail.com.

CFP: “Life Cycles under Socialist Regimes: Managing Gender Relations, Aging, and Health”

 The Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana, invites paper proposals for the Workshop “Life Cycles under Socialist Regimes: Managing Gender Relations, Aging, and Health,” to be held on February 16, 2027, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

State socialism, as a political and economic system, was one of the major innovations of the twentieth century and became a global phenomenon in its latter half, with socialist regimes emerging across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. State socialism can be understood as a political regime characterized by single-party government, directed modernization under systemic governmentality, and the predominance of state property. From the 1950s onward, socialist governance increasingly embraced the notion that political, economic, and social lives could be organized and governed as closed systems. With the “scientific and technological revolution” integrated into the ideology as a new stage on the path to communism, the accumulation and application of knowledge became a central function of state socialist regimes, while holistic, systemic governmentality turned into a key feature of the ideology. The workshop will explore how socialist states sought to manage human life cycles through scientific knowledge, administrative practices, and institutional interventions. Focusing on gender relations, aging, and health, it will examine these fields as central dimensions of socialist biopolitics and as sites where broader models of governance and technocratic management were developed. Bringing together perspectives from conceptual, institutional, and political history as well as the social sciences, the workshop will investigate how socialist regimes attempted to organize social reproduction, welfare, health, and individual life trajectories between the 1950s and 1991. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the development and implementation of official policies concerning family, gender, demographic change, health, and aging; group and individual responses to official policies; the role of scientific research and expert communities in shaping socialist governance; international cooperation and the circulation of knowledge, expertise, and technologies; and the communication of scientific knowledge to broader publics. We are particularly interested in approaches that examine how scientific and technological visions influenced understandings of the human body, social reproduction, and socialist futures, including the role of techno-optimism, popular science, and the intersections between science fact and science fiction. The workshop will situate these developments within a global and comparative framework, paying particular attention to the circulation of ideas, institutions, and practices beyond national boundaries.

The workshop is part of the project Socialist Management in a Global Context: Technocratic Developments in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, 1955–1991, sponsored by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARIS). It is part of a series of four workshops, the results of which will be published together. The selection of papers will, hence, be based on their quality and coherence. Submissions addressing developments outside the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are explicitly encouraged.

Please submit a 300-word abstract and a short biography to PD Dr. Ivan Sablin (ivan.sablin@inz.si) by September 15, 2026. Notifications of acceptance are expected by the end of October. Invited participants will be expected to submit drafts of up to 7,000 words by February 1, 2027. The organizers will be able to provide accommodation to the participants but cannot cover their travel costs. See less

Dana Hašková: Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu

 Dana Hašková: Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu: Představitelé technických, přírodních a zemědělských věd [Russian White Emigration in Czechoslovakia: Representatives of Technical, Natural and Agricultural Sciences]. Praha: Academia, Slovanský ústav 2026. ISBN: 978-80-200-3697-1

Po revoluci v roce 1917 a následné občanské válce emigrovaly z území bývalé Ruské říše statisíce lidí. Přibližně třicet tisíc žilo i v meziválečném Československu.

Zvláštní skupinu této emigrace tvořila ruská vědecká a kulturní elita. V Československu tak působily stovky profesorů, pracovníků vysokých škol a vědců z nejrůznějších oborů.

Své odborné práce emigranti vydávali v českém i slovenském jazyce, publikovali v českém a slovenském periodickém tisku a zapojovali se do zdejšího vědeckého života. Badatelé věnující se tématu ruské emigrace se dosud zaměřovali především na představitele humanitních či uměleckých oborů. Činnost představitelů technických, přírodních a zemědělských věd zatím není podrobněji zdokumentována. V populárně-naučných publikacích a odborných článcích jsou zmiňováni pouze jednotlivci v souvislosti s výsledky své práce. Monografie Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu je tak prvním pokusem zmapovat činnost těchto techniků a přírodovědců během jejich pobytu v Československu. Uplatnili se zde jako pedagogové, v praxi i ve výzkumu a ve svých oborech mnohdy patřili ke špičkovým odborníkům. Předkládaná publikace z velké části vychází z dobového tisku, nekrologů, archivních materiálů, rodinných archivů a databáze udělených patentů. Citované dokumenty rovněž podávají svědectví o životě v emigraci a těžkostech, s nimiž se emigranti museli v běžném životě vyrovnávat.

CFP: Beyond Borders: Global Histories of Transboundary Rivers

 Beyond Borders: Global Histories of Transboundary Rivers

International Online Workshop

University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

November 19-20, 2026

 

More than 300 river basins cross international borders, providing freshwater, energy, transportation, food, and ecosystem services for billions of people. Yet transboundary rivers are far more than shared natural resources. They are political, technological, legal, ecological, and diplomatic spaces where states, engineers, scientists, international organizations, and local communities have negotiated competing visions of development, sovereignty, environmental protection, and cooperation.

Although transboundary rivers have attracted growing scholarly attention, research remains fragmented across disciplines. Environmental historians have explored changing human–river relationships; historians of technology have examined hydraulic engineering and infrastructure; historical geographers have analysed river landscapes and territorial change; scholars of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have investigated expertise and knowledge production; political scientists and scholars of international relations have focused on water diplomacy and international institutions; legal scholars have examined international water law; while hydrologists and water-governance researchers have developed sophisticated frameworks for understanding river basin management. Yet these conversations often do not intersect.

This workshop starts from the premise that understanding transboundary rivers requires genuine interdisciplinary dialogue. Rather than treating rivers simply as environmental systems or geopolitical boundaries, we invite participants to explore them as dynamic socio-environmental systems shaped simultaneously by ecology, infrastructure, science, law, diplomacy, economics, and politics.

Building upon the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) project An Environmental History of Transboundary Rivers in Cold War East-Central Europe, the workshop seeks to expand regional scholarship into a broader comparative and global conversation. It aims to establish an international interdisciplinary network dedicated to the historical study of transboundary rivers and to identify new directions for collaborative research at the intersection of environmental history, history of technology, geography, international law, political science, STS, and water governance.

 

We welcome contributions from scholars working in:

Environmental History

History of Technology

History of Science

Historical Geography

Science and Technology Studies (STS)

Water History

Environmental Humanities

Political Ecology

International Relations

International Environmental Law

Environmental Governance

Hydrology and Water Governance

Geography

Anthropology

Sociology

Environmental Planning

 

We welcome proposals on topics including, but not limited to:

Comparative histories of transboundary river basins

International river commissions and basin organizations

Environmental governance across political borders

Water diplomacy and international cooperation

Rivers during the Cold War

Hydraulic engineering, dams, and river regulation

Navigation and inland waterways

Flood protection and disaster management

Pollution, water quality, and environmental monitoring

Fisheries, wetlands, and aquatic ecosystems

Hydrological science, environmental expertise, and knowledge production

International organizations and shared waters

Climate change and the historical governance of river basins

Colonial and postcolonial river governance

Indigenous and local perspectives on transboundary rivers

Comparative and global approaches to river history

Rivers, sovereignty, and international environmental law

Methods and concepts for interdisciplinary river research

Studies covering all world regions and historical periods are welcome.

 

Format:

The workshop will be held in online format.

Rather than focusing exclusively on completed research, we particularly encourage proposals presenting original archival research, conceptual interventions, comparative perspectives, methodological reflections, and work in progress.

The workshop is designed to maximize discussion and exchange across disciplines. Each paper will receive substantial time for discussion, and the programme will conclude with a roundtable on future directions in the interdisciplinary study of transboundary rivers.

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Submission

Please submit:

an abstract of 300–500 words

a short biography (100 words)

to: cesh@osu.cz

Submission deadline: 15 September 2026

Notification of acceptance: 1 October 2026