Thursday 29 February 2024

Kazimierz Maliszewski, Droga chłopaka z Rudnik na Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika. Wspomnienia [A road of a boy from Rudnik to the Mikołaj Kopernik University. Memoirs],

 Kazimierz Maliszewski, Droga chłopaka z Rudnik na Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika. Wspomnienia [A road of a boy from Rudnik to the Mikołaj Kopernik University. Memoirs], Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika 2023. ISBN: 978-83-231-5261-3


Droga chłopaka z Rudnik na Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika. Wspomnienia to bardzo osobista relacja prof. Kazimierza Maliszewskiego z jego życia. Przedstawia koleje losu, które zaprowadziły go z małej miejscowości na Pojezierzu Iławskim do grodu Kopernika i na Uniwersytet imienia astronoma. Wspomnienia to opisane z dużym sentymentem różne epizody z okresu dzieciństwa i młodości autora oraz elementy jego autobiografii naukowej, w powiązaniu z życiem rodzinnym. Książka pokazuje także, jak wyglądał Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu za czasów studiów Profesora w latach 1968–1973 i jak zmieniał się podczas jego 46-letniej pracy naukowej i dydaktycznej.


Wojciech Piasek, „Noce i dnie” Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu we wspomnieniach profesora Kazimierza Maliszewskiego / 9

Tempora labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis / Czas upływa, a my starzejemy się wraz z cicho biegnącymi latami (Owidiusz, Fasti) / 13

ROZDZIAŁ 1

The proper study of mankind is Man / Prawdziwym studium o ludzkości jest człowiek (Alexander Pope) / 25

Środowisko rodzinne – moje lata dzieciństwa, Moja Szkoła Podstawowa w Kamieńcu, Nauka w Liceum Ogólnokształcącym w Iławie, Po maturze – i co dalej?, Lata studenckie na UMK 1968–1973

ROZDZIAŁ 2

Rzekła żona do męża: „Co mi mężu po Senece, kiedy mi cukru zabrakło i po masło lecę. Wszystkie Scypiony tudzież Hannibale – niewarte wiązki drzewa, którym piec rozpalę. Daj mi pokój z Kalpurnią, Volumnią i Porcją i lepiej od piekarza przynieś żuru porcję”. „O tempora, o mores”, westchnął biedny klasyk i poszedł do piekarza, bo – takie są czasy (Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna, Żona klasyka) / 65

Pierwsza praca i życie prywatne, Początki mojej pracy na uniwersytecie w Zakładzie Historii Powszechnej i Polski XVI–XVIII w., Praca nad doktoratem, obrona oraz wydanie monografii o Rubinkowskim, Stan wojenny w Polsce, Dalsze etapy awansu zawodowego w mojej pracy naukowej a życie prywatne

ROZDZIAŁ 3

Nulla dies sine linea / Ani dnia bez kreski – to jest bez posunięcia choć odrobinę naprzód pracy twórczej (sentencja łacińska przypisywana rzeźbiarzowi Apellesowi) / 99

Jakie inspiracje do dalszych badań dały mi studia nad Rubinkowskim? Rozprawa habilitacyjna, Moje badania po habilitacji, Opracowania syntetyczne, napisane z pozycji historyka kultury i badacza dziejów Kościoła, Powrót do kultury brytyjskiej i amerykańskiej, Fascynacja Faustem i Johanem Wolfgangiem Goethem, Edycja źródłowa listów Jakuba Kazimierza Rubinkowskiego do Elżbiety Sieniawskiej, Moje najważniejsze wystąpienia na konferencjach naukowych. Podróże do Rzymu i Stanów Zjednoczonych oraz Niemiec (Oldenburg – Rostock), Moje miejsce w strukturze organizacyjnej w Instytucie Historii i Archiwistyki UMK, Praca dydaktyczna – rodzaj zajęć, seminaria magisterskie, wykształceni doktorzy, Działalność społeczna i organizacyjna

ROZDZIAŁ 4

Przeszłość jest to dziś, tylko cokolwiek dalej (Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Przeszłość) / 151

Moje refleksje na temat historii, a w szczególności historii kultury

ROZDZIAŁ 5

Ma się ku wieczorowi i dzień się już nachylił (Ewangelia Łukasza 24, 29) / 169

Rok akademicki 2019/2020 – epidemia, ostatni rok mojej pracy na uniwersytecie

ROZDZIAŁ 6

W emeryturze nie ma nic złego, pod warunkiem że nie dopuścimy, aby nam przeszkadzała w pracy (Benjamin Franklin) / 175

Emerytura i co dalej?

Dni człowieka są jak trawa. Kwitnie jak kwiat na polu: ledwie muśnie go wiatr, a już go nie ma. I miejsce, gdzie był, już go nie poznaje (Psalm 103, 15–16) / 187

FOTOGRAFIE I REPRODUKCJE FOTOGRAFICZNE DOKUMENTÓW / 199

SPIS ODPISÓW LISTÓW, FOTOGRAFII I REPRODUKCJI FOTOGRAFICZNYCH DOKUMENTÓW /219

Monday 26 February 2024

Medical Authority in East Central Europe

 The Hungarian Historical Review, Volume 12 Issue 3 2023, Special issue Medical Authority in East Central Europe

URL: https://hunghist.org/issue-current .

Contents

Janka Kovács and Viola Lászlófi

Special Editors of the Thematic Issue

ARTICLES

Barbora Rambousková – Darina Martykánová

Social Class in the Czech Physicians’ Quest for Professional Authority and Social Acknowledgement, 1830s–1930s 363

Zsuzsa Bokor

“Separation is Required in Our Special Situation”: Minority Public Health Programs in Interwar Transylvania 395

Šárka Caitlín Rábová

Between Public Health and Propaganda: Tuberculosis in Czechoslovakia in the First Decades of the Communist Regime 433

Annina Gagyiova

Every Child According to Its Pace: School Maturity between Expertise, State Policies, and Parental Eigensinn in Socialist Hungary 461

Judit Sándor – Viola Lászlófi

Women Facing the Committee: Decision-Making on Abortion in Postwar Hungary 493

Aleksandra Kozłowska: Ambulans jedzie na wieś. Śladami objazdowych wyrwizębów [Ambulance goes to the countryside. Following travelling dentists].

Aleksandra Kozłowska: Ambulans jedzie na wieś. Śladami objazdowych wyrwizębów [Ambulance goes to the countryside. Following travelling dentists]. Kraków: Znak 2023. ISBN: 978-83-240-6693-3


Dentobusem przez PRL


Deszcz czy mróz, skwar czy roztopy… nie było wyjścia, ojczyzna w potrzebie. Młodzi dentyści, najczęściej świeżo po studiach, pakowali narzędzia i ruszali w teren.


Plombowali, czym mogli, częściej rwali. Tłumaczyli, jak używać szczoteczki do zębów. Walczyli nie tylko z szalejącą próchnicą, ale z ludzką niewiedzą, bólem i strachem. Zdarzało się, że musieli przyszyć odcięty palec albo odebrać poród.


Niektórzy na ich widok uciekali, choć częściej ustawiały się kolejki. Nic dziwnego, uzębienie obywateli przypominało stolicę w ruinie. Dla wielu pacjentów był to pierwszy w życiu kontakt z lekarzem. Ból zębów leczyło się wódką i okładami z piasku.


Reportaż Aleksandry Kozłowskiej to nie tylko fascynujący, chwilami mrożący krew w żyłach kawałek historii polskiej medycyny. To także barwny portret powojennej wsi, obyczajów, przesądów, warunków, w jakich żyli ludzie. Wreszcie wyjątkowa opowieść drogi, w którą autorka rusza śladami swojej mamy i innych wędrownych stomatologów z czasów PRL.


Aleksandra Kozłowska – dziennikarka, reporterka, dawniej związana z „Gazetą Wyborczą”, jako freelancerka współpracuje m.in. z „Polityką”, „Przekrojem” i „Tygodnikiem Powszechnym”. Współautorka (z Mirellą Wąsiewicz) książki „Islandia i Polacy. Historie tych, którzy nie bali się zaryzykować” (2023).


Thursday 22 February 2024

call for papers: East and Central European Cultures in Exile

 call for papers: East and Central European Cultures in Exile. Archiving, Collecting, and Publishing in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Herder-Institute, Marburg, 28.08.2024 - 30.08.2024, deadline 30.04.2024. URL: https://www.herder-institut.de/event/call-for-papers-east-and-central-european-cultures-in-exile/


The Herder Institute Summer Academy invites Early Career Researchers, including Advanced Master Students, Ph.D. Students, and Early Postdocs, to participate in a workshop dealing with the East and Central European diaspora’s experiences of collecting, archiving, and publishing in exile. Eastern Europe can be characterized by constant flux, with peoples, objects, andinstitutions undergoing continuous movement. From the late nineteenth century through periods of wars, revolutions, and the Cold War, various social, ethnic, religious, and political groups were compelled to migrate and exile due to poverty, catastrophes of the twentieth century, aspirations for better lives, and sometimes escaping prosecution for both trumped-up accusation and actual WWII crimes. Mass migration entails the establishment of cultural institutions in new environments, including archives, libraries, and publishing houses, which serve as mediators between cultures and their bearers, both within and outside their respective countries.

Suppressed under socialism, East European cultures sought avenues to the „free world,“ yet they were influenced by the ideological confrontation between East and West. Along with opposing the unfreedoms of Socialism in their native countries and on the global scale, publishing activities in the diaspora could include the dissemination of far-right and radical nationalist ideas. Furthermore, conflicts, recriminations, suspicions, and financial quarrels were not rare and they occupied a visible place in émigré publications. How can we critically engage with this heritage while paying attention to its diversity and historical significance?

The Summer Academy will delve into the publishing and collecting initiatives that emerged across Europe and the world following World War II, continuing into the late 1980s.

Equally crucial is the issue of preservation and accessibility, which can be facilitated through digitization. However, the challenge lies in how to approach and digitally connect the scattered multicultural and multilingual collections.

Against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing aggressive war in Ukraine and mounting repressions in Belarus and Russia, East European cultures find themselves once again facing exile and emigration, while the Cold War experience of émigré activities at archiving, collecting, and publishing regain its relevance.

With its extensive archival materials, including the unique Urbańczyk collection of the Polish underground press from the era of Solidarność, the newspaper clippings archive from the Cold War period, and the comprehensive periodicals archive covering Eastern and Central Europe, the Herder Institute provides an exceptional foundation for this thematic focus, which will be explored through various theoretical and practical thematic units.

We invite submissions for 10-15 Minutes Paper presentations on the topics, including, but not limited to:

- Publishing Houses in exile: national and transnational perspectives

- The variety of émigré and publishing and collecting activities and how they affect the production of knowledge on Eastern Europe during the Cold War and after

- (Re)creation of national cultures in exile Intercultural connections and collections in the diasporas

- New and old diasporas’ approaches to publishing and collecting: continuity or rupture?

- The role of digital publishing and archiving techniques for enhancing access to émigré collections and archives

Send your exposé (approx. 300 words) and a short CV to

forum@herder-institut.de

until April 30, 2024.

Accomodation for selected participants will be provided and travel costs up to 250 Euro (EU), 500 Euro (Non-EU), 800 Euro (overseas travels) can be covered upon request.

Call for Papers: Reassembling the Computer Networks of Eastern and Central Europe: From the Collapse of Soviet Bloc to the Russia-Ukraine War

Call for Papers: Reassembling the Computer Networks of Eastern and Central Europe: From the Collapse of Soviet Bloc to the Russia-Ukraine War


Special issue of Internet Histories. Digital Technology, Culture and Society and a conference "Histories and Legacies of the Digital: from Communist Cybernetics to Local Histories of the Internet"Abstracts due by April 2, 2024. URL: https://www.lvivcenter.org/en/conferences/computer-networks-cfp-2/ .


Being neither unified nor static, the Internet has been continuously reassembled under the influence of various direct and indirect factors and agents. It has been affected by decisions of the Internet governing institutions, state and corporate tensions, natural disasters, pandemics, and climate change, as well as by changing political orders at wars and in so-called-peace (Dyer-Witheford & Matviyenko, 2019; Aben, 2022a, 2023). Today's telecom and Internet infrastructures in Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) present one of the most vibrant cases of such reassembling against a historical backdrop of constantly shifting and conflicting ideological, institutional, technological and political realities that still remain understudied.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union that led to the emergence of multiple independent states in the 1990s also intensified the development of today's predominantly private Internet and IT industries. The faster and cheaper Internet has enabled the growing exploitation of platform labour and visible militarization of the Internet by cyberattacks, digital infrastructure hacks, and surveillance. Corporate and state claims to control parts of the Internet infrastructure within and outside state borders have led to ongoing tensions and reconfiguration of the established networks. Moreover, such processes were sped up by conflicts and wars such as the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia, the 2008 cyberattacks on Georgia during the Russia-Georgia war, or the current Russia-Ukraine war that presents continuous rebooting of the Internet technologies in response to the demands of the war. All these and similar factors and events continue to shape and reshape the Internet infrastructures in ECE entangled in Soviet technological and political legacies.

The computer network projects in the former Soviet Bloc influenced by a series of factors, from cybernetic techno-optimism (Gerovitch, 2004) to the rigorous competition between government bureaucrats and economists in the planned economy (Peters, 2016), from far-reaching decisions on the hardware architecture (Zhabin 2020) to transnational academic networks exchange (Rindzevičiūtė, 2016;  Wasiak 2015; Leslie & Gryczka, 2014). The implications that could be drawn from such projects for multiple network infrastructures after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc remain relatively understudied.

ECE countries have undergone an extensive process of modernisation and, at times, privatisation of their telecommunications infrastructures (Campbell, 1995; Bareikytė, 2022). Over the past thirty years, various IT and telecom companies, start-ups and platforms have emerged in these countries, which extensively developed the IT-outsourcing markets or digitalised their public digital infrastructures, with Estonia being perhaps the most prominent example (Kattel & Mergel, 2019). Simultaneously, the example of Estonia illustrates how the development of the idea of an "information society" was built upon a discourse of "rupture" from Soviet cybernetics while still referring to its legacy (Velmet, 2020). This special issue and the conference focus on deepening the exploration of such projects and their path dependencies (Bijker et al. 1993) for the countries that emerged from the Soviet Union after the so-called transformation period (Förster, 2000).

To date, there is a need for broader historical and critical research on the contemporary histories of the post-Soviet private and public ECE telecommunications and platform industries as a sociotechnical phenomenon (Abbate, 2000; Driscoll & Paloque-Berges, 2017). It is also worth taking into account the multiple temporalities (Koselleck, 2004) that Soviet and post-Soviet in different countries or even localities of the region represent. This is crucial to better understand the historical politics of digitalization in Central and Eastern Europe and to explore political and ethical questions of data privacy, algorithmic accountability or platform labour rights in relation to these histories and their legacies (Aben 2022b).

Furthermore, as the war in Ukraine explicitly indicates, the Internet infrastructures are undergoing key historic transformations entangled with military action and the extensive use of simple to hyper-complex digital systems as part of warfare. The Internet's operational capacity had already been boosted by new demands, initially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine made it necessary to process the industrial volumes of data for military operations. Both civilian and military Internet infrastructures, nearly indistinguishable today, remain vulnerable to the highest-impact disruptive cyberattacks on the largest telecom infrastructures.

We therefore explicitly invite papers that address this gap with research on the contemporary histories and socio-cultural, critical explorations of the post-Soviet telecom, IT, and Internet infrastructures, as well as the related digital technologies and institutions in the ECE countries in times of war.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

Socio-technical historical accounts of the computer networks and infrastructures in the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe

Cybernetic histories and legacies (Soviet and beyond)

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the privatization or non-privatization of Internet infrastructures

Telecom and Internet infrastructures in ECE and its dis/entanglement with Soviet legacy

War-driven technological changes of the Internet infrastructure

Local histories and precise case studies of the ECE Internet

Methodological approaches to study ECE Internet and telecom infrastructures

Contact Information

For questions, please contact: cfp_internet_histories@lvivcenter.org.ua

Monday 19 February 2024

Call for Papers: Life and works of Immánuel Löw

 Call for Papers: Life and works of Immánuel Löw. Szeged Jewish Community, Jewish Theological Seminary - University of Jewish Studies, Budapest; Szeged University. 04.09.2024 - 07.09.2024, deadline 01.03.2024


The Jewish Community of Szeged, the Jewish Theological Seminary – University of Jewish Studies, and the University of Szeged are organizing an international scientific conference in Hungarian and English titled "Life and works of Immánuel Löw" in Szeged.

The objective of the international conference discussing the life and work of Immánuel Löw, the Chief Rabbi of Szeged, is to bring together scholars, researchers, and experts from different countries and regions of the world, facilitating collaborative work and the development of new perspectives. The prestigious professional plenary and section presentations provide an opportunity for researchers to showcase their research areas, along with the official unveiling of spaces named after Löw Lipo and Löw Immánuel, as well as the Löw memorial walk, forming an integral part of the program.

The conference is scheduled to take place from September 4th to 6th, 2024, with the venue provided by the University of Szeged. The Sabbath prayer service within the local community will be held in the synagogue designed by Baumhorn Lipót and Löw Immánuel, also constituting a part of the program.

We kindly request that you submit the title and a brief, 200-word abstract of your planned presentation to immanuellowconference@gmail.com by March 1, 2024. The submission of abstracts will be followed by a peer-review process to ensure the conference's high scientific standards. Applicants will be notified of section acceptance by March 11th.

Selected studies presented at the conference will be considered for publication in English by a reputable international publisher. If an author wishes to publish their research in the conference volume, a scholarly article meeting the formal requirements must be submitted to immanuellowconference@gmail.com no later than December 31, 2024. Accepted and peer-reviewed studies will be published in a printed volume. Formal requirements for the study will be announced at a later date. The travel and accommodation costs for presenters from Austria will be covered by the Österreichisches Kulturforum in Budapest.

Programm

Tag 1: 4. September

09:30 Uhr - 10:00 Uhr: Anmeldung und Begrüßungskaffee

10:00 Uhr - 10:30 Uhr: Eröffnungszeremonie

10:30 Uhr - 12:00 Uhr: Vormittagssitzung

12:00 Uhr - 13:00 Uhr: Mittagspause

13:00 Uhr - 14:30 Uhr: Nachmittagssitzung

15:00 Uhr - 17:30 Uhr: Geführte Tour

17:30 Uhr - 19:00 Uhr: Freizeit

19:00 Uhr - 21:00 Uhr: Konferenzdinner

Tag 2: 5. September

09:30 Uhr - 12:00 Uhr: Vormittagssitzung (Englisch)

12:00 Uhr - 13:00 Uhr: Mittagspause

13:00 Uhr - 14:30 Uhr: Nachmittagssitzung (Englisch)

14:30 Uhr - 15:00 Uhr: Kaffeepause

15:00 Uhr - 17:30 Uhr: Einweihung des Immánuel-Löw-Platzes und des Lipót-Löw-Platzes

17:30 Uhr - 19:00 Uhr: Freizeit/Networking

19:00 Uhr - 21:00 Uhr: Konferenzdinner

Tag 3: 6. September

09:00 Uhr - 09:30 Uhr: Anmeldung und Begrüßungskaffee

09:30 Uhr - 11:00 Uhr: Vormittagssitzung

11:00 Uhr - 11:30 Uhr: Kaffeepause

11:30 Uhr - 13:00 Uhr: Mittagssitzung

13:00 Uhr - 14:00 Uhr: Mittagspause

14:00 Uhr - 15:30 Uhr: Nachmittagssitzung

15:30 Uhr - 16:00 Uhr: Schlusswort und Abschied

19:00 Uhr: Kabbalat-Schabbat-Gottesdienst (optional)

Tag 4: 7. September 2024

10:00 Uhr – 13:00 Uhr: Schabbat-Gottesdienst (optional)

Kontakt

immanuellowconference@gmail.com

CFP: Early Modern Private Libraries as Sites of Knowledge Production and Circulation,

CFP: Early Modern Private Libraries as Sites of Knowledge Production and Circulation, Frank Ejby Poulsen, Research Group CINTER (King Juan Carlos University), Madrid (Spain), 07.11.2024 - 08.11.2024, Deadline 14.04.2024



The Research Group CINTER (Courts Images Nobility TERritory) and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of King Juan Carlos University have the pleasure to invite you to submit your paper proposal for the upcoming symposium ‘Early Modern Private Libraries as Sites of Knowledge Production and Circulation’.


This symposium aims to explore the role of private libraries in the production and circulation of knowledge with a focus on the early modern period. Private libraries are defined by the restricted access to their content, typically located inside the home, as opposed to a library with wider access such as in a monastery, university, or royal collection. The library is defined as a dedicated room or space in the house with built shelves for the display of books, accessible to a wider range of people in the household.


Often, the homes containing the libraries were geographically remote from centres of knowledge such as big cities that could provide access to public libraries. They constituted therefore knowledge hubs in otherwise isolated areas. The content of the libraries reflected the interests and needs of their owner and their extended household. These homes can be owned by members of the nobility, the gentry, commoners, or even royalty.


In many ways, the private library contributed to making the world enter the home. This was done not only with books and manuscripts, but also with letters, news, artefacts, objects of art, maps, scientific instruments, taxidermy, or any other foreign objects of curiosity. The library was sometimes combined as a “cabinet of curiosities” or Wunderkammer, which effectively created a microcosm inside the home.


The symposium will bring together early career and established scholars working in various fields of history to discuss the role of private libraries, laboratories, and cabinet of curiosities in connecting the home to the world through the production and circulation of knowledge. This can be ways of learning, ways of reading, ways of writing, ways of representing, ways of experimenting, or ways of teaching and tutoring, while integrating a gender perspective.


Overal theme:

The overall theme this symposium would like the participants to reflect upon concerns the world and the home. The home is understood as the architectural place where the private library is located. The world is understood as a plural concept describing the outside as geographical (other countries, the whole world), historical (antiquity), cultural, economic, political, cosmopolitan (views of a united humankind), scientific, religious (reformation, theological questions, other religions), artistic, etc.


The main question the participant should reflect upon is: How did the world enter and interreact with the home? This includes sub-questions, for instance:

- What world(s) entered the home?

- How did it (they) enter the home?

- Who in the home received the world(s) and what kinds?

- How can the historian trace a connection between the activities in the home and their impact in the world (and vice versa)?


The end scope of this symposium is to publish the papers in an edited volume.


Guide for Authors:

Authors are encouraged to submit their latest research, case studies, or methodological advancements aligned with the conference theme and topics of interest. Please send your proposal (max. 300 words) with a short CV (max. 200 words) before 14 April 2024 (midnight Madrid time) to: frank.poulsen@urjc.es


Practical elements:

The symposium will take place for one and a half day. There are no fees for registration. Lunch and coffee breaks will be provided, but the cost of transport and hotel will be at the charge of the participants.


Important Dates:

Deadline for submission: 14 April 2024

Notification of acceptance: 1 May 2024


For any programme and general enquiries: frank.poulsen@urjc.es

Studies in East European Thought, Collection 100 years of Evald Ilyenkov

Studies in East European Thought, Collection 100 years of Evald Ilyenkov. URL: https://link.springer.com/collections/ghfbhhceha


This special issue commemorates the centenary of the philosopher Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979). Ilyenkov provided a creative counter-current to the stagnation of Soviet thought, focusing on topics including activity, dialectics, psychology, education, and cybernetics. We present his historic contribution and present-day legacy. David Bakhurst opens the issue with a consideration of the relevance of Ilyenkov’s thought and concepts to contemporary philosophy. Several essays illustrate his relationship with his Soviet and East European contemporaries. Sergei Alushkin documents how Ilyenkov influenced the richness ofphilosophical thought in Ukraine inside and outside academe. His interpretation of individuality, personality, subjectivity and dialectics is explored and compared with that of contemporary thinkers, including Slavoj Žižek. Ilyenkov’s interes tin dynamic systems is set in the context of other dialecticians. The innovative ways in which he built on Marx’s dialectical approach in Das Kapital are examined, focusing on the ascent from the abstract to the concrete and the dialectics of the logical and the historical. Ilyenkov’s last book is decoded as a deployment of Lenin’s materialist dialectics to critique the Soviet economy and formulaic nature of official philosophical culture and a powerful defence materialist dialectics. Ilyenkov’s little-known fragments about composer Richard Wagner are examined.


Thursday 15 February 2024

2 Postdoc-Fellowships “Academia at Risk” / 2 years / deadline 24th February 2024

 2 Postdoc-Fellowships “Academia at Risk” / 2 years / deadline 24th February 2024

Our new interdisciplinary project group “Protecting academia at risk: Towards a new policy agenda for a thriving culture of higher education in Europe”, financed by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, is looking for 2 postdocs for two years (for the fellowship see here: https://www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/en/researchscholarships). We welcome researchers from the humanities and social sciences who bring in their own projects on (the history of) topics like academic refugees, migration and/of epistemologies, and related science policies (for the framework and involved researchers see here: Protecting Academia at Risk [https://www.uni-erfurt.de/to/JnyYoBCyUt8FJ8Oe]). Please send a CV including publications, a letter of intent that explains your previous experience in the field of research, a short project sketch (1-2p.), and two article-length samples of writing by 24th February to petoa@ceu.edu and bernhard.kleeberg@uni-erfurt.de. Interviews are planned asap.

Pavlíček Tomáš, Kulawiaková Barbora (eds.) Martin Černohorský. Studenti v centru pozornosti [Martin Černohorský. Students in the spotlight]

Pavlíček Tomáš, Kulawiaková Barbora (eds.) Martin Černohorský. Studenti v centru pozornosti [Martin Černohorský. Students in the spotlight]. Brno: MUNI Press 2023. ISBN: 978-80-280-0428-6


Kniha je velmi zdařilou a cennou publikací, která není pouhým ohlédnutím za bohatým a plodným životem jedné vědecké osobnosti. Poskytuje také užitečný vhled do metodologie výuky fyziky a vzdělávání obecně. Je i svědectvím o době a o tom, jak se s jejími nástrahami vypořádal člověk vybavený racionálním myšlením a pevnými morálními postoji. V tom jsou rozhovory s profesorem Černohorským trvale aktuální. Kniha nepochybně osloví nejen vědce, pedagogy a studenty v oblasti fyziky a matematiky, ale i další čtenáře se zájmem o vědu, vzdělávání a o životní osudy výjimečných osobností. Osobní svědectví profesora Černohorského doplněné faktografickou částí a poznámkovým aparátem je zároveň velmi cenným příspěvkem k historii české vědy.


Obsah: Table of contents: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s_rz8zIR3MPw6VROU9UrrhaGRddhP5fg/view?usp=sharing

online launch of Elena Kochetkova's recent monograph The Green Power of Socialism (MIT Press 2024)

On February 29 2024 at 15:00 the ESEH Environmental History Today Series will host the online launch of Elena Kochetkova's recent monograph The Green Power of Socialism (MIT Press 2024)

In The Green Power of Socialism, Elena Kochetkova examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving Soviet policies of wood consumption, discussing how professionals working in the forestry industry of the Soviet state viewed the present and future of forests by considering them both a natural resource and a trove of industrial material. When faced with the prospect of wood shortages, these specialists came to develop new industry-ecology paradigms. Kochetkova looks at the materiality of Soviet industry through forests and wood to show how, paradoxically, industrial ecology emerged and developed as a by-product of the Soviet industrialization project. The Green Power of Socialism also discusses how post-Soviet industry has abandoned these socialist practices and the idea of nature as a complicated ecosystem that provides a crucial service to society.


February 29, 2024, Thursday, 15:00-17:00 CET – Russia

Book presentation: The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press 2024)

Presenter: Elena Kochetkova, University of Bergen, Norway

Discussant: Laurent Coumel, CNRS and EHESS, France

Chair: Anastasia Fedotova, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

Please register to join the zoom meeting: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwrd-qhqT8iH9C3UOKpkSmCuTbDWyD8ng0A

Share and follow the event on FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/2667050713471636?ref=newsfeed

More on the seminar series: http://eseh.org/envhistoday-webinars/environmental-history-today-webinars-2023/

Monday 12 February 2024

Johan Östling and David Larsson Heidenblad: The History of Knowledge.

Johan Östling and David Larsson Heidenblad: The History of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press 2023. 

open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/history-of-knowledge/44D3F2F9BFF5E7005263411CB7738802 .

SUMMARY

This Element provides a pedagogical overview of the history of knowledge, including its main currents, distinguishing ideas, and key concepts. However, it is not primarily a state-of-the-art overview but rather an argumentative contribution that seeks to push the field in a certain direction – towards studying knowledge in society and knowledge in people's lives. Hence, the history of knowledge envisioned by the authors is not a rebranding of the history of science and intellectual history, but rather a reinvigoration of social and cultural history. This implies that many different forms of knowledge should be objects of study. By drawing on ongoing research from all across the world dealing with different time periods and problems, the authors demonstrate that the history of knowledge can enrich our understanding of past societies. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.


Николаос Хриссидис: Академия при царском дворе

Николаос Хриссидис: Академия при царском дворе: Греческие ученые и иезуитское образование в России раннего Нового времени [An Academy at the Court of the Tsars: Greek Scholars and Jesuit Education in Early Modern Russia]. Новое литературное обозрение 2023. ISBN: 978-5-4448-2189-3

Издательская аннотация:

В 1685 году два греческих иеромонаха, Иоанникий и Софроний Лихуды, основали первое в истории России высшее учебное заведение открытого светского типа, известное нам как Славяно-греко-латинская академия. Как и многие их греческие современники, братья получили образование в школах постренессансной Италии, копировавших учебные программы иезуитов. В своей книге Н. Хриссидис анализирует влияние Славяно-греко-латинской академии на российскую образовательную практику и помещает ее в широкий контекст русско-греческих культурных связей и контактов между Россией и Западной Европой в XVII веке. Он показывает, как российские и греческие образовательные предприятия были встроены в общеевропейскую модель академической деятельности иезуитов, повлиявшей на римско-католические и восточноправославные учебные заведения в части выбора учебных программ. По мнению автора, греческое академическое и культурное влияние на Россию во второй половине XVII века носило отпечаток западных образовательных стандартов, хотя и оставалось номинально православным с доктринальной точки зрения. Николаос Хриссидис — историк, профессор Государственного университета Южного Коннектикута, США.

Thursday 8 February 2024

Elena Kochetkova: The Green Power of Socialism

 Elena Kochetkova: The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology. Boston: MIT Press 2024. ISBN: 9780262547451. 

How the Soviet forestry industry developed a unique form of industrial ecology—a commonsense approach toward natural resources for the economy and society.

In The Green Power of Socialism, Elena Kochetkova examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving Soviet policies of wood consumption, discussing how professionals working in the forestry industry of the Soviet state viewed the present and future of forests by considering them both a natural resource and a trove of industrial material. When faced with the prospect of wood shortages, these specialists came to develop new industry-ecology paradigms. Kochetkova looks at the materiality of Soviet industry through forests and wood to show how, paradoxically, industrial ecology emerged and developed as a by-product of the Soviet industrialization project.

The Green Power of Socialism also discusses how post-Soviet industry has abandoned these socialist practices and the idea of nature as a complicated ecosystem that provides a crucial service to society. Emphasizing the technological and environmental impacts of the Cold War, Kochetkova critically reconsiders two explanatory models that have become dominant in the historiography of Soviet approaches to nature over the last decades—ecocide and environmentalism. Within the context of the current environmental crisis, the book invites readers to reevaluate state socialism as a complex phenomenon with sophisticated interactions between nature and industry. In so doing, it contributes a fresh perspective on the activities of socialist experts and their view of nature, shedding light on Soviet state industrial and environmental policy and its continuing legacy in the present day.

Rindert Jagersma, Helwi Blom, Evelien Chayes, and Ann-Marie Hansen (eds.) Private Libraries and their Documentation, 1665–1830.

Rindert Jagersma, Helwi Blom, Evelien Chayes, and Ann-Marie Hansen (eds.) Private Libraries and their Documentation, 1665–1830. Brill 2023. ISBN: 978-90-04-54295-2

open access: https://brill.com/edcollbook-oa/title/64633 .

The essays in Private Libraries and their Documentation revolve around the users and contents of early modern private book collections, and around the sources used to document and study these collections. They take the reader from large-scale projects on historical book ownership to micro-level research conducted on individual libraries, and from analyses of specific types of primary sources to general typologies and overviews by period and by region. As a result of its comparative approach and active engagement with questions regarding the nature, selection and accessibility of sources, the volume serves as a guide to sources and resources in different regions as well as to state-of the-art methods and interpretational approaches.


Publication of this volume in open access was made possible by the Ammodo KNAW Award 2017 for Humanities.

Yuk Hui (ed.) Cybernetics for the 21st Century.

Yuk Hui (ed.) Cybernetics for the 21st Century. Vol.1 Epistemological Reconstruction. Hanart Press 2024.

Philosophy, Art and Technology series. Open Access: https://hanart.press/cybernetics-for-the-21st-century-vol-1/ .


Cybernetics for the 21st Century Vol.1 is dedicated to the epistemological reconstruction of cybernetics, consisting of a series of historical and critical reflections on the subject – which according to Martin Heidegger marked the completion of Western metaphysics. In this anthology, historians, philosophers, sociologists and media studies scholars explore the history of cybernetics from Leibniz to artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as the development of twentieth-century cybernetics in various geographical regions in the world, from the USA to the Soviet Union, Latin America, France, Poland, China and Japan. The reconstruction shows the various paths of cybernetics and their socio-political implications, which remain unfamiliar to us today. It reveals more than what we thought we knew – and yet we hardly know – and allows us to understand where we are and to reflect on the future of technology, ecology and planetary politics.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Cybernetics Now? 

Yuk Hui

Part I: Maps

Translating Rationalism: Leibniz and Cybernetics 

Brunella Antomarini

Machine and Ecology 

Yuk Hui

Ontology and the Politics of Information in the first Cybernetics 

Mathieu Triclot

Detoxifying Cybernetics: From Homeostasis to Autopoiesis and Beyond

Kathrine Hayles

James Lovelock, Gaia, and the Remembering of Biological Being 

Dorion Sagan

Part II: Territories

Cybernetics in Britain 

Andrew Pickering

Cybernetics Across Cultures: The Localization of the Universal 

Slava Gerovitch

Cybernetics, Communism, and Romanticism: Cybernetic Thinking in the Polish People’s Republic and in the Pre-Cybernetic Era  

Michał Krzykawski

A Brief History of Chinese Cybernetics  

Dylan Levi King

Why Did Cybernetics Disappear from Latin America? An Incomplete Timeline 

David Maulén de los Reyes

Life-in-formation: Cybernetics of the Heart  

Daisuke Harashima

Monday 5 February 2024

Lukáš Babka: Slovanská knihovna 1924-2024

Lukáš Babka: Slovanská knihovna 1924-2024 : (průvodce po dějinách, fondech a službách) = The Slavonic Library, Prague 1924-2024 : (a guide to its history, funds and services). Transl. Rita Lyons Kindlerová, Pat Lyons.  Praha : Národní knihovna České republiky - Slovanská knihovna, 2023. 

The Slavonic Library in Prague was founded in 1924 by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This library was tasked with two main goals: (a) creating the informational foundations for the newly established Institute of Slavonic Studies, and (b) collecting and making accessible documents for the diaspora from the Russian Empire. Many of these refugees, with different nationalities, found refuge in Czechoslovakia after 1918. The Slavonic Library since 1958 has been part of, what is today, the National Library of the Czech Republic. Thanks to the size and composition of its collections, the Slavonic Library is an internationally recognized centre of Slavic studies.

This book provides a detailed description of the history of the Slavonic Library over the last century. It introduces the reader to the libraryʼs collections, how they were created, and gives insights into the most valuable documents in the library. In addition to providing the usual information about those departments dealing with books, journals, and newspapers this monograph also highlights the Slavonic Libraryʼs unique historical, manuscript, and cartographic collections. Information about emigration from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, after 1917 is presented in a separate chapter. This is because on this migration topic the Slavonic Libraryʼs collection is of global importance. In addition, this volume also presents the libraryʼs special collections that include unique archives of documentary, visual, artistic, photographic, and numismatic materials.

Finally, this book provides an overview of the range of services provided by the Slavonic Library with practical information about the libraryʼs operations that will be welcomed by anyone interested in studying and using the Slavonic Libraryʼs services.

This book was published to mark the centenary of the libraryʼs foundation.

Price: 350,- CZK

Distribution of the book is provided, besides the Slavonic Library, by online bookshop Kosmas.cz.


 

Михайло Могилянський. Неопубліковані новели [Mykhailo Mohylyanskyi. Unpublished short stories]

 Михайло Могилянський. Неопубліковані новели [Mykhailo Mohylyanskyi. Unpublished short stories] / упорядкування та передмова Вікторії Сергієнко. — Харків: ТОВ «Видавництво „Права людини“», 2023. ISBN 978-617-8186-24-1. Open access: https://library.khpg.org/index.php?id=1706465034 .

Михайло Михайлович Могилянський (1873–1942) — один із засновників жанру інтелектуального роману в українській літературі XX століття. Після появи оповідання «Вбивство» (1925), де в особі антагоніста — невдалого «національного героя» — радянська влада впізнала історика Михайла Грушевського, Могилянському було заборонено друкуватися. «Честь» (1929), один із трьох написаних у шухляду романів письменника, вперше виданий 1990 року в київському літературному часописі «Вітчизна». «Ильза» (1937) та «Всюду страсти роковые» (1939), написані російською мовою у Дніпропетровську, де Могилянський мешкав у 1934–1941 роках, збереглися в Центральному державному архіві-музеї літератури і мистецтва України. Обидва твори — це романи у первісному значенні цього слова, а саме: романтичні, любовні історії. Інтертекстуальність, інтелектуальна провокація та випробування меж пристойного для радянського суспільства 1930-х років, ніби емансипованого революцією від «буржуазної моралі», — ось те, що характеризує публіковані тут тексти.

Thursday 1 February 2024

online event: Sergei Mokhov: Oncology in USSR: Research and Treatment

online event: Sergei Mokhov: Oncology in USSR: Research and Treatment, 7.2.2024, 17:00 CET/18:00 Kyiv. (In Russian)


О достижениях советской науки знает практически каждый: это и первый искусственный спутник Земли, и первый человек в космосе, и атомная бомба, и ледокол. Однако о достижениях в сфере онкологии известно достаточно мало. Почему так? Почему советские физики гремели на весь мир, а советские онкологи нет? Как вообще исследовали и лечили рак в СССР? Можно ли говорить об особой «советской онкологии»?

7 февраля в 18:00 на эти и другие вопросы ответит Сергей Мохов, PhD, исследователь смерти и умирания.

Организатор:

Институт междисциплинарных медицинских исследований (ИММИ)

Встреча пройдет онлайн. Для участия зарегистрируйтесь на Timepad (https://eusp.timepad.ru/event/2762451/).


Journal for the History of Knowledge – Call for Proposals, Special Issue 2026

 

Journal for the History of Knowledge – Call for Proposals, Special Issue 2026


The Journal for the History of Knowledge features an annual special issue, compiled by guest editors, which explores a theme central to the journal’s scope. The special issues of previous years have been Histories of Bureaucratic Knowledge (2020), Histories of Ignorance (2021), Situated Nature (2022) and Entangled Temporalities (2023).

We are currently accepting proposals for the 2026 Special Issue. Proposals should contain the following:

  • A description of the proposed theme (1500-2000 words) highlighting its significance for the history of knowledge
  • A table of contents (typically 8-12 articles of 8000 words)
  • Abstracts of the articles
  • Two-page CVs of the editors; short biographies of the contributors
  • An outline of the production process up to manuscript submission. All manuscripts must be submitted to the journal by 1 May 2024.

Please send your proposal to: jhokjournal@gmail.com

Proposal deadline: 1 May 2024
Notification of acceptance: by 30 June 2024

After submission, all manuscripts will go through a process of peer-review, author’s revisions, and copy-editing. JHoK is a diamond Open Access journal, at no charge to the authors. The journal will be available in print (on demand) at Brepols Publishers.

Details of the journal’s scope and a full list of the editorial team and advisory editorial board is available on the journal's website.

Tomasz Pudłocki: Szekspir i Polska. Życie Władysława Tarnawskiego (1885 - 1951) [Shakespeare and Poland. Life of Władysława Tarnawskiego (1885-1951)

Tomasz Pudłocki: Szekspir i Polska. Życie Władysława Tarnawskiego (1885 - 1951) [Shakespeare and Poland. Life of Władysława Tarnawskiego (18...