Newsletter des Collegium Carolinum 17/2016

(2.6.2015)

Werkstattgespräch

Das Collegium Carolinum vergibt jährlich Gaststipendien an Nachwuchswissenschaftler/innen für einen Forschungsaufenthalt in München. In diesem Zusammenhang laden wir herzlich zu einem Werkstattgespräch mit einem der diesjährigen Stipendiaten ein:

Filip Herza (Charles University in Prague):
Body, Dis/ability and Czech Nationalism in the 19th and 20th Century

am 15.6.2016, 17.00 Uhr, im Seminarraum des Collegium Carolinum
(Hochstr. 8 / 2. Stock, München)

Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell recently suggested that there is a convergence between nationalism and able-ism leading to what they term "ablenationalism". Such understanding of an intimate bond between nationalism and a conception of bodily ab/normality rests on the assumption, that the formation of modern national states entailed not only standardization and homogenization of national languages – but also normalization of bodies and bodily practices. According to this approach, national discourses should be analyzed as certain forms of biopolitical reasoning and as a form of governance of the individual as well as collective national body. This presentation demonstrates the usefulness of thinking nationalism through body and disability which will be demonstrated on a few examples from the history of Czech nationalism at the turn of the 19th century.

Filip Herza is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague. He is approaching the social and cultural history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the vantage point of the dis/ability and gender history. His dissertation project focuses on the culture of exhibiting “abnormal” bodies in the entertainment industry of the turn-of-the-19th-century Prague. Parts of his research were published in "Exploring the Cultural History of Continental European Freak Shows" and elsewhere. He is recently preparing a publication entitled "Anthropologists and their Monsters. Ethnicity, Nation and Able-bodiedness in the Early (Czech) Anthropology".

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