Seminar: New Directions in Dissent Research. Charter 77 as a Family Experience
We would like to invite you to another seminars of the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which will take place on Wednesday 30 April 2025 at 16:00 in the study room of the Institute of Contemporary History (Vlašská 355/9).
The seminar will present one of the ending collective research projects of the Institute of Human Rights of the CAS, supported in 2022-2024 by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. The main aim will be to present and characterize the society that was formed around Charter 77, the most important Eastern European human rights initiative before 1989. There is a wealth of available sources on the group under study, including ego-documents, biographical interviews, audiovisual documents and artistic, fictional reflection. Thanks to this diverse range of sources, the seminar will open up the possibility to look at the actors on a personal, intimate level – with their dilemmas, doubts, experiences – and to show their everyday life with features that can be considered typical of this particular community. Its character is well expressed by the metaphor of a network based on trust and solidarity. The role of apartments and households as the axis of these networks, the forms of communal coexistence and the gendered functioning of the Chartist community will be discussed in detail. Family life is then a particular theme: How did their loved ones experience the numerous incarcerations of Chartists? How was it possible to fulfil a parental role in these conditions? And above all, what was the experience of children who grew up and matured in this environment?
Keynote: Marta Edith Holečková (Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Comments: Barbora Čiháková (The Institute for Czech Literature of the CAS) and Nikola Balaš (The Institute of Ethnology of the CAS)
Please note that an audio recording of the seminar will be made and will be available on the Institute’s website and Spotify.