The Holocaust in Slovak Drama

The article discusses several Slovak plays with the theme of the Holocaust; namely Ticho (Silence) by Juraj Váh, Holokaust (Holocaust) by Viliam Klimáček, and Rabínka (The Woman Rabbi) by Anna Grusková. It also briefly refers to Návrat do života (Return to Life) and Antigona a tí druhí (Antigone and Those Others) by Peter Karvaš, both mediating traumas from concentration camps. Two plays (Ticho and Návrat do života) were written and staged immediately after the Second World War. Karvaš’s Antigona is a rare occurrence of the theme in Slovak drama during the Communism (in the early 1960s), whereas Klimáček’s and Grusková’s plays are recent, both staged in 2012. The article focuses on several aspects of these five plays: on dramatic characters representing “victims”, “witnesses” and “culprits” (Panas, quoted in Gawliński 2007: 19); on references about and/or representation of the Holocaust in dramatic texts; and on the type of the conflict(s) in the plays. It also mentions specific approaches of respective authors when dealing with the theme of the Holocaust, as well as with the relevance of their reflection of the theme for Slovak society in respective periodsThe article discusses several Slovak plays with the theme of the Holocaust; namely Ticho (Silence) by Juraj Váh, Holokaust (Holocaust) by Viliam Klimáček, and Rabínka (The Woman Rabbi) by Anna Grusková. It also briefly refers to Návrat do života (Return to Life) and Antigona a tí druhí (Antigone and Those Others) by Peter Karvaš, both mediating traumas from concentration camps. Two plays (Ticho and Návrat do života) were written and staged immediately after the Second World War. Karvaš’s Antigona is a rare occurrence of the theme in Slovak drama during the Communism (in the early 1960s), whereas Klimáček’s and Grusková’s plays are recent, both staged in 2012. The article focuses on several aspects of these five plays: on dramatic characters representing “victims”, “witnesses” and “culprits” (Panas, quoted in Gawliński 2007: 19); on references about and/or representation of the Holocaust in dramatic texts; and on the type of the conflict(s) in the plays. It also mentions specific approaches of respective authors when dealing with the theme of the Holocaust, as well as with the relevance of their reflection of the theme for Slovak society in respective periods

Economics of the new member states: A post-crisis perspective

This essay addresses four major issues confronting the Central and Eastern European new members of the European Union in the decade to come. First: what to think of the financial meltdown of 2008-2009. Second, what have they learned from the tremors, having shaken the previous star performers of the EU? Third we ask if we can expect a return to ‘normalcy' as forecast by most models of financial rating agencies and international financial institutions? Fourth the question is raised what did the new members benefit from their EU membership? Some conclusions on the future of EU reforms and policies close the overview

Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art

This book traces the influence of the changing political environment on Czech art, criticism, history, and theory between 1895 and 1939, looking beyond the avant-garde to the peripheries of modern art. The period is marked by radical political changes, the formation of national and regional identities, and the rise of modernism in Central Europe – specifically, the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the creation of the new democratic state of Czechoslovakia. Marta Filipová studies the way in which narratives of modern art were formed in a constant negotiation and dialogue between an effort to be international and a desire to remain authentically local

Les Musiques Électroacoustiques: construction of a discipline

My hypothesis in this paper is that Hugh Davies redefined what electronic music was via his research and documentation work in the 1960s, and, that his definition of electronic music still holds true today (at least as far as electronic music in an academic context is concerned). My argument, in other words, is that Hugh Davies constructed the discipline of what is now known as electroacoustic music. Two questions are as follows. First of all, how did Davies go about constructing a discipline of electroacoustic music? To answer that question I examine Davies’s published and unpublished research work from 1961–1968. Second, to what extent was he successful? Or, to put it another way, to what extent has Davies’s definition of electronic music been accepted? To answer this second question I examine subsequent published literature and projects from 1968–2012 that have cited or been based on Davies’s work, and show how the structure of Davies’s model of electronic music is reflected in this subsequent work. This is a transcript of a presentation given at the 3rd International Conference ‘Music and Technologies,’ Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, 15 November 2013

The Tübingen Corpus of Eastern European English(TCEEE): From a small-scale corpus study to a newly emerging non-native English variety

Research in the field of World Englishes aims to pin down, as precisely as possible, the linguistic and pragmatic properties a certain variety displays or does not display. The status of English in the Expanding Circle has been of significant interest in recent years (Berns 1995, 2005; House 2002; Knapp – Meierkord 2002; Jenkins 2007; Sedlhofer – Widdowson 2009, etc.). Nevertheless, the use of English by Slavic speakers in Post-Soviet Space has been largely ignored. Given the typological similarities among the Slavic languages (and similar historical and societal developments in the region) the paper proposes to view the Eastern European English(es) as a variety of English within the Expanding Circle. In particular, the paper questions which morphosemantic patterns, especially those of tense and aspect, emerge in the data. The study draws on spontaneously produced language data of fifteen Slavic speakers of English with L1 Ukrainian, Russian, Polish or Slovak which have been compiled into the Tübingen Corpus of Eastern European English (TCEEE: sixty thousand words). The paper argues that a variety of Eastern European English(es) is indeed emerging and that further studies examining the domains of morphosyntax, morphosemantics and lexis are necessary to provide additional evidence of this development

IN SEARCH OF A USEABLE PAST: POLITICS OF HISTORY IN THE POST-COMMUNIST CZECH REPUBLIC AND SLOVAKIA FROM A COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The dissertation examines the puzzle of the divergent post-communist discourses and rituals of collective memory in the Czech republic and Slovakia - in particular, the difference in (1) the two countries' attitudes toward de-communization, (2) their interpretations of their common Czechoslovak past, and (3) the overall content and style of official memory discourses employed in the two countries after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Taking a comparative historical perspective, the dissertation traces the transformation of the Czech and Slovak historical narratives over time and finds the roots of the divergent Czech and Slovak post-communist paths in the legacies of the Czechoslovak communist and interwar regimes. On a conceptual level, the dissertation presents a culturalist critique of the dominant institutionalist literature on democratization and an argument on how we might think of post-communist transitions outside of the strictly institutional framework. It conceptualizes democratization as a dynamic and a highly contentious process of meaning creation in which various actors struggle to legitimize themselves and their visions of the present and the future by making references to the past and highlights the special role of political myths in this process. Rather than a straightforward adoption of some ready-made institutions and processes, in other words, democratization is presented as an activity of sensemaking - of searching for useable pasts and new legitimizing mythologies. The Czech and Slovak post-communist search for useable pasts represents neither an unprecedented "return of history" nor some cynical sinister power play of elites acting on some well-constituted interests but rather a new phase of an ongoing, dynamic project of identity and meaning-creation - of sense-making through time