Finding a voice: The Slovak-Roma woman writer in Irish and Czech fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
CHARLES SABATOS
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Woman Writer ◽  
Complex Case ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
American Writer

The theory of minor literature (based on Kafka’s hybrid identity in Prague) is applicable to the complex case of Czech and Slovak-Romani writing, including fictional portrayals of the Roma. The Irish-American writer Colum McCann’s Zoli, published in 2006, features a Slovak-Roma woman who becomes an acclaimed poet under the Communist regime, only to be cast out by her community and forced into exile. Two years later, Irena Eliášová (a Roma writer born in Slovakia who lives in the Czech Republic) published her novel Our Settlement (Naše osada), a far more affectionate view of the Roma society of her childhood. Both writers walk an uneasy balance in presenting Slovak-Roma culture from both insider and outsider perspectives. In McCann’s case the intention of bringing one of Europe’s most misunderstood minorities to anglophone readers struggles to avoid cultural appropriation, while Eliášová’s use of multilingualism negotiates the power dynamics between Czech, Slovak, and Romani.

scholarly journals Ministerial staff of the Czech Republic 25 years after the ‘Velvet Revolution’

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
František Ochrana ◽  
Michal Plaček ◽  
Michal Křápek
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Residual Effects ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Velvet Revolution

The article analyses ministerial staff of the Czech Republic 25 years after the Velvet Revolution. It characterizes ministerial employees during the period of the communist regime in former Czechoslovakia (1948–1989) and following the anti-communist coup. In order to analyse the present-day situation, it uses our own survey of the staff working at ministries in the Czech Republic. Within the survey (conducted April–June 2013) all 14 ministries of the Czech Republic were contacted. In total, 1351 respondents (ministerial employees of the Czech Republic) participated in the survey. The research aimed to examine the gender structure, age, education, acquired experience and performed activities of ministerial staff. The results of the research also signal that in some areas (e.g. within the so-called systematized employment positions and the prescribed level of education at some ministries) the residual effects of the previous regime still manifest themselves. The results of this research may be an inspiration for similar research projects in other countries of the former Soviet bloc.

The Effects of Agricultural Conservation Practices on the Local Water Cycle in conditions of the Czech Republic Modeled by SWAT

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Noreika ◽  
Tailin Li ◽  
David Zumr ◽  
Josef krása ◽  
Tomáš Dostál
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Cropping Systems ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Conservation Practices ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Agricultural Conservation ◽  
Farm Scale

<p>The Czech Republic is an intensely agricultural country. Agricultural intensification of the Czech Republic started in the 1970s during the Communist regime wherein large monotonous agricultural fields, subsurface tile drainage systems, and artificially straightened streams were incorporated across the landscape. Since 1989 (the end of the Communist era), agricultural land and management has been privatized and has experienced shifts from centrally planned crop rotations to those that are economically-driven. On the other hand, nowadays many Czech farmers are beginning to explore various agricultural conservation practices which can have as significant of an impact as land use changes. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of various agricultural conservation practices (contour tillage, reduced tillage, and grass strip addition) and decreasing field sizes at the farm scale in a representative agricultural basin in the Czech Republic. We conducted scenario analysis using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to determine the effects of these measures on basin water balance and soil erosion. Through SWAT we were able to determine which measures are most effective when combined at the farm-scale.</p><p>Acknowledgment: The presented research has been performed within project H2020 No. 773903 Shui, focused on water scarcity in European and Chinese cropping systems and the Grant Agency of Czech Technical University in Prague, No. SGS20/156/OHK1/3T/11.</p>

scholarly journals Years in Cultural Studies: 2013

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karel Šima ◽  
Ondřej Daniel ◽  
Tomáš Kavka
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Uk

n Eastern Europe, which is the focus of our study, different national scholarly traditions assigned their own place to the study of culture. Although the influence of the kulturologia (“culturology”) schools installed at Russian universities in the 1980s radiated out into Eastern European countries, local academic communities dictated the approach to the study of popular culture. While the Polish field of kulturoznawstwo was propelled by internal forces from the early 1970s onwards, in Czechoslovakia, kulturologie emerged as a new discipline around the fall of the Communist regime. Even so, it failed to take off and by 2012 had vanished completely from the Czech Republic. Central European countries were also affected by the German academic tradition of Kulturwissenschaften with its emphasis on philosophy and aesthetics. Our inquiry highlights the first international conference on cultural studies in the Czech Republic in 2013. It was during this event that a group of new postdocs from Charles University, including ourselves, raised the topic of changes in Eastern European popular culture due to the political transformation in 1989. This group had also arranged for Ann Gray, the final director of the UK Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to give a keynote address at the conference, a gesture that clearly linked the CCCS with the group’s own Centre for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPK) established three years earlier. From the outset, CSPK’s organizers aimed to promote the Anglo-American tradition of cultural studies both in the academy and among the general public. At the same time, they sought to retain their independence from academic structures and funding systems that might restrict their political activism.

Havel, Vaclav

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma D. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel (1936–2011), born into a wealthy family in Czechoslovakia, became a famous playwright and an activist under the Communist regime. He was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic.

scholarly journals Is Foreign Aid Responsive to Environmental Needs and Performance of Developing Countries? Case Study of the Czech Republic.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zdeněk Opršal ◽  
Jaromír Harmáček
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Individual Development ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Environmental Objectives ◽  
Environmental Aid ◽  
And Performance

This paper examines the responsiveness of foreign aid to environmental needs and performance of developing countries using, as an example, the Czech Republic. It focuses on the environmental component of foreign aid, which is defined as the development intervention of the Czech Government, which can be expected to have positive environmental impacts in target countries. The provision of environmental aid is based on the assumption that the Czech Republic has practical, transferable experience of qualitative improvements in the environment following the collapse of communist regime. Flows of environmental aid were determined by analyzing and categorizing individual development aid projects in the period 2000 to 2015. Regression analyses were employed to explain the pattern of Czech environmental aid allocations. The results show relatively limited reflection of the recipient’s environmental needs in the distribution of Czech environmental aid. Only two environmental objectives were significantly echoed in actual aid flows. The first was transfer of advanced environmental technologies and reductions in energy consumption, approximated by carbon dioxide emissions per capita. The second was protection of biodiversity, represented by the extinction risk of sets of species. The other five objectives did not play significant roles in environmental aid allocations. Above that, other factors not related to the environmental needs and performance of recipient countries affected Czech environmental aid. Among them, historical ties to other former communist countries were of high significance. The findings call into question the environmental objectives of Czech foreign aid and point to the need for transparent criteria for the allocation of environmental aid.

Czech Militant Democracy in Action

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslav Mareš
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
European Dimension ◽  
European Court ◽  
Legislative Framework

This article analyses the dissolution of the extreme right Workers’ Party by the Czech courts in 2010. It situates the case in the historical development of party closures by militant democracy on Czech territory and explains why the Workers’ Party was the first party to be dissolved in the Czech Republic after the fall of the Communist regime. It also describes the legislative framework in contemporary Czech law for the dissolution of political parties. It details the political and legal repercussions of the ruling and the wider discussions it provoked, not only in political and expert circles but also among the general public. Given the fact that the case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the European dimension of the dissolution of the Workers’ Party is also analysed.

The Czech Republic: The Military and Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zdeněk Kříž ◽  
Oldřich Krpec
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
The Military

The states that existed historically in what is now the Czech Republic were characterized by frequent changes of political regime, and these changes were substantially reflected in the military. Every political regime successfully avoided a military putsch despite that regime changes and international crises opened several windows of opportunity for considering open military interference (including military coups) in politics. All of the political regimes ruling in the Czech lands sought to make the military a mirror of the civilian state and society, applying what Samuel Huntington calls subjective civilian control. Military institutions were adapted to the ruling political regime as much as possible with the aim of securing their political loyalty. Values typical of each regime were implemented in the military. In the period of 1918–1938, for example, soldiers were expected to be politically conscious citizens of a democratic state. After 1948, the communist regime devoted considerable effort to transforming soldiers into obedient members of the socialist society, faithful to Marxism-Leninism and the Soviet Union. Later on, after 1989, the civic concept of the military was again emphasized, with the identification of soldiers with democratic and patriotic values considered an ideal. All the political regimes operating on the territory of today’s Czech Republic were successful in that the military as an institution has not interfered in politics and has been consistently loyal.

Czeskie rozliczenia z komunizmem po 1989 roku. Rozwiązania prawne i instytucjonalne

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Paweł Ukielski
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Past

The collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989 required settlement with the past on many levels. This applies especially to settlements with communism. In the first years after change of the regime, many legal solutions were adopted to align accounts with the past, but in parallel the communist party was allowed to function. Only very few communist functionaries responsible for crimes were sentenced, however, many symbolic changes were carried out. It took more time to create the institutional framework - institutions dealing with the period 1948-1989 in Czech history. In recent years, the importance of this topic in Czech public life has increased again. The purpose of this article is to analyze legal, formal and institutional solutions and their functioning in the practice of the Czech Republic. The legal acts, institutions as well as the effects of their functioning and actions in the last 30 years have been examined.

scholarly journals Between Language Revitalization and Assimilation: On the Language Situation of the German Minority in the Czech Republic

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Sandra Kreisslová ◽  
Lukáš Novotný
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Language Preservation ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Research Survey ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Forced Resettlement ◽  
German Minority ◽  
Regional Associations

Abstract Language preservation is considered to be one of the central missions of ethnic groups. For the German minority in the Czech Republic too, language plays an important role in group identity. Its current language situation is a result of the negative historic developments after World War II and under the communist regime. Due to the forced resettlement of most German-speaking inhabitants and the subsequent assimilation policies of the communist regime, the German community underwent strong cultural and language assimilation, which is also attested by the steady decline of its membership. The study focuses on issues of the language situation of the German minority and the revitalization efforts that have been undertaken by its elite in cooperation with other relevant institutions. A research survey of the main representatives of the minority and its regional associations demonstrates their evaluations of the ways in which German language is currently used and promoted in the Czech Republic, and it also points to the different strategies they have been striving to implement to reverse the language shift.

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