| Course title | Censorship and Books in Totalitarian Regimes |
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| Course code | KBH/92BVS |
| Organizational form of instruction | Seminar |
| Level of course | Doctoral |
| Year of study | not specified |
| Semester | Winter and summer |
| Number of ECTS credits | 4 |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Status of course | Optional |
| Form of instruction | Face-to-face |
| Work placements | This is not an internship |
| Recommended optional programme components | None |
| Course availability | The course is available to visiting students |
| Lecturer(s) |
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| Course content |
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Dates: 10. 2.; 24. 2.; 9.3.; 23.3.; 6. 4.; 20. 4.; 4. 5. SYLLABUS: 1/ 10. 2. Introductory remarks, key themes, assessment, resources, course requirements Presentation/s and readings for the upcoming seminar: Darnton, Robert. "What is the history of books? Revisited". Modern Intellectual History 4(3): 495-508, 2007. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3403039/darnton_revisited.pdf?sequence=2 Optional reading: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, "The Unacknowledged Revolution" (1979), in Michelle Levy; Tom Mole eds., The Broadview Reader in Book History, 2014. 2/ 24. 2. Book communication circuit - basic concepts in book studies, print as an agent of change; presentations of the Book Review ideas and its preliminary structure. Presentation/s and readings for the upcoming seminar: Jiřina Šmejkalová, "Censors and Their Readers: Selling and Silencing Czech Books," in Libraries & Culture, University of Texas Press, 2001, reprint in Alexis Weedon ed., The History of the Book in the West: 1914-2000, Ashgate 2010. "Zákon ze dne 5. května o znárodnění polygrafických podniků," http://aplikace.mvcr.cz/archiv2008/sbirka/1948/sb47-48.pdf Václav Kopecký: "Knihy do rukou lidu". Zákon o vydávání a rozšiřování knih, hudebnin a jiných neperiodických publikací. Projevy a dokumenty, Praha: Ministerstvo informací a osvěty, 1949. 3/ 9.3. Censorship - definition/s and key principles of the in command 'book communication circuit', beyond the market, nationalization and centralization. Presentation/s and readings for the upcoming seminar: Šmejkalová, J., "Command Celebrities: The Rise and Fall of Hanzelka and Zikmund". Central Europe, 13:1-2, pp. 72-86, 2015. 4/ 23.3. Cold War Books - vehicle and weapon of communication control, 'liberalization' (?) of the book in the 196os; technologies of regulation. Presentation/s and readings for the upcoming seminar: Lishaugen, Roar. "Incompatible Reading Cultures: Czech Common Readers and the Soviet Mass Reader Concept in the Early 1950s." Scando-Slavica, vol. 60, no. 1 (2014): 108-127. Šmejkalová, J., Lishaugen, R. "Reading East of the Berlin Wall", PMLA - Modern Language Association of America, Januray, 2019. 5/ 6. 4. Reading behind the Berlin Wall, readers' demand VS resources allocation, reading cultures of shortage and storage. Presentation/s and readings for the upcoming seminar: Johnston, Gordon. "What Is the History of Samizdat?" Social History, vol. 24, no. 2, (1999,): pp. 115-133. Fenomén Underground: Vokno, 30. 1. 2015 http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10419676635-fenomen-underground/video/ 6/ 20.4. Resistance - cultures of oppositions and alternatives, smuggling texts across the Cold War borders, samizdat. 7/ 4.5. Materiality of control, current trends in media and book studies (new materialism), 'paper revolution', waste paper: new materialism in the analyses of Cold War culture. Summary of the course achievements & further research tracks.
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| Learning activities and teaching methods |
| Monologic Lecture(Interpretation, Training), Dialogic Lecture (Discussion, Dialog, Brainstorming) |
| Learning outcomes |
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SUMMARY The traditional notion of censorship includes the suppression of speech and public communication considered by the authorities as objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or simply inacceptable. Drawing on examples from the book production and reception in East and Central Europe of the second half of the twentieth century we shall address censorship not just as a list of libri prohibiti but as a complex network of social, material and discursive practices (i.e. print runs, paper allocation, timing of release, book promotion, etc.) that totalitarian regimes historically built up in-between the text and the reader. CONTENT The course will introduce students to the debates on regulating book communication circuit (Darnton, 1982) as well as into the processes of regulating textual transmission from a neo-materialistic perspective. East and Central European cultural dynamics, with a special focus on the Czech records of the Cold War and its aftermath, will represent the resource of core data in a sense of a socio-cultural model expressed in terms of entities and their relationships. The course will revisit the established notions of censorship and revolution in order to uncover people's appropriation of texts (Chartier) that contributed to both the reproduction and erosion of the Old Regime. The topics will include: the origins of command and centrally controlled model of book production; distribution and reception of books in totalitarian societies; de-commodification of the book market, book as a vehicle and weapon of the Cold War; censored books; publishing policy of the Communist party; resistance and alternatives; reading samizdat; smuggling exiled books; looking beyond the official versus underground binary oppositions; book as a vehicle of shadow economy, paper as an actor of change in a sense of every-thing that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference (Latour, 2005: 71).
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| Prerequisites |
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unspecified
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| Assessment methods and criteria |
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Student performance
A/ Active participation in the class. B/ Academic Book Review of an academic text selected from the attached Resources. It will introduce the text under review into the current disciplinary context, critically evaluate the key arguments, and suggest further directions of research in the area. The Review will include Bibliography with full references to all resources consulted following the respective referencing style. The Review's Objectives: - 1. to summarize the content of the work under review and present a complex, fully-developed argument to your readers - 2. to provide a critical evaluation of the work within its genre or academic discipline. - 3. to develop critical reading skills, close reading of a text - 4. to enhance your understanding of how an argument can be constructed and supported in an academic text - 5. to offer possible strategies and approaches you will apply (or avoid) in your own writing (Independent Study) C/ Oral presentation of the key issues and conclusions addressed in the essay. |
| Recommended literature |
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| Study plans that include the course |
| Faculty | Study plan (Version) | Category of Branch/Specialization | Recommended semester | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Philosophy (2021_2024) | Category: Philosophy, theology | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Theory and History of Music (19) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Historical Sciences (2025) | Category: History courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Historical Sciences (19) | Category: History courses | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Czech Language (2025) | Category: Philological sciences | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Andragogy (20_2024) | Category: Pedagogy, teacher training and social care | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Religious Studies (20) | Category: Philosophy, theology | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Czech Language (2019) | Category: Philological sciences | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Philosophy (2025) | Category: Philosophy, theology | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Philosophy (2021) | Category: Philosophy, theology | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Andragogy (2025) | Category: Pedagogy, teacher training and social care | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Adult Education (2021) | Category: Pedagogy, teacher training and social care | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Theory and History of Arts (2025) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Theory and History of Theatre, Film, Radio and Television (2019) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Theory and History of Music (2025) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): English and American Literature (2019_2024) | Category: Philological sciences | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Theory and History of Arts (19) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Theory and History of Theatre, Film, Radio and Television (2025) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Russian Language (2019_2024) | Category: Philological sciences | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): History of Art, Heritage Conservation and Technology for Material Analysis (20) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Religious Studies (2025) | Category: Philosophy, theology | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Russian Language (2019) | Category: Philological sciences | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): English and American Literature (2019) | Category: Philological sciences | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): Andragogy (20) | Category: Pedagogy, teacher training and social care | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): History of Art, Heritage Conservation and Technology for Material Analysis (2025) | Category: Theory and history of arts | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |
| Faculty: Faculty of Arts | Study plan (Version): English and American Literature (2025) | Category: Philological sciences | - | Recommended year of study:-, Recommended semester: - |