In 2024, we have started the PDR project entitled « La Belgique ‘lue’ en tchèque et en allemand. Pour une approche multilatérale et non-hiérarchisée des transferts culturels ». This project, directed by Petra James (MODERNITAS, MSH-ULB) and Hubert Roland (UCLouvain), aims to contribute to the historiography of cultural transfers and to the study of intellectual mediation networks in Europe between 1870 and 1939. The project’s originality lies in the fact that it compares “asymmetrical” contexts like national and regional entities. Petra James and Hubert Roland collaborate with two post-doctoral researchers, Martina Mecco at MODERNITAS, MSH-ULB and Quintus Immisch at UCLouvain.

The triangle “Belgium - Bohemia - German-speaking countries” brings together places that have evolved through regional, multi-ethnic and/or national identities throughout modernism. In this regard, the project illustrates and problematises the logic of transfers as a mechanism for “importing” and appropriating a foreign culture based on the triangular and multilateral model that fully integrates the so-called “peripheral” cultures that are object of this research.

The PDR aims to map the ramification of cultural, literary, and intellectual relations between Belgium, the German-speaking countries, and the Czech-speaking regions in the key period of European modernism between 1880 and 1939. This means mapping and geolocalising the people and places involved in literary and intellectual mediation: through a comprehensive study of journals, editors, translators, and mediators. Particular attention will be given to regional periodicals (in dialogue with Petra James’ FER 2022 project) and to female mediators (in dialogue with the PhD project of Eve Filée, MODERNITAS, MSH-ULB). Besides the research devoted to periodicals, the work in archives will represent an essential step in the analysis.

The first conference of the workshop will be held at Maison Française d’Oxford on 22-23 April 2025. The keynote speakers of the conference will be Patrick McGuinness (Saint Anne’s College, Oxford) and David Hopkin (Hertford College, Oxford).

Financed by FNRS
Budget : 480 333 euros