by Libuše Heczková, MSH Invited Professor, Charles University Prague

In addition to technological advances and new artistic approaches, modernity has brought with it a significant change in the understanding of the role of human being in the world and society and a marked reassessment of gender roles, masculinity, and femininity. The beginning of the 20th century, which in the Czechoslovak context intersects with the establishment of the new state and the formation of Czechoslovak society as a distinctive entity, is strongly associated with women's emancipation, which the artistic avant-garde partially adopted as its own and made part of its programme. At the same time, however, other approaches than the exclusively avant-garde ones, which came with their own concept of femininity, were also taking shape within the social debate. The lecture will thus focus on a comparison of two views of the so-called civilized woman from the perspective of the urban avant-garde and the agrarian liberalism.

Libuše Heczková currently works at the Institute of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, where she also holds the position of its head. Additionally, she has been head of the international PhD double degree program with Sapinenza Roma since 2018. In her wide interdisciplinary range of research, teaching and publishing activities, she covers gender studies, comparative literature, and Slavic literature, especially focusing on modernism and the avant-garde. She is the author of pioneering work on female art and literary critics in Central Europe in the 19th and 20th century, which paved the way for research in gender studies in Central Europe.

Thursday 28 October 2023, 2pm - 4pm

Salle de réception
Bâtiment DE1 - Niveau 3 - Salle R.3.105
Avenue Antoine Depage 1
1000 Bruxelles

Contact: petra.james@ulb.be