The Institute of Ethnology, Central European and Balkan Studies at CU FA co-organises the conference on 17 October 2023. The opening ceremony will take place at 9:00 am in the Patriotic Hall in Carolinum, where a new travelling exhibition will also be presented, and the rest of the conference will be held at the main building of CU FA.
The central theme and the subtitle of the conference is “One Hundred Years since Marian Szyjkowski was appointed Professor of the Department of Polish Language and Literature at Charles University in Prague and since the Establishment of the Lectureship of Polish at Masaryk University in Brno and Comenius University in Bratislava”. Marian Szyjkowski delivered his first lecture at the newly created department at Charles University on 13 October 1923. It was the first institutional foreign Polish studies lecture that built on the fruitful and inspiring relationship between Polish and Czech cultural leaders in the 19th century. In one of his texts, Szyjkowski wrote: “There will be a new perspective, by which we will look at the exchange of values in the great family of nations, that will build the work of its civilisation, based on joint efforts”. From this angle, the conference will look back on a century of Czech institutional Polish studies and reflect on its current present and immediate future.
After the official opening ceremony in Carolinum, the guests of honour will speak at a plenary session. The afternoon programme of the conference is divided into three sessions, in which guests from the Czech Republic, Poland and other countries where Polish studies are developing will speak.
In front of Carolinum, a new travelling exhibition, “What Does It Mean?”, will be unveiled on the day of the conference on Polish-Czech faux amis. The exhibition has been prepared by students of Prague Polish studies in cooperation with the Polish Institute Prague and with the support of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland.
The conference is organised by the Institute of Slavonic Philology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the Department of Slavonic Studies at Masaryk University in Brno, the Department of Slavonic Studies at Palacky University in Olomouc, the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Ostrava, and the Polish Institute Prague. The Dean of CU FA Dr Eva Lehečková, the Rector of Charles University Prof Milena Králíčková, the Rector of the University of Ostrava doc. Petr Kopecký, and the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Prague Mateusz Gniazdowski have all taken patronage over the conference.
The conference and the accompanying programme are part of the “100 Years of Czech Polish Studies” project co-financed by the Czech-Polish Forum grant programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
You may find the complete programme here.
