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Lilliputians.Representations of the bodily "difference" in the Prague's freakshow culture 1820-1940
Herza, Filip ; Storchová, Lucie (advisor) ; Kolářová, Kateřina (referee)
In the following essay, I focus on the representations of bodily "difference" in the Prague's freakshow culture, particulary on the displays of the so called "Lilliputians", which were popular among the public from the beginning of the 19th Century to the 40's of the 20th Century. Firstly, I introduce the Prague's curiosity exhibitions as a specific social praxis and I compare them with similar displays in Europe and the United States. In the second part of this essay, I try to analyse those exhibitions critically, using the concepts from the present disability studies discourse. I deal with the bodily "otherness" as a category of difference, which arises from the intersection of different ideologies. According to the point of view, this category shaped the individual and collective identities and fostered the social hierarchies of the time. Throughout the essay, I focus on the dis/continuities in the imagination of bodily "difference" and I try to describe the specificity of the Czech freakshow tradition. Key words: 19th Century, body, representations, bodily difference, abnormality, ideology
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Department stores and the beginnings of consumerism in interwar Czechoslovakia
Pauli, Barbora ; Herza, Filip (advisor) ; Čapská, Veronika (referee)
Authorˈs name: Barbora Pauli School: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Humanities, Pátkova 2137/5, 182 00 Praha 8 - Libeň Programme: General Anthropology Title: Department stores and the beginnings of consumerism in interwar Czechoslovakia Consultant: Mgr. Filip Herza, Ph.D. Number of characters: 152.574 Year: 2021 Key words: Department store, retail, Brouk and Babka, Bílá labuť, interwar Czechoslovakia, consumerism, consumer, marketing theories The thesis deals with developement of department stores in interwar Czechoslovakia, from the end of the first World War, until the end of the 1930s. Focucing on example of company Brouk a Babka, it describes important aspects of their practice, which in many ways differ from the traditional concept of retail sales. Sales and advertising strategies, which included a variety of methods and tools, usually completely new or significantly modified in practice of department stores, aimed to gain a large number of customers and buyers, shape their consumer behavior in the spirit of modernity and progress, and keep their trust in a long term. At the same time, experts in marketing and retail encouraged specific efficiency to increase the efficiency of the whole interwar economy, including the retail practices. The thesis focuses on how these recommendations...
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Imaginations of "Otherness" and Freak Show Culture in the 19th- and 20th-Century Prague
Herza, Filip ; Storchová, Lucie (advisor) ; Hanulík, Vladan (referee) ; Sokolová, Věra (referee)
in English Dissertation deals with the freak show culture in Prague and the Czech lands in a broader context of the modern discourses of dis/ability and the imaginations of the collective body of the Czech nation. Exhibitions of "Lilliputians", "Giants", "Siamese twins" and other "extraordinary" bodies are analyzed here as a part of the history of an international entertainment culture in the 19th-century Europe. The emphasis lays on the turn of the century, the decade that witnessed rash development both of the capitalist entertainment industry and the expert disciplines that dealt with the "ab/normal". I claim, that the popularity of freak shows in this period rested in their ability to articulate fears and ambitions of their visitors, both in their individual embodied experience and their imaginative belonging, notably their belonging to the collective body of the Czech nation. In four case studies, I focus on individual freak figures and analyze how the intersections of different axes of difference - ethnicity, gender, class - within the representation of "the extraordinary", coproduced certain notion of social order and power hierarchies that were closely intertwined with the imagined collective body of nation.
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The Representation of the Other in travelogues of Zikmund and Hanzelka
Chejnová, Anna ; Storchová, Lucie (advisor) ; Herza, Filip (referee)
My thesis deals with the representations of differences in the travelogues of Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund. Despite the two men being a couple of very well-known travellers, such an analysis of their travelogues has not yet been done. Consequently, my research concentrates precisely on the representations of differences in the travelogues written by Hanzelka and Zikmund on their travels. In the shorter introductory part of the thesis, I outline the context of Hanzelka and Zikmund's time period in Czechoslovakia when it comes to travelling and politics. Here, I also introduce the methodology and the newest research of travelogue representations both in Czech and foreign historiography. In subsequent chapters I pay attention to several topics laid down by my initial research questions: How do the authors present differences in relation to 'us' and 'them' and how do they represent themselves in their texts and with their car. I base my analysis on the first editions of Hanzelka and Zikmund's travelogues, specifically editions from the years 1952-1969. I treat the travelogues as texts, which through the medium of a shared language create not only images of the 'others' (Africans, Indians, Arabs or the Orient in general), but also present the criticism of capitalism and colonialism as well as the ideas of...
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"The Invention" of Intelligence and its Reflection in Czech Pedagogical and Social-pedagogical Discourse, Based on Selected Academic Journals from 1888 to 1944.
Čechová, Anežka ; Kolářová, Kateřina (advisor) ; Herza, Filip (referee)
The thesis deals with intelligence, as a socio-cultural concept that has its own history and development. It thus deconstructs the naturalized notions of a biological "essence" of intelligence, which has not been proved to this day. The scientific and philosophical modes of thinking, that participated in both "inventing" intelligence and its forming, are introduced. The analysis of the primary sources enables to compass the reflection of these dominant scientific approaches towards intelligence in the Czech expert discourses. The thesis also reflects on the important role intelligence has in the assessment of mental norm and disability, and it thus analyses the perception of disability during the defined historical period, including the discourse analysis of the different representations of disability. Key words Intelligence, disability, craniometry, eugenics, pedagogy, medicine, biopower.
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Imaginations of "Otherness" and Freak Show Culture in the 19th- and 20th-Century Prague
Herza, Filip ; Storchová, Lucie (advisor) ; Hanulík, Vladan (referee) ; Sokolová, Věra (referee)
in English Dissertation deals with the freak show culture in Prague and the Czech lands in a broader context of the modern discourses of dis/ability and the imaginations of the collective body of the Czech nation. Exhibitions of "Lilliputians", "Giants", "Siamese twins" and other "extraordinary" bodies are analyzed here as a part of the history of an international entertainment culture in the 19th-century Europe. The emphasis lays on the turn of the century, the decade that witnessed rash development both of the capitalist entertainment industry and the expert disciplines that dealt with the "ab/normal". I claim, that the popularity of freak shows in this period rested in their ability to articulate fears and ambitions of their visitors, both in their individual embodied experience and their imaginative belonging, notably their belonging to the collective body of the Czech nation. In four case studies, I focus on individual freak figures and analyze how the intersections of different axes of difference - ethnicity, gender, class - within the representation of "the extraordinary", coproduced certain notion of social order and power hierarchies that were closely intertwined with the imagined collective body of nation.
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Lilliputians.Representations of the bodily "difference" in the Prague's freakshow culture 1820-1940
Herza, Filip ; Storchová, Lucie (advisor) ; Kolářová, Kateřina (referee)
In the following essay, I focus on the representations of bodily "difference" in the Prague's freakshow culture, particulary on the displays of the so called "Lilliputians", which were popular among the public from the beginning of the 19th Century to the 40's of the 20th Century. Firstly, I introduce the Prague's curiosity exhibitions as a specific social praxis and I compare them with similar displays in Europe and the United States. In the second part of this essay, I try to analyse those exhibitions critically, using the concepts from the present disability studies discourse. I deal with the bodily "otherness" as a category of difference, which arises from the intersection of different ideologies. According to the point of view, this category shaped the individual and collective identities and fostered the social hierarchies of the time. Throughout the essay, I focus on the dis/continuities in the imagination of bodily "difference" and I try to describe the specificity of the Czech freakshow tradition. Key words: 19th Century, body, representations, bodily difference, abnormality, ideology
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