The Programme of the Strategy AV 21 of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic responds to current societal challenges by formulating research programmes based on cooperation between disciplines and institutions in solving them. The Department of Comenius and Intellectual History of the Early Modern Period is regularly involved in the announced calls. A specific feature of our department is the combination of a historical approach with highlighting links to the contemporary situation, such as the search for the causes of recurrent social crises in the literary works of the 1720s and pointing to parallels in the present, or the description of the relationship of European states to Russia and the Principality of Moscow in the early modern period, which highlighted the long-term evolving attitudes towards the eastern neighbour in the context of current events in Ukraine. The results of the scientific events are regularly published towards the public, for example through public readings published on the //www.youtube.com/@comeniusonline314">Comenius onlineYouTube channel .
An overview of the programmes, events and activities in which the department has been involved:
Year 2024
Within the framework of the research programme of the AV21 Strategy Anatomy of European Society and the activity "Multilingualism, Communication and Textual Practices in the Context of the Transformations of the Czech Lands and Exile, 1620-1640" (researcher V. Urbánek), a workshop of the same name took place on 23 September (I. Lelková, L. Řezníková, V. Urbánek and T. Havelka from the FLÚ participated). In the framework of the programme Identities in a World of Wars and Crises, the activity "Us and Others. Forming Collective Identities in the Early Modern Period", the international two-day conference "Representing Muscovites in Early Modern Textual Cultures " took place on 31 October - 1 November (main organizer T. Havelka and L. Storchová. M. Slavíková actively participated in the event).
Year 2023
As part of the AV21 Strategy research programme Anatomy of European Society and the activity "Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Knowledge Fields and Knowledge Transfer in the Early Modern Period", V. Urbánek and I. Lelková co-organised the international prestigious conference Scientiae 2023, Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World (Prague, 7-10 June 2023), co-organised by the Institute of Philosophy and attended by over 180 participants from all over the world, who discussed in 50 thematic panels.
Year 2022
Within the framework of the research programme of the Strategy AV21 Anatomy of European Society and the activity "Scholarly Correspondence: the Republic of Scholars between the Ideal of a United Europe and the Practices of a Hierarchical Society", the Department, in collaboration with the Institute of Philosophy and the HIU of the CAS, organised an internationally-staffed workshop Scholarly Correspondence and the Practice of Multilingualism between the Republic of Scholars and the Origins of Modern National Society, which took place on 24 November 2022 at the Academic Conference Centre of the FLU (researcher V. Urbánek, from OKID participated V. Urbánek, I. Lelková and M. Slavíková).
Year 2021
Within the framework of the research programme of the AV21 Strategy Resilient Society for the 21st Century, the department organised a workshop Our Former Crisis. Urbánek, with the participation of L. Řezníková and T. Havelka), followed by a public online reading of texts reflecting the crisis of the 1720s (published on the Comenius online channel). Within the framework of the research programme of the AV21 Strategy Memory in the Digital Age, the department, in cooperation with the KNAV and the MUA of the CAS, further developed the Historical Correspondence Online web portal focused on bohemian projects processing historical correspondence. It included the continuation of the activity "Digitisation and presentation of the estate of Milada Blekastad-Topičová" (V. Urbánek) and the development of the database of Milada Blekastad's correspondence (especially the extensive corpus of letters with L. Vaculík and his family). As part of the same programme, but as part of a different research activity entitled "Correspondence Networks of Post-Belarusian Scholars of the Czech Crown Lands ", metadata of letters of Jan Marko Marci, Theodor Moret, Philipp Jakob Sachs of Löwenheim, etc. were processed (I. Lelková, K. Šolcová).
Year 2020
Within the framework of the AV21 Strategy research programme Memory in the Digital Age, the members of the department under the leadership of V. Urbánek for the project "Digitization and presentation of the estate of Milada Blekastad-Topičová". In cooperation with the KNAV and the MUA of the CAS, the Historical Correspondence Online web portal was developed, focusing on bohemian projects processing historical correspondence. Within its framework, a database of Milada Blekastad's correspondence as well as older correspondence of Polan of Polansdorf was built. As part of this research programme, the department organised an exhibition "J.A.K.: Komenský in the Cultures of Remembrance" (V. Urbánek, L. Řezníková, T. Havelka) in the Science and Art Gallery in cooperation with the Centre for Joint Activities of the CAS, which was the CAS contribution to the 350th anniversary of the death of J.A. Komenský. See the exhibition trailer and the virtual guide to the exhibition. A catalogue of the exhibition was later prepared.
As part of the AV21 Strategy Research Programme Forms and Functions of Communication, the department prepared the international conference "Between the Labyrinth and the Way of Light: Early Modern Metaphors of Knowledge and Johannes Amos Comenius", which could not take place due to the coronavirus pandemic and was postponed until next year. However, the department invited some of the participants to the international online event "Reading Comenius Universally", in which more than 100 participants from five continents participated in a twenty-four hour reading from Comenius' works.