Jiřina Šmejkalová

PhDr. Jiřina Šmejkalová, CSc.

Address

Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship
Místnost č. NP504

Jiřina Šmejkalová’s teaching and research interests cover a range of topics spanning from cultural production and reception under totalitarian regimes (including its gender aspects) to the contemporary and historical aspects of publishing, book sales and readership. She has worked in academia in the USA and Europe for twenty-five years: including the UK (Durham, Lincoln). She received a promotion to reader in Media and Cultural Studies in 2007. Along with Prof Ann Gray she was a co-leader of the Research Centre for European Cultural Studies at the UK’s University of Lincoln. She was a principal investigator and co-investigator on research projects funded by the British Academy’s Arts and Humanities Research Board, UK; COST Action; and lately the Czech Science Foundation.

 

Her research and public activities benefit from an interdisciplinary background in the sociology of culture along with literary and media studies. She was among the founding members of SHARP, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, and serves on the editorial board of its flagship journal Book History. Beyond her key monographs (Cold War Books in the ‘Other’ Europe, 2011; Kniha, 2001) and dozens of studies in academic journals and books, she designed expert events at the Prague Book Fair, the London Book Fair and for the Czech Embassy in London. She belongs to the pioneering academics and activists who initiated post-Cold War feminist and gender scholarship in the Czech intellectual context, and she took part in establishing the Gender Studies Foundation along with Jiřina Šiklová

Schedule

Publications

  • Šmejkalová J.: Robinson Jeffers’s Pilgrimage through the Iron Curtain: The Beloved Shepherd. In Barnhisel G.: The Bloomsbury Handbook to Cold War Literary Cultures. London, NYC, Dublin, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, s. • p. 373-391. ISBN 978-1-350-19173-0.
  • Šmejkalová J., Wögerbauer M., Madl C.: De-Centering the History of Reading. The Perspective of the Czech Lands 1750–2021. In Frimmel J., Fromm W., Müller H., Schellong M.: IM ZENTRUM: Das Buch. Forschungen, Projekte, Reflexionen am Zentrum für Buchwissenschaft. Eine Bilanz der ersten Jahre. Für Christine Haug. München/Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2022, s. • p. 235-249. ISBN 978-3-447-11799-9.
  • Pořízková L., Šmejkalová J.: Co jsou dějiny knihy? : antologie k dějinám a teorii knižní kultury. Praha, Academia, 2021. 253 s. • p. ISBN 978-80-200-3222-5.
  • Šmejkalová J.: Úvodem : jak psát dějiny knihy? In Pořízková L., Šmejkalová J.: Co jsou dějiny knihy? : antologie textů k dějinám a teorii knižní kultury. Praha, Academia, 2021, s. • p. 9-26. ISBN 978-80-200-3222-5.
  • Lishaugen R., Šmejkalová J.: Reading East of the Berlin Wall. PMLA, 2019, č. • no. 134, s. • p. 178-187. ISSN 0030-8129.
  • Šmejkalová J.: Andělé bez ráje: Praktiky vylučování z literární komunikace na počátku sedmdesátých let. In Wögerbauer M.: V obecném zájmu. Cenzura a sociální regulace literatury v moderní české kultuře. 1749–2014. Praha, Academia, 2015, s. • p. 1295-1307. ISBN 978-80-200-2491-6.
  • Šmejkalová J.: Command Celebrities: The Rise and Fall of Hanzelka and Zikmund. Central Europe, 2015, č. • no. 13, s. • p. 72-86. ISSN 1479-0963.

Books:

Cold War Books in the ‘Other’ Europe and What Came After. Leiden, Boston, Brill, 2010. (https://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=30214).

Kniha. K teorii a praxi knižní kultury. [The Book: Towards the Theory and Practice of Book Culture] Host, Brno 2000.

Chapters in books:

“Andělé bez ráje: Praktiky vylučování z literární komunikace na počátku sedmdesátých let” [Censoring Travellogues in the 1970s Czechoslovakia] in in Michael Wögerbauer, Petr Píša, Petr Šámal, Pavel Janáček a kol.: V obecném zájmu. Cenzura a sociální regulace literatury v moderní české kultuře. 1749–2014, Praha, Academia – Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2015, pp. 1295–1307.

“Censors and their Readers: Selling, Silencing, and Reading Czech Books,“ in Alexis Weedon ed., The History of the Book in the West: 1914-2000, Ashgate 2010. (reprint from Hermina G.B. Anghelescu and Martine Poulain eds., Books Libraries, Reading, and Publishing in the Cold War, Austin TX: University of Texas Press, & Washington DC: Library of Congress, 2001, pp. 87- 103.

“Možnosti využití rodové perspektivy ve výzkumu otcovství ve Střední Evrope” [Possible application of gender perspective in the analyses of fatherhood in Central Europe], in Filipowicz, Marcin, Joanna Królak and Alena Zachová eds., Od patriarchy k tatínkovi: západoslovanské modely otcovství [From a Patriarch towards Daddy: West-European Models of Fatherhood], Hradec Králové:Gaudeamus, 2008,pp.12-24.

Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries, Franscisca de Haan et al eds., Budapest: CEU Press, 2006 (author of 1 entry, country co-ordinator and editor of 10 entries dealing with Czech women’s history).

“Framing the Difference: ‘Feminism’ and ‘Plebeianism’, ” in van Leeuwen-Turnovcova, Jirina et al., eds., Mediale Welten in Tschechien nach 1989: Genderprojektion und Codes des Plebejismus, Specimina Philogiae Slavicae, Band 142, Munchen: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2005, pp. 9-27.

“Feminist Critique of Progress and Modern Science in the Work of Anna Pammrová,“ in Linkova, Marcela and Alice Cervinkova (eds.), Thinking Borders/ Gender Perspectives on Rationality, Objectivity and the Knowing Subject./Myšlení hranic. Genderové pohledy na racionalitu, objektivitu a vědoucí subjekt. [bilingual publication], Praha: Sociologický ústav AVCR, [Inst. of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2005, pp.75-94.

“Female Domination? Czech Visual Artists at the End of the XXth Century” in  Danielle Chliche et al eds., Pyramid or Pillars. Unveiling the Status of Women in Arts and Media Professions in Europe. Bonn: ARCult Media, 2000, pp. 283-291.

“Unbinding Books: Publishing in the Czech Republic” in Peter Boorsma, Annemoon van Hemel, Niki van der Wielen eds. Privatisation and Culture: Experiences in the Arts, Heritage and Cultural Industries? [Based on a joint project of European Union, Dutch Boekmanstichting and CIRCLE. Boston / Dodrecht / London: Kulwer Academic Publishers, 1998, pp. 142-159.

“When the Censor Was Gone: Crossroads of Czech Publishing,” in Cultural Crossroads in Europe,  Stockholm: Swedish Council for Planning and Research (RFN), 1997, pp. 137-152.

“Laenderbericht Tschechische Republic” [Country Report of the Czech Republic] in Christiane Dienel, ed. Frauen in Fuhrungspositionen in Europa, Internationale texte, Band 6, Munchen: DJI Verlag Deutsches Jugendinstitut, 1996, pp. 176-187.

“Censoring Canons: Transitions and Prospects of Literary Institutions in Czechoslovakia” in The Administration of the Aesthetic: Censorship, Political Criticism and the Public Sphere, ed. Richard Burt, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1994.

Articles in academic journals:

“Command Celebrities: The Rise and Fall of Hanzelka and Zikmund”. Central Europe, 13:1-2, 2015, pp. 72-86.

“Pojem čtenář v anglosaské kulturně-analytické tradici Cultural Studies: možné spojnice, parelely a přesahy” [The notion of ‘reader’ in Cultural Studies: possible links, parallels and impacts], in Česká literatura, 58, 2010/4.

“Cultural and Media Studies: The Politics of Location”. Interview with Ann Gray. Media Studies 2007/04, pp. 463-478.

“Feminist Sociology in the Czech Republic after 1989,” European Societies (Routledge), 6:2, 2004, pp. 169-180.

“Cultural Studies, sociologie kultury a ‘my’: úvaha mírně metodologická,“ [Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture and “Us“: Essay on Methodology], Sociologický časopis [Czech Sociological Review], 40:1-2, 2004, pp. 77-94.

“Censors and their Readers: Selling, Silencing, and Reading Czech Books,“ Libraries & Culture, 36:1, Winter 2001, pp. 87-103.

“Retailing Words and Images: The De-socialisation of Cultural Industries,“ Culturelink, Special Issue “Redefining Cultural Identities: The Multicultural Contexts on the Central European and Mediterranean Regions“, N. Svob-Dokic ed., Institute for International Relations, Zagreb 2001, pp. 37-52.

“Marketing Silence: On the Transformation of the Czech Book,” Cultural Policy, 5:2, 1999, pp. 199-218.

“The Other Monster: ‘American Feminism’ in the Post-Communist World” in Bulletin Nr. 14: Frauen in den ehemals sozialistischen Landern, Zentrum fur interdisciplinaere Frauenforschung, Berlin (1997), pp. 1-8.

“The Open Book and Its Enemies:  the Transformation of Publishing in Central Europe,” in Transition, OMRI, Prague, 3:1 (10 January1997),  pp. 41 – 44.

“On the Road: Smuggling Feminism Across the Post-Iron Curtain,” in Replika. Hungarian Social Science Quarterly,(Special Issue, 1996), pp. 97-103.

“Revival? Gender Studies in the ‘Other’ Europa,” in Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 20:4 (Summer 1995), pp. 1000 – 1006.

“Do Czech Women Need Feminism? Perspectives of Feminist Theories and Practices in Czechoslovakia,” in Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 17, Nos. 2/3, (1994) pp. 277-282.

“Potíže s rodem. Několik poznámek k jedné knize” [Gender Trouble. Several Notes on One Book], Filozofický časopis [The Journal of Philosophy], 40(1992): pp. 819-824.

“Co je feminismus? Na okraj ‘ženské otázky’ a současného feminismu” [“What is feminism? Notes on ‘the question of women’ and contemporary western feminism”], TVAR 37-41  (12 September – 10 October 1991).

“Mladý hrdina v próze 70. let” [The Young Hero in the 1970s Fiction], Master’s Thesis, Zlatý Máj: Časopis pro teorii dětské literatury [Journal for the Theory of Juvenile Literature] 7/304 (1985), pp. 34-49.

 

 

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