No. 13 (2024): Digital Studies of Culture in Central Europe

The thirteenth issue of Colloquia Humanistica contains a thematic block prepared by Robert Kulmiński and Ondřej Daniel, titled Mapping and Boosting Digital Humanities in the Visegrad Region (led by the NGO Centre of the Study of Popular Culture). The thematic section begins with an article authored by four researchers, Silvie Cinková, Barbora Hladká, Jiří Mírovský, and Sylvie Archaimbault, titled “Data Storytelling Around André Mazon’s Correspondence”. The article presents the complex yet highly intriguing research process involved in working with a multilingual collection of correspondence by the French Slavist André Mazon. The authors detail four phases of the data lifecycle: collection, analysis, annotation, licensing, and dissemination. Robert Kulmiński, in his article (“What Do Digital Humanists Tell Us About the Digital Humanities? Digital Humanities Discourse in Polish Cultural Studies Projects”) offers a meta-reflection on the role and positioning of the digital humanities within the contemporary scientific system. In his two texts, Richard Změlík considers Czech prose in the context of the digital humanities, drawing special attention to the emerging corpus of Czech prose (“Computational Literary Studies in the Context of Contemporary Czech Literary Studies – Especially the Concept of the Corpus of Czech Novel” and “Literary-Cartographic Models in the Corpus of Czech Prose”). Změlík presents models of the fictional topography of Prague in the work of selected Czech writers and demonstrate a way of working with them in the process of literary interpretation. Vojtěch Kessler and Jan Bouška, in their article “Digitalised Everyday Past: History of Everyday Life Database” present an international research project in the field of the digital humanities, led primarily by the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The project’s main objective is to create a digital collection of sources, specifically ego-documents, that chronicle the history of everyday life. Simon Ganahl (“Mapping Austrofascism and Beyond: Report on the Digital Research Lab Campus Medius”) discusses how the digital humanities can be used to describe – “map” – historical events. Author highlights the significant role that the digital humanities can play in today’s world, and presents the plans to establish a digital platform for describing and visualizing media experiences in everyday life from many perspectives. Lwów/Lviv is the focus of two different texts. Bohdan Shumylovych and Taras Nazaruk (“Lviv Interactive and Exploring Artists’ Spaces on a Digital Map”) consider the history of Lviv in the 1980s by analysing artistic practices, mainly pursued by alternative artists, in the context of the urban space. To this aim, they take advantage of the vast palette of possibilities offered by the digital humanities. The authors combine digital tools with an academic approach and try to answer the question: How did the city shape contemporary art in Lviv? Writing about street names changing in the course of the city’s turbulent history, Orysia Vira (“Beyond Coordinates: Exploring Street Naming Practices in Contemporary Ukraine”) takes advantage of the possibilities offered by an interactive online map covering a long period of history, i.e. the 16th to 18th centuries when Lviv was part of the various state bodies. At the same time, discussing the decommunisation and decolonisation processes, she notes the opposite process – the revival of historical local street names. These two opposing tendencies give chance for a holistic approach that combines modern realities with historical heritage, and ensuring the preservation of a dynamic cultural identity.

In the “Discussions. Presentations. Book reviews” section we publish two reviews. Francesco Trupia presents Emil Hilton Saggau’s interesting monograph Nationalisation of the Sacred: Orthodox Historiography, Memory, and Politics in Montenegro, just recently published by Peter Lang of New York, which leads us into the world of Montenegro’s most recent history. Trupia praises Saggau for invoking and analysing Montenegrin Orthodox historiography’s significant background, namely the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as other Orthodox traditions in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Prepared by Miroslav Vašík presentation of Radim Hladík collective monograph, titled Digitální obrat v českých humanitních a sociálních vědách, introduces readers to the potential of the digital humanities and outlines the impact that the digital revolution has had on the humanities and social sciences.

Conception and academic editing of the issue: Robert Kulmiński & Ondřej Daniel

List of reviewers for the issue

Original Table of Contents
(articles’ titles in original language, unrelated to the user interface language)