Online lecture Drawing Fatherlands: The geographers’ moment of glory

The Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the EthnoMap Working Group cordially invite you to the online lecture titled Drawing Fatherlands: The geographers’ moment of glory presented by the professor Maciej Górny (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw). It will take place on Monday, 6 October 2025, at 5 PM (Central European Time) via Zoom.

Invitation

The book Kreślarze ojczyzn: Geografowie i granice międzywojennej Europy (Warszawa: IH PAN, 2017; Osnabrück: fibre, 2019; Leiden: Brill, 2022) combines methods of collective biography, history of science, and spatial history. Political events are juxtaposed with an analysis of the work of geographers – their texts and maps, narrative strategies, personal acquaintances, friendships, and animosities.
The history of “national science” is also presented as a collection of individual fates within a multinational cohort of outstanding scientists and equally talented politicians. The book offers a fresh example of critical cartographic history, particularly in the East Central European context. It brings international attention to figures of prominent geographers from this region and the ways in which they defined their social and academic roles. In ways that were much more understandable to them than to posterity, they combined political engagement with scientific professionalism. The fact that they did not perceive a conflict between these values makes them a fascinating subject of research.
The presentation of the book’s main theses will also be an opportunity to reflect on how a historian of ideas (rather than a geographer) analyses cartographic sources, and on the usefulness of the category of biopolitics in the history of science.

Maciej Górny is professor and deputy director at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences, foreign member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research interests are East Central Europe in the 19th–20th century, history of historiography, geography, discourses on race and WWI. Currently he works on an entangled history of cultures of defeat between late 19th century Polish lands and the United States. His recent books include Forgotten Wars: Central and Eastern Europe, 1912-1916 (together with Włodzimierz Borodziej, CUP 2021, German ed. 2018, Polish ed. 2014) and, most recently, Matka wynalazków. Jak Wielka Wojna urządza nam życie (Agora 2024). Forthcoming: Na prvním místě má být národ (Nakladatelství Academia, Praha); Veliki rat profesora. Nauke o čoveku (1912-1923) (Akademska knjiga, Novi Sad).

Link: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/m/gorny-maciej

The lecture is organised with the support of the Strategy AV21: Research programme Identities in the World of Wars and Crises.

For the participation, please register here: https://forms.gle/QdVsYiBXyxEyLy7P8

For more information, please contact: Jitka Močičková, mocickova@hiu.cas.cz

Foto: Dawid Żuchowicz, Agencja Gazeta