Preliminary Programme

A problematic genre that has evoked much discussion is the life story, especially when it entails one’s own family and tells the story of one’s own mother. Despite warnings about the hurdles I would encounter, I have started interviewing my mother. It has lead to considerations about involvement and detachment, and about how in the process of narrating life stories people both take things for granted and cover them up.

Only now does my mother have a life story; aged 84, a widow for two years. She tells me, in weekly sessions, about her youth in Indonesia (warmth, freedom), the years before she married and had children (freedom, friendship, drawing), the period when she was bringing up a family, her depressions, and how it is now – a phase that she experiences similarly to the time before her marriage: freedom, an independent rhythm, friendship; the wheel come full circle. Since my father’s death she has blossomed: she has gained her own voice, she observes the world, she has a story to tell.
My closeness to her is an advantage in our talks together: she trusts me and feels confident with me. She would never tell so much to a stranger. And I can empathise with what she has to say. The disadvantage is that she is so much part of me (or I of her) that I run the risk of finding the things that she says quite matter-of-course – when they are in fact remarkable; that I don’t ask questions because I know that she finds them painful, that I collude in avoiding the same subjects as she does, and that I adopt our family’s feelings of hesitance and timidity without even realizing it. How much truth can she cope with? And how much can I bear? What does she want to save me from, and what do I prefer not to hear?
Her life story is a version that she can manage pretty well. She would not tell these stories so frankly and openly to an outsider; but an outsider would be more perceptive of things that I perhaps miss. Emotional and sociological distancing could contribute to another ‘truth’, comprising a more-encompassing narrative. (Show less)

The project appreciates posttraumatical family expierience of thousands soviet families during a few of decades. The project reviews how the fate of mothers - prisoners of GULAG influenced their children, how were formed their fates and biograpies, how developed their life against the background of the traumatic family expierience and how changed the memory about it.
The project work enables to study not only the historical fate of respondents, but also lets us understand the structural changes of the soviet family and what role played the expierience of family destruction. (Show less)

I would like to present my research – Between us is (not only) an ocean – which aims to enrich our knowledge of the 20th century’s events. The project focuses on biographical narrations of Czech women. The project is based on recording and transcribing data due to qualitative research and biographical method.

Data: biographical narrations of 10 women born before 1960 in Czechoslovakia and moved to USA – by way of marriage or emigration – before 1989 (they lived in Czechoslovakia until they became adults). They have not returned to their native country.

The interviews of women living in the USA will show, for example, their motives for emigration, the problems in their new home country that they faced, the clash of previous ideas and subsequent reality and how they experienced their “differences“ in a foreign country.

Also touched on during the interviews will be their resolution to assimilate to the condition of their new home country as they kept aspects of their native language, traditions, and customs. The research will show how they see the situation of women in the present Czech Republic (including the topic of emancipation) and how much and where they can see some similarities and/or differences between the past (Czechoslovakia) and present Czech Republic. The narrators will be able to express how they experienced the historical events of 1968 and 1989.

This project presumably open and recall several myths and ideas (for example about Western lifestyles, emigration, image of Czechoslovakia in USA) and develop the topic of the identity of the Czech women living in the USA.

The data will record and reflect the changes and stages of the native language of the compatriots. As part of the study I will attend to the topic of individual bilingualism. (Show less)