On 17–19 February 2025, more than 70 participants of the COST Action “Print Culture and Public Spheres in Central Europe 1500–1800” (PCPS_CE) will meet in Prague for their first General Assembly. Czech participants are researchers from the Institute of History CAS, the Institute of Czech Literature CAS and the Library of the CAS, and Charles University’s Faculty of Humanities.
The COST event addresses the relationship between public discourse and political authority, which has been fundamentally transformed by the media revolution of the last decade. An unlimited virtual audience is only gradually being recognized as an heir to the public sphere forming the modern state’s basis on its way to democracy during the early modern era. If we as a society wish to address its ongoing transformation, this public sphere needs to be understood in its historical dimension. The COST Action “Print Culture and Public Spheres in Central Europe 1500–1800” (PCPS_CE) is devoted to studying print culture and its impact on the formation of public spheres in early modern Central Europe (CE).
The network aims to investigate multilingual and transnational cultural practices of print culture and to analyze how a common Central European sphere of public literary interaction can be defined. It will foster a historical awareness of multiple public spheres, and thus a better understanding among future generations of the cultural heritage and identity of CE beyond the nation-state level.
