Dominik Zelinsky
- Name
- Dominik Zelinsky
- Title
- Organisation
- Sociology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh
- Address
- Edinburgh UK
- Telephone
- Dominik.Zelinsky@ed.ac.uk
- Research Interests
- Social theory, Cultural Sociology, Totalitarism, Communism, Central Eastern Europe, Dissent, Semiotics, Literary Theory, Comparative/Historical Sociology, Hermeneutics, Historical sociology, Sociology of Knowledge, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Art
- URL
- http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/gradschool/community_and_representation/research_student_profiles/sociology/dominik_zelinsky
PhD Research
My doctoral research focuses on the phenomenon of underground seminars in communist Czechoslovakia. A largely unstudied topic, underground seminars emerged after the Czechoslovak reform movement was forcefully quelled by the invasion of the armies of the Warsaw Pact in 1968. In the following process of “normalisation”, the Communist Party imposed strict regulations on academic life that precluded many from pursuing their studies or careers in research and academia. Underground seminars emerged as a spontaneous response to the situation and offered an alternative, unofficial education and formed a space for discussion of philosophical, sociological, or theological topics that had no place in the official academy, dominated by Marxism-Leninism. My analytical approach is based on the tradition of interpretive social science, foreshadowed by the works of Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. It further draws inspiration from the symbolic anthropology of Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz or Mary Douglas, and from recent American cultural sociology. Method-wise, my project is based on reconstructive historical ethnography, drawing on primary texts of Czechoslovak dissidents, archival sources, and unstructured interviews.
Supervisors
Education
since 2016 PhD in Sociology, University of Edinburgh
2014 - 2016 - Mgr. (MSc.) Sociology, Masaryk University (Czech Republic)
2011 - 2014 - Bc. (B.A.) Sociology, Masaryk University (Czech Republic)
Awards
2016 - Economic and Social Research Council +3 Scholarship
- Graduate School of Social and Political Science Special Award
Publications
Želinský, Dominik and P. Janebová (2017, Forthcoming) "What Does It Take to Become a Hero: Perspectives of Cultural Sociology and Political Science." Pp. 37-46 in Transregional versus National Perspectives on Contemporary Central European History, edited by M. Vít and M. Baran. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag.
Želinský, Dominik and W. Binder (2017) "How Not to Prepare Majales: A Meaning-Centred Analysis of Subversive Student Performances in Communist Czechoslovakia." Sociální Studia 13 (4): 61-79.
Želinský, Dominik (2017) "An Ethnographer inside the Stasi: On Andreas Glaeser's Political Epistemics." American Journal of Cultural Sociology. (review essay)
Conference Presentations
Želinský, Dominik (Forthcoming 2017) "Philosophy and power: Solidarity, resistance, and underground seminars in communist Czechoslovakia." 13th Conference of the European Sociological Association. Athens, Greece.
Želinský, Dominik (2017) "The Music of Spiritual Poverty: Jazz in Stalinist Czechoslovakia." Yale Center for Cultural Sociology Annual Spring Conference. New Haven, USA.
Želinský, Dominik (2016) "Where It All Happened: Authenticity and Commemoration Ritual." ISA 3rd Forum of Sociology. Vienna, Austria.