Ethnology at Masaryk University in Brno. The 70th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Sub-Division for Ethnography and Ethnology

Since its foundation in the academic year 1945/46, the ethnological (ethnographic) section at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) has taken part in the formation of the discipline in the former Czechoslovakia and – since 1993 − in the independent Czech Republic. It was Prof. Antonín Václavík (1891–1959) and his student who defined the teaching’s orientation, so one speaks about the Brno (Moravian) ethnographic school. After 1948, the discipline was declared a historical science and at the Faculty of Arts it became part of several departments dealing with history and history of art together. In 1964, an independent Department of Ethnography and Folkloristics was founded, which was chaired by Prof. Richard Jeřábek (1931– 2006), but in the period of Communist “normalization”, from 1970, the discipline was again part of the Department of History and Ethnography of Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. After social changes relating to 1989, the discipline became independent as the Institute of European Ethnology (since 1991). The teaching of the discipline gradually focused – as well as traditional folk culture observed within the Slavic context – on contemporary culture and society (working classes, countryside with cooperative agriculture, ethnic issues, folklorism, oral history, identity, and migration). The lectures on non-European ethnology were delivered by Richard Jeřábek. Domestic and international discovery trips became an integral part of the teaching. This line will be continued by the new study programme of ethnology, which is emerging in connection with the 2016 amendment to Higher Education Act.