Zuzana Říhová, the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences, MSH Visiting Professor

Team MODERNITAS cordially invites you to the first event of the new semester, a lecture by Zuzana Říhová, who will present a new unique anthology of source-texts of the Czech Avant-garde in English translation.

In recent years, a prominent trend in the study of European modernism and the avant-garde has increased attention to traditions that have long stood in the shadow of the French, German, and British traditions that dominate the canon. However, the limited range of texts available outside the original languages has hindered this more expansive view of European modernism and the avant-garde. The lecture will present a newly published book, "From Laughter to Forgetting: A Source Book of Czech Avant-Garde Discourses," which addresses this problem by offering a wide-ranging selection of literary, theoretical, and documentary sources from one of the most dynamic and original European avant-garde traditions: that of the first Czechoslovak Republic and of the Bohemian lands. In many respects, the Czech avant-garde is the ideal "alternative" avant-garde to present in detail to a wider readership: it tracks Central European developments and was often influential internationally, while being deeply embedded in particular cultural dynamics that produced original forms. The presented volume returns interwar Czech avant-garde writings to their place as a firmly embedded component of the European avant-garde and has an ambition to be a comprehensive compendium on the Czech literary avant-garde.

Zuzana Říhová has been working at the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences since 2007, where she, within the Department for Research into 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, focuses on the Czech avant-garde and modernism in a broader international context. In parallel, she is also engaged in the Textual Studies Department and has teaching experience in Czech universities and universities abroad. In 2014-2017 she held the Chair of Bohemian Studies at Oxford, and she has been a visiting scholar at Humboldt Univerzität zu Berlin, University of Glasgow and SUNY at New Paltz. Her most recent works include an anthology of the correspondence of the Czech exile writer Milada Součková and an anthology of texts of the Czech avant-garde, as well as the monograph "Vprostřed davu. Česká avantgarda mezi individualismem a kolektivismem". In addition to her academic work, she is also an active author of poems and critically acclaimed novels.

Wednesday 25th september 2024, from 2:15 pm. to 4:15 pm.

Salle de réception
Bâtiment DE1 - Niveau 3 - Salle R.3.105
Avenue Antoine Depage 1
1000 Bruxelles

Free entrance

Contact : Petra James