Jan Váňa
Leader of the Literature & Society Laboratory
Jan Váňa is a leader of the Literature & Society Laboratory at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Within the intensive five-year research project, Jan and his team are developing a research model for studying the relationship between literature and society through a critical discussion of relevant paradigms in literary theory and sociology. Jan Váňa's academic awards include a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology and a Junior Visiting Fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He was nominated for the SAGE Prize for Innovation/Excellence for his article on theorizing the social through literary fiction. His long-term interest is in transgressing the boundaries between social sciences and literature, which he also pursues by publishing socially engaged/sociological fiction. In 2022, he received a Czech Literary Book Club award for his sociological novel Křehkost (Fragility) probing the oppressive power of gender norms. The research topics include the sociology of literature, cultural sociology, sociological and literary theory, and sociological fiction.
