Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Cities of Exile. Prague and Zürich. Literature, History and Politics

Class at Faculty of Arts |
ABO700420

Syllabus

Topics:

1. Book exile: TAMIZDAT. Written Here, Published There.  A history of books in exile before and after World War II. The Role of Switzreland. Authorities of power and literature in a divided world. Exile publishing houses. Unusual friendships and artistic and scientific collaborations (e.g. the case of Dmytro  Tschyzhevsky).

2. Prague 20ś and 30's Ucranian and Russian Exile The Czechoslovak policy and the erasure of the exile comunities and culture after the communist takeover.  Euroasia - project (Savitsky, Trubeckoy, Jacobson and the others)

3. Behind the Iron Curtain.  Authorities of power and literature in a divided world. Publishing House "Konfrontace" and the others. Prague a  place of Exile after communist takeover?

4. Contemporary Samizdats. The project "33 books for another Belarus". Ucraine Literature in Prague

Annotation

Important!!!!!!

Due to the need to coordinate the seminar with the University of Zurich, it does not start until 21 February and ends on 30 May. !!!!!!

Due to Eastern break in Zurich, there are no seminars on the fourth of April and the eleventh of April. !!!!!!!

The course will look at the current questions about exile and emigration in and from Eastern Europe, but also about the history and about debates of migration in our two cities/countries after the whole 2Oth century and now. The course wil concentrate on specific topic, such as tamizdats, publishing houses in exile and their strategies, exile universities, researchers and artists as refugees, the smuggling of literature during the Cold War, the strategies of state securities both in Switzerland and Czechoslovakia, multilingual literature as a conceptual result of migration, problems of internal exil of the artist.It also concentrate on the problem of "decolonisation" of the East European emigration, which used to be usually described as a Russian one.

The course is based on the lecture given by researchers of CU and Zürich Universities and from the institutions which deal which current and historical migration from Eastern Europe (such Boris Němcov Centre in Prague and Slovanská knihovna) on-line, it will be completed with an optional visit to institutions that archive exile documents and a joint workshop. Participants who are unable to attend the on-site workshop will produce a written paper.

The course is guaranteed by doc. Libuše Heczková, the director of Institute of Czech and Comparative Literature at FA CU and prof. Sylvia Sasse, Slavisches Seminar Universität Zürich https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/slav/de/seminar/mitarbeitende/litwiss/sylviasasse.html and prof. Tomáš Glanc Slavisches Seminar Universität Zürich.