Talk: Prominents, Giants, and Chieftains: Collective Biography, Pantheons, and Literary Historiography by Marek Nekula

Výtečníci, velikáni, náčelníci: Kolektivní biografie, pantheony a literární historio¬grafie"

Prominents, Giants, and Chieftains: Collective Biography, Pantheons, and Literary Historiography

Thursday April 26^th, 2012    5-6pm  CAL 422

Marek Nekula, a Fellow at the Davies Center, Harvard University, is a Professor of the Institute of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Chair of the Department of Czech Studies at the University of Regensburg. He has published on Czech/Slavic and German literature and culture, as well as on Franz Kafka and Prague German literature. His most well known book is the monograph Franz Kafka’s Languages: „... on a Floor of the Inner Tower of Babel...“ (2003). Other publications deal with the semiotics of space, bilingualism and contact linguistics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics, as well as Czech grammar.

Nekula has also published short stories Pellicova 47 (1994) and a novel The Father (2008), and is preparing an anthology of Czech-German authors “I dream about Prague…” (2012). His project in the Davis Center concerns the Pantheon in Czech literature and culture and focuses on the role of public funerals, as well as architectonical and literary pantheons for the mobilization and constitution of national and other collectives.