Veronika Tuckerova

Second Year Czech continues in developing communicative, reading, and writing skills.

Prerequisites: First Year Czech.

Readings: Susan Kresin, Czech for Fun (Cestina hrou).

Grading: Midterm 20%, Final Exam 20%, Participation, Quizzes, Presentations, Short Essays 60%.

This course focuses on literature that examines the complex relationships between a cityscape and literary texts, which it inspired. We will study how are different architectural and geographical spaces conceived in literary text.  Literary texts connected to Prague will be at the focus of our investigation, as a place that was depicted in numerous travelogues and numerous fictional works, but we will also read examples from a theoretical literature that explore the relationship between space and literary imagination.

Readings:

The Czech Reader

Daniela Hodrova, Prague, I See a City

Petr Kral, In Search of the Essence of a Place

Jan Novak, Commies, Crooks, Gypsies, Spooks, and Poets.

Gustav Meyrink, Golem

Franz Kafka, The Description of a Struggle

Franz Kafka, The Judgment

Franz Kafka, The Trial

Alfred Thomas, Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory, and the City.

Paul Wilson, Prague. A Traveller’s Companion.  

Selected Poetry: Rilke, Seifert, Apollinaire 

Grading:  Participation 30%, Response Papers 30%, Final Paper 40%

The course will focus on “Prague” as the locus of diverse literary influences, as a site that engendered writers such as Jaroslav Hasek, Franz Kafka, and Bohumil Hrabal, and as a creation of their imagination.  We will examine how was Prague perceived by outsiders, e.g. Chatwin and Sebald. Artistic and cinematic representations will complement the literary imagined representations of the city.  Our readings will take us across languages (texts written originally in German, English, Italian), historical periods (medieval, Renaissance, nineteenth century, modern), as well as across different districts of Prague. Which parts of Prague were most inspiring for poets and painters?   We will supplement our textual close readings by reading Prague as a text: its layered architectonic texture, distinct districts, monuments, cemeteries, individual buildings, the churches and the Castle, but also its geography; its hills, trees, and river.  Finally, we will inspect how the past is commemorated by the most recent monuments, and raise the question of whether contemporary Prague builds on its historical legacy.   

Readings include selection from:

Prague: A Traveler’s Literary Companion; Ed. Paul Wilson. 

Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

Jan Neruda, Prague Tales

Paul Eisner, Kafka and Prague

Franz Kafka, The Trial

Rilke, selection of poems

Gustav Meyrink, Golem

Karel Capek

Jiri Weil, Mendelssohn is on the Roof

Karel Polacek

Jaroslav Hasek, Svejk

Sebald, Austerlitz

Bruce Chatwin, Utz

Laurent Binet, HHhH

Alfred Thomas, Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory, and the City

Grading:  Participation 35%, response papers 35%, final paper 30%

Third Year Czech continues in developing communicative, reading, and writing skills.

Prerequisites: Previous instruction in Czech language required0.

Readings: Susan Kresin, Czech for Fun (Cestina hrou), Nekovarova, Alena, Cestina pro zivot (Czech for Life). Additional reading and study materials provided by instructors.

Grading: Participation, Quizzes, Presentations, Short Essays 60%, Final Project 40%.

GENERAL

The course is a continuation of Czech 507 with an emphasis on speaking and reading.  In addition to the textbook, short articles, videos, and lectures will be used not only to increase comprehension, but also to expose the student to Czech culture.

Grading:  Short tests—45%s, final exam—20%, homework:  15%, quizzes—5%, attendance—5%

Grading scale:  90–100=A; 80–89=B; 70–79=C; 60–69=D.  Any average below 60 is failing

How did Czechs imagine and construct themselves and the "other," and how, by contrast were they perceived by others? What did Czechs create, and how do they relate to other Slavs, Germans, and wider world? Is there a Czech identity and culture? To what extent did Czechs construct their identity based on the difference from others, and how accommodating they were to “strangers” in their midst? What was the role of translation, creation of language, and literature in negotiating their identity? What did the Czechs gain and lose by attaining their own linguistically and nationally defined culture? We will read authors such as Palacký, Havlíček, Masaryk, Hašek, Kafka, Patočka, and Havel, and secondary texts on Central Europe, translation, nationalism, transnationalism, and “Orientalism.” We will pay special attention to the role of language and translation, to Czech Jews and anti-Semitism, Roma (Gypsies), Germans, and the complex identities of Prague German Jewish authors such as Kafka, Werfel, Rilke, Brod, and Eisner. The course materials will include literary texts, films, and artworks.

Readings:  The Czech Reader; selection of texts assembled by the instructor. 

Grading: Midterm 20%, Research Paper 30%, Response Papers, Participation, Presentation 50%.

Course Description

The course is designed to facilitate listening, speaking, and writing skills in the Czech language.  It is organized around  Láska jedné plavovlásky by Miloš Foman, DVD of which students are encouraged to purchase from one of the plethora on on-line book and film retailers polluting the World Wide Web.  The movie is also on reserve in the undergraduate film library in the Flawn Academic Center, third floor.  The film will be supplemented with grammar exercises from the textbook Cestine hrou by Susan  Kresin, et al. as well as those of my own devising.

This course will examine modern works of Czech literature, from the 19th century Jan Neruda to Josef Škvorecký.

The wide range of authors and works on the list will enable us to enjoy the diversity of these writings and expand

and challenge the usual limited and contradictory notions of Czech literature and Czechs as “revolutionaries”, “beer

drinkers”, “philosophers”, “dreamers”, or “realists”. As much as possible, we will read these works in the context

of wider Central European and World literature, as counterparts to writers such as Marcel Proust, James Joyce,

Virginia Wolf, and others – I encourage students to draw on their previous readings! We will consider different

genres (novels, short stories, philosophical essays), as well as multilingual dimensions, primarily the German;

mutual exchanges, influences, and appropriations.

Requirements: Class participation, Presentation (30%), Response Papers on two chosen works (40%), final paper

(30%).

GENERAL

The course is a continuation of Czech 507 with an emphasis on speaking and reading.  In addition to the textbook, short articles, videos, and lectures will be used not only to increase comprehension, but also to expose the student to Czech culture.

Grading:  Short tests—45%s, final exam—20%, homework:  15%, quizzes—5%, attendance—5%

Grading scale:  90–100=A; 80–89=B; 70–79=C; 60–69=D.  Any average below 60 is failing

Course Description

The course is designed to facilitate listening, speaking, and writing skills in the Czech language.  It is organized around  Láska jedné plavovlásky by Miloš Foman, DVD of which students are encouraged to purchase from one of the plethora on on-line book and film retailers polluting the World Wide Web.  The movie is also on reserve in the undergraduate film library in the Flawn Academic Center, third floor.  The film will be supplemented with grammar exercises from the textbook Cestine hrou by Susan  Kresin, et al. as well as those of my own devising.

Czech literary characters are often outsiders or dissidents.  Hašek’s Švejk, Hrabal’s Hanťa, Kafka’s K. or Havel’s Vaněk  display an irresistible resilience, irony, and sense of humor, often while dramatic political and social upheavals surround them.  Do they consciously try to be subversive, or are they forced into their roles? Are they heroes or fools? What is the role of language in their responses to their particular predicaments?  This course follows 20^th century Czech literature and culture in their broader Central European (and exilic) contexts. It explores questions of identity and language. We will examine the interplay between politics and aesthetics: how did literature and arts not only react to political, social and cultural conditions, but how did they help to shape them? We will consider humor and irony, dissidence and censorship. We will thus both discuss literature in its broader context, but also do close readings of the assigned texts. The reading list includes authors such as: Franz Kafka, Adolf Loos, Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Poláček, Bohumil Hrabal, Kundera, Josef Škvorecký, Václav Havel,  and Ivan Blatný.

By the end of this class, students will have a good knowledge of modern Czech literature, and will have developed their skills of literary interpretation and critical writing. 

Requirements:

Class participation 15 %; Midterm 25%; Essay 25%; Final Exam 35%

Required Texts:

The Czech Reader (ed. Bažant), Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude, Hašek, Good Soldier Švejk; Kundera, The Joke, Havel, Largo Desolato, Blatný, The Drug of Art, Škvorecký, The Engineer of Human Souls