Schedule for Czech and Slovak Studies Workshop 2026

Session I
Borderlands of Memory: From Municipal Governance to Post-War Reckoning
Chair: Kimberly E. Zarecor

• Zora Piskačová (Harvard University): Financing a Divided City: Municipal Governance and Economic Survival in Cieszyn and Český Těšín, 1918–1938
• Julian Gillilan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): The Forgotten Massacre at Přerov
• Alec Ott Marshall (UNC-Wilmington): The Memory of Jozef Tiso in the Slovak Diaspora Community, 1947-1993 

Session II
Nationalism and Ethics in Czech Music, Culture, and Visual Poetry
Chair:  Míla Šašková-Pierce

• Martin Nedbal (University of Kansas): Czech Pan-Slavism vs. Russian Imperialism: Smetana, Balakirev, and Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Prague
• Garrett Scholberg (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): The Moravian Imagination of Janáček’s Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs
• Bita Takrimi (Northwestern University): Jiří Kolář’s Visual Poetics: Liberation of Form and the Ethics of Artistic Commitment
• Brianna Tichy (Charles University, Prague): The Search for Authenticity: Is the Miss Czech-Slovak US Pageant Changing Czech Identity in the US and Beyond?

Session III
Literary and Linguistic Frontiers
Chair: Veronika Tuckerová

• Denisa Glacová (University of Michigan): Queer Experiences and the Jewish East in Langer, Olbracht, and Hostovský
• Alexey Shvyrkov (Columbia University): Escaping Home, Reproducing Empire: Orientalist Tropes in Contemporary Czech Literature
• James Wilson (University of Leeds, UK): Phonological Variation in the Pronunciation of Czech Anglicisms

Session IV
Between Heaven and Homeland: Religious Reform, Slavic Nationalism, and the Bolshevik Utopianism
Chair: Stephen Lahey

• Kateřina Horníčková (Palacky University, Czech Republic): New Insights into Bohemian Reform Movements (from Medieval Devotio Moderna to the Defeat of the Protestant Estates in 1620)
• Matthew Slaboch (Arizona State University): Works in Pragueress: Optimistic Narratives and the 1848 Slavic Congress
• Emily Hackett (University of Chicago):  Making Sense of a Multilayered Past: Interhelpo  [as a Case for the Czech Republic’s Reckoning with its Soviet Past]

Special Public Event: Belousek Literary Feast
Moderators: James D. Le Sueur and Hana Waisserová

Alena Jirásek:  Poems from a Concentration Camp by Josef Čapek
Josef Čapek (1887–1945), the brother of Karel Čapek, a painter and writer arrested for his opposition to Nazism, wrote powerful poems in concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Bergen-Belsen) before dying there in 1945. Published posthumously as Básně z koncentračního tábora (1946), Alena Jirásek translated these verses noted for their defiance, misery, and reflection on the inhumanity of the war.

Stephen Lahey: Krvavý román/Bloody Novel by Josef Váchal
Krvavý román (Bloody Novel) is a cult classic Czech book written, illustrated, typeset, and published by artist and writer Josef Váchal in 1924. It is a unique parody that is being translated into English for the very first time by Dr. Stephen Lahey, who has developed great empathy and appreciation for this hilarious horror. 

Jaroslav Olša: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer, the Czech-American Science Fiction Writer
Jaroslav Olša, Jr. will present on his book, Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miles (Miroslav) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025). The life and career of Miles (Miroslav) J. Breuer (1889-1945) provide a fascinating window into the literary and cultural world of immigrants in late 19th- and early 20th-century America, and is connected to Nebraska.

Session V
Antisemitism, and Entangled Jewish Identities in the Czechoslovak Press and Exilic Diaspora
Chair: Jindřich Toman

• Nina Viršíková (University of Amsterdam): Making Móricko: Channeling “Soft” Antisemitism in Czechoslovak Interwar Humouristic and Satirical Press
• Tim Turnquist (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): The Jewish Elephant in the Room: 'Non-Aryan’ Catholic Refugees from Nazism and Intergenerational Jewish Identity
• Rebekah A. Klein Pejšová (Purdue University): Back to Sosúa: Julius and Hanna Adler’s Knotty Czechoslovak emigration story, 1946-1948

Session IV
Narrating Trauma: Literature, Memorialization, and Seeking Justice
Chair: Alexander Vazansky

• Jose Alaniz (University of Washington, Seattle): Atentát: Heydrich and Historical Trauma in Czech Comics
• Lena Franke (University of Regensburg, Germany): Negotiating Memory: Early Reports by Czech Jewish Survivors of the Terezin Ghetto
• Kaitlyn Cannady (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): Memorialization as Restorative Justice: Czech Victims at Hartheim and Pirna-Sonnerstein

Afternoon in Wilber, NE
Wilber Czech Museum, Sokol Hall with The Accordionettes and Polka dancing workshop with Sheryl Kastanek; Karpisek Wiener Store (Do we learn the secret Wilber wiener recipes from the Senator Russ Karpisek himself?),  Hotel Wilber, Czech cemetery.

Special appearance:  Jaroslav Olša, career diplomat and promoter of Czech-American literary and cultural heritage.