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, Jr.: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer, the Czech-American Science Fiction Writer from Nebraska
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 VI
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): Scholarship and Memorialization as Restorative Justice: Czech Victims of the Nazi “Euthanasia” Program

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.