Prague, Czech Republic - Course Descriptions - Czech Culture, Literature, and Visual Arts

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Course Description

This interdisciplinary course will provide deeper insight into the issues of modern Czechoslovak history, culture and socio-cultural developments as documented by literature, film and visual arts of the 20th and 21st centuries in the works of writers like Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hašek who is reputed by The Good Soldier Švejk novel. Most of the time will be spent with the prominent members of small but significant modern Czech literature such as Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Arnošt Lustig etc., as well as with major feature films and documentaries by leading directors including Academy Award Laureates Miloš Forman and Jiří Menzel. Film screenings will include films covering WW II., the Stalinist Fifties, the period of political and cultural thaw of the Sixties Czech New Wave as well as the most interesting and controversial works of art of the post-1989 Velvet Revolution. Certain amount of time will be devoted to contemporary generation of - often controversial- visual artists, painters, sculptors and video artists whose studios we shall visit, for example David Černý, Michal Pěchouček. In the course of a semester we shall also visit exhibitions of other Czech artists who will hold their presentations.

Course Format

The course is conducted in the form of a combination of lectures, screenings and discussions.

Course requirements 

• Students are required to read respective books and articles (using a Course reading pack and professor’s handouts), get familiar with political and cultural background of the books and films and participate actively in the discussions.
  
• Students are asked to submit short responses to film screenings which are not graded and serve as a feed-back for the professor and guidance for discussion sessions.
  
• There will be a short mid-term in class-test and a comprehensive final exam in the form of a take home written essay on given topics.
  
• Course grade will be determined on the basis of the following: class attendance and active participation in discussions (20%), mid-term test (20%), and final essay (60%).
  

 Syllabus

Week 1

Introduction:

• Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hašek, the two opposites?
• Similarities and differences. Hašek‘s Good Soldier Švejk as a picaresque novel. 
• Kafka’s Trial and the subversion of plot.

Week 2

• The miracle of Czech New Wave: why the fruitful sixties can also be called the Sisyphean years (1963-68)? General introduction to the topic, realities of WWII. and the years of shame, i.e. the Stalinist era of the fifties.
  

Screening:  Jiří Menzel: Closely Watched Trans

Week 3

• Man under both internal and external pressure: lack of freedom.
• Arnošt Lustig: Diamonds of the Night, a realistic story of two boys escaping the concentration camp transport in World War II.
• Jan Němec as a specific phenomenon of Czech New Wave and his absurd, mysterious and Bunuelian work of art.

Screening:  Jan Němec: Diamonds of the Night

Week 4

• Paintings, photographs, videos and installations of Michal Pěchouček (1973), Winner of Jindřich Chalupecký Award 2003. Visit to his studio: lecture and discussion. www.pechoucek.com

Week 5

• Milan Kundera: The search for self in a Post-modern World
• Laughable Loves (3 stories: Golden Apple of Eternal Desire, Old Dead Must Make Room for the Young Dead, Hitchhiking Game)
• The Joke novel.

Week 6

• Screening: Jaromil Jireš: The Joke, film based on Kundera’s novel
• Comparing the novel and the film.

Week 7

• Magic realism - Hrabal’s aesthetic of the powerful experience
• Bohumil Hrabal: Pearls from the Deep (stories), Too Loud a Solitude (novel)

Week 8

• Screening: Jiři Menzel, Věra Chytilová and others: Pearls from the Deep
  
• Jiří Menzel :I Served the King of England
  

Week 9

• Typical representative of the Czech New Wave of the Sixties: humanity, farce and grotesque.
• Screening:  Miloš Forman: Loves of a Blond

Week 10

• David Černý, a controversial Czech artist, winner of Jindřich Chalupecký Award www.davidcerny.cz
• Wikipedia, David Černý
• You Tube: Prague in your pocket-David Černý: Pissing Men
• Visit to MEET FACTORY (International Center of Contemporary Art)
• Seeing sites with D.C.‘s sculptures in Prague – Black Babies on the TV tower, The Hanging Man, The Horse.

Week 11

• The problematic 1989 Velvet Revolution aftermath: denationalization process and its consequences on film industry. Young directors trying to find their original grasp of new reality.
• Screening:  Petr Zelenka: The Buttoners 

Week 12

• Screening : Boredom in Brno (Back to the 60’s?) black and white no-budget film attempt of a theater director Vladimír Morávek
  

Week 13

• Screening: Marek Najbrt: The Champions
• "If we won’t root for ourselves, who will?” Critical view on the Czech losers in a small border village, united only by watching ice-hockey matches.
• Discussion on finals.

Reading:

• Franz Kafka:The Trial
  
• Jaroslav Hašek:The Good Soldier Švejk (excerpts)
  
• Milan Kundera: Laughable Loves, The Joke
  
• Bohumil Hrabal:Too Loud a Solitude, I Served the King of England
• Course pack (articles on the above mentioned books and screened films)
• Hand-outs  

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