African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia
Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People Knowledge and Practices
Contact: frantiska.zezulakova.schormova@cefres.cz (from September 1, 2019)
I just finished a PhD program at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University in Prague with a dissertation called “African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia.” I am now working on turning it into a book with the preliminary title Prague, Red and Black: Early Cold War Journeys, Networks, and Poems.
After being a PhD Fellow in 2019/2020, I am pleased to be able to stay in the CEFRES team as an Associated Fellow. In the future, I look forward to my stay at Northumbria University in Newcastle (Anglo-Czech Fund), FU Berlin (John F. Kennedy Library Research Grant), and, most recently, at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Jan Patočka Fellowship).
CV
Education
2016–2020 :PhD studies, English and American Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague. Dissertation title: African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia.
Supervisor: Justin Quinn
Date of Defense: December 18, 2020
Opponents: prof. Penny Von Eschen, Stephen Delbos, PhD
2014-2016: Master’s Degree in Anglophone Literatures and cultures, Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague. MA thesis title: Us and Them: Presenting America 1948-1956
2010-2014: BA program English and American Studies and German for International Communication
Professional Awards and Fellowships
- 2017-2018: Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
- Fellow, Fulbright-Masaryk Scholarship
- 05/2017: Oxford University, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities Research stay and participation in Race and Resistance workshop, EUROPANEUM Scholarship
- 2016: Mathesius Award for the MA thesis, Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University Prague
- 2016: Free University Berlin, John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies Catholic Academic Exchange Service (KAAD) Scholarship, research stay
Grants
2017-2019 : Things in Poems – Poems of Things
Researcher, supported through Charles University grant (GAUK). Main outcome: international conference in January 2019
Journal articles
2021 – “Stalinův černý apoštol: Paul Robeson v Praze,” [Stalin’s Black Apostle: Paul Robeson in Prague], Soudobé dějiny (accepted for publication, spring 2021)
Chapters in collective monographs
2020 – “Hlasy z Harlemu: Transkontinentální solidarita v poezii Noémie de Sousy” [Voices from Harlem: Transcontinental Solidarity in Noémia de Sousa’s Poetry], Zamyšlení nad africkými identitami zobrazenými v básnickém prostoru [Reconsidering African Identities in Poetry], Praha: FF UK, 2020.
2018 – “Pravidla hry: Zábranovy poznámky k detektivní próze” [Rules of the Game: Zábrana’s Translations of Detective Fiction] Jan Zábrana, Básník, překladatel, čtenář [Jan Zábrana: Poet, Translator, Reader], Praha: Karolinum, 2018
Selected academic reviews
2020 – “Kánon a já”[The Canon and I], Svět literatury 62, p. 183–187. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/123014
2019 – Half-Buried Books: Forgotten Anti-Imperialism of Popular Front Modernism”Historical Materialism, electronic version http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/book-review/half-buried-books-forgotten-anti-imperialism-popular-front-modernism
2018 – “Forget English! Orientalism and World Literature” Twentieth Century Literature 64 (2): p. 259–264. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-6941939
2017 – “Švéda, Josef. Země zaslíbená, země zlořečená: obrazy Ameriky v české literatuře a kultuře (Promised Land, Accursed Land. Images of America in Czech Literature and Culture)” Brno Studies in English, 42 (2): p. 179–184. https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2017-2-10
Conferences
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09/2019 – Secrets: Biennial Conference & 22nd International Colloquium of American Studies, Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies & the Department of English and American Studies, Palacky University Olomouc
“Cold War Secrets and African American Literature: The Story of Abraham Chapman” - 03/2019 – Bad Romance: The Ethics of Love, Sex, and Desire, Harvard University.
“Me, Too, but What? Socialist Sex, Translatability, and Milan Kundera
- 01/ 2019 – Things in Poems – Poems of Things, Charles University Prague
“All those Pretty Things: Women and Their Objects in Anglophone Poetry”
conference organizer – the conference was supported through a grant from Charles University (GAUK)
- 11/2018 – Cesty translatologie, Charles University Prague “Konceptualizace rasy v českých překladech afroamerické literatury” [Concepts of Race in Czech Translations of African American Literature]
- 10/2018 – New Pathways in American Studies, Masaryk University Brno “Black Bodies White Translations: Cold War Journeys of African American Poets”
- 06/2017 – The Hermes Consortium for Literary and Cultural Studies Seminar, Aarhus University „Solidarity in Black and Red: Transnational Perspective on the Translation on Anti-colonial Poetry in Cold War Czechoslovakia”
- 12/2015 – Prva Stran, International Student Conference in Comparative Literature, University of Ljubljana “‘The Other America’: Constructing American Literature 1948- 1956“
- 11/2015 – Jan Zábrana: básník, překladatel, čtenář, Charles University Prague “Pravidla hry: Zábranovy překlady detektivní prózy” [Rules of the Game: Zábrana’s Translations of Detective Fiction]
Academic Seminars
10/2019–02/2020 : Charles University Prague, Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures: “Reading African American Literature Now (and from Europe)” Course Design; Lecturer