Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures - CUFA, Prague

08/07/2026

The latest issue of Litteraria Pragensia: Studies in Literature & Culture has been published in open access: 'Romanticism across Borders: Transnational Exchanges, Identities and Agencies', edited by Camille Adnot (École normale supérieure, France), Felix Duperrier (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France), and Pauline Hortolland (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, France).

The latest issue of Litteraria Pragensia has been published in open access: ‘Romanticism across Borders: Transnational Exchanges, Identities and Agencies’, edited by Camille Adnot (École normale supérieure, France), Felix Duperrier (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France), and Pauline Hortolland (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, France).

Cover design by Karolína Bendová (Kaya Art)

This issue reconsiders Romanticism through a transnational lens. It challenges the tendency to organise literary and artistic production along national lines, and instead argues that Romanticism participates in the formation of imagined communities that exceed the nation-state. In this account, literary and artistic agency emerge as relational, dynamic, and more-than-national. Accordingly, Romantic literary and artistic production is organised in terms not of national boundaries, but of the circulation of texts, images, ideas, and people across linguistic, political, and cultural borders. The issue envisions “the border” less as a dividing line than as a series of porous nodes that reveal the mobility and hybridity at the heart of Romantic culture. Drawing on recent scholarship on global, imperial, and comparative Romanticisms, the volume reframes Romantic creative practices within fluid networks shaped by translation, travel, exile, correspondence, print culture, and visual exchange.

CONTENTS

Introduction
Camille Adnot (École normale supérieure, France) – Felix Duperrier (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France) – Pauline Hortolland (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, France)

Porous Borders / Border Controls
Nicholas Halmi (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)

Scottish Travellers, National Character, and Cross-border Storytelling
Angela Esterhammer (University of Toronto, Canada)

Scott’s Border Characters
James Chandler (University of Chicago, USA)

Crossing Borders: The Geological and Mythological Imagination of Staffa in British and European Romanticism
Elisabeth Ansel (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany)

J.M.W. Turner’s Plagues: Thinking in Pictures from Single to Serial Forms
Luisa Calè (University of London, United Kingdom)

Porous Boundaries: Space, Shorelines, and Sexuality in Byron’s “Turkish Tales”
Rebekah Musk (Independent Scholar, United Kingdom)

Lord Brougham’s Secret French Novel
Patrick Vincent (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland)

Joseph Severn’s Significantly Borderline Correspondence
Jeremy Elprin (University of Caen, France)

25/06/2026

Blahopřejeme! Naše absolventka Františka Schormová (Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR) získala prestižní Prémii Otto Wichterleho!

Prémie uděluje Akademie věd České republiky vybraným, mimořádně kvalitním a perspektivním vědeckým pracovníkům AV ČR do 35 let.

Františka Schormová z Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR vede část mezioborového výzkumného projektu Migrace a my: Mobilita, uprchlictví a hranice v perspektivě humanitních věd. Letos jí vyjde monografie v zahraničním nakladatelství Brill, v níž zkoumá kontakty mezi českou a afroamerickou kulturou v době studené války. Za text, který vychází z její dizertace, obdržela Cenu Jana Palacha a čestné uznání Americké asociace komparativní literatury.

24/06/2026

The summer issue of the Prague English Studies newsletter has just been dispatched! Follow the link to read about the latest news from DALC and from Oddělení anglického jazyka a didaktiky FF UK. 📬 📩

Welcome to the second issue of our newsletter. The first issue was warmly received, much beyond our expectations, and we were delighted to see so many of you at the lecture on Milton's Paradise Lost by Professor Martin Hilský in April.

22/06/2026

Nový díl podcastu Akademie věd České republiky s naší absolventkou Františkou Schormovou (Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR) - zveme k poslechu!

🎙📚 LÁKAJÍ MĚ PŘÍBĚHY, KTERÉ JDOU PROTI SRSTI / Františka Schormová v Podcastu Akademie věd

V nejnovějším Podcastu Akademie věd České republiky hovořila Jitka Kostelníková s kolegyní Františkou Schormovou. O českém literárním exilu, o projektu „Migrace a my. Mobilita, uprchlictví a hranice v perspektivě humanitních věd“, v němž vede jeden z pěti výzkumných záměrů, i o její disertaci, která letos vyjde v prestižním nakladatelství Brill.

Odkaz k poslechu najdete v komentářích. 👇

Foto z natáčení: Jitka Kostelníková

09/06/2026

Amazing result of the Charity Book Sale: it has raised over 12,000 CZK for Člověk v tísni and its SOS Ukraine appeal. Many thanks to Schwa student society for taking care of the stall and all the practicalities and to everybody who donated. 💛💙

05/06/2026

This weekend, Centre for Irish Studies, Prague is hosting the conference "Theatre and Resilience", organised by Ondřej Pilný and Clare Wallace. https://cde2026.ff.cuni.cz

The conference is organised on behalf of the CDE, the German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English, and as part of the project CoRe: Beyond Security.

Keynote speakers include Tony Fisher (University of London), Miriam Haughton (University of Galway), playwright Deirdre Kinahan, Alice Koubová (Czech Academy of Sciences), and Louise Lowe (TU Dublin).

02/06/2026

Congratulations to our own Justin Quinn on his professorial appointment! 🎉Yesterday, prof. Quinn received his decree from President Petr Pavel.

Justin Quinn was born in Dublin, and educated there at Trinity College (BA & PhD). With David Wheatley, he was a founding editor of the Irish poetry magazine, Metre. His translations of the Czech poet Petr Borkovec, From the Interior, appeared in 2008 from Seren. He also lectures at the Department of English, Faculty of Education, University of West Bohemia.

In 2017 his translations of Bohuslav Reynek, 'The Well at Morning: Selected Poems, 1925-1971,' were published by Karolinum, with essays by Martin C. Putna and Jiří Šerých (read a sample). His translations of Jan Zábrana’s poetry, 'The Lesser Histories,' were published in 2022 by Karolinum/University of Chicago Press. Some of these have been published in BODY, the Fortnightly Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, LitHub, and the New York Review of Books; an excerpt from the afterword appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

With Gabriela Klečková, he edited 'Anglophone Literature in Second-Language Teacher Education: Curriculum Innovation through Intercultural Communication' (Routledge, 2021). It is based on the new program at the English Dept of the Faculty of Education at the University of West Bohemia.

His monograph, 'Literature in the Age of Lingua Franca English: The Zero Style,' was published by Routledge in 2025.

He has published seven collections of poetry; Tomáš Fürstenzeller translated his work into Czech (Vlny a stromy; Opus, 2009). A novel, 'Mount Merrion' (Penguin), was published in 2013; it was translated by his wife, Tereza Límanová, into Czech and published by Argo in 2015.

27/05/2026

Blahopřejeme! 🎉👏 Letošním držitelem Ceny Růženy Vackové je náš absolvent Jan Kostohryz. Za svou vynikající diplomovou práci "Searching for a Spanish Joyce: Interactions between Anglophone and Spanish Experimental Fiction since 1962" získal již Cenu Viléma Mathesia. Tou byla oceněna také jeho bakalářská práce "Against His Own Theory: The Contradictions of B. S. Johnson’s Fiction".

Ceny Jana Palacha a Růženy Vackové znají své letošní laureáty 🏅

Jan Šebek získal Cenu Jana Palacha za disertační práci Vliv zevní radioterapie v oblasti krku na hlasový a řečový projev českého mluvčího. V rámci doktorského studia programu Fonetika realizoval výzkum zaměřený na vliv zevní radioterapie v oblasti krku na hlasový a řečový projev českých pacientů, který přinesl nová, dosud mezinárodně neprobádaná zjištění s přímým uplatněním v klinické praxi, zejména v onkologii a otorinolaryngologii při dlouhodobé dispenzarizaci těchto pacientů.

Cenu Růženy Vackové získal Jan Kostohryz, který v rámci svého studia Anglofonních literatur a kultur se specializací Literární a kulturní teorie, obhájil diplomovou práci Searching for a Spanish Joyce: Interactions between Anglophone and Spanish Experimental Fiction since 1962. Práce už dříve obdržela první cenu Viléma Mathesia za nejlepší diplomovou práci v celém ročníku.

Gratulujeme! 👏

27/05/2026

New publications by DALC staff members: the essay 'The pastoral mode and uncanny intimacy: an ecocritical reading of Buile Suibhne' by Radvan Markus has been published by Irish Studies Review. 🇮🇪 📚 Thanks to support from the project CoRe: Beyond Security, the essay is available in open access. 🔓

The article undertakes an analysis of the Middle Irish prosimetric tale Buile Suibhne in the light of the current cultural resignification of the Irish-language tradition from a resource for nation-building to a locus of inspiration for modern ecological thought. The general theoretical framework is provided by Timothy Morton’s concepts of “ecology without nature,” “strange stranger,” and especially “uncanny intimacy.” The article contends that while many early Irish treatments of nature display features of the pastoral mode, favourably comparing idealised nature to civilisation, Buile Suibhne remains ambiguous in this respect. In addition, the tale contains exceptional passages where the main character blends into the environment in a disquieting, although often sympathising way. A possible explanation for the unique features of the text is the fact that it creatively combines material from various sources.

The article undertakes an analysis of the Middle Irish prosimetric tale Buile Suibhne in the light of the current cultural resignification of the Irish-language tradition from a resource for nation...

19/05/2026

On 22-23 May, DALC hosts an international interdisciplinary conference on 'Disaster Nationalism' as part of the project CoRe: Beyond Security: Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building. https://ualk.ff.cuni.cz/disaster-nationalism/

The conference is open to students, alumni, and colleagues from other departments and faculties. The programme features presentations by DALC staff members and graduates, including Pavel Drábek, Mirka Horová, Radvan Markus, Petra Johana Poncarová, Martin Procházka, and others.