PRAGUE FORAYS: EGON ERWIN KISCH, talk by Professor Chad Bryant, New York, May 18, 2023

Описание: Historian Chad Bryant shared a fascinating story of Egon Erwin Kisch whose literary experimentations suggested ways of thinking about strangers and difference, place and community, in the fin-de-siècle Prague more broadly.

Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948), a celebrated member of the Prague Circle, first earned local fame while writing a newspaper column entitled Prager Streifzüge, or Prague Forays, published weekly from 1910 to 1911. In these literal and figurative forays, Kisch puzzled through notions of urban belonging in a city ruled by Czech elites and shot through with political antisemitism.

Chad Bryant is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and adjunct professor in the Curriculum in Global Studies. He is the author of the recently published Prague: Belonging and the Modern City (Harvard University Press, 2021). The book has been positively reviewed in the Economist and Times Literary Supplement and is co-winner of the Radomír Luža Prize. A Czech translation, published by Argo, is forthcoming.

The event was organized by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews with support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and the Leo Baeck Institute.