News

The English Department is glad to invite you to

to an interesting public lecture

by

Iryna Dumchak, CSc.

researcher and external lecturer, Technical University of Liberec
visiting researcher, Charles University
associate professor, Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University

Farewell to Motherland: Narrative Identity in Ukrainian-American Studies
May 16, 2023, 12.30 pm, P004

Narrative identity is the story a human constructs to tell about themselves in order to understand who they are for themselves and for others. A cultural context is that one which influences the development of narrative identity rooted in "its origins in conversations between parents and their young children to the articulation of sophisticated meaning-making strategies in the personal stories told in adolescence and the emerging adulthood years."

Ukrainian/Canadian/Jewish narrative identity which could be traced in Askold Melnyczuk's, Irene Zabytko's, Claire Messud's, Jonathan Safran Foer's stories is represented by searching themselves not only within the context of their ancestors' homeland but also within the conditions of the new reality they, ancestors, happened to live and survive and their children were born and try understanding their "double" identity.

Farewell to motherland as a border situation is observed in the characters' attempts to leave their past behind or/and live with memories to the end of the life with/without their right for the future.

---

Iryna Dumchak, CSc. was named assistant professor of English Philology by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education in 2012, and holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University and a master's degree in English Philology from Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. Dr. Dumchak has been an external visiting researcher at Charles University since 2022, and is a researcher and external lecturer at the Technical University of Liberec in the 2022/2023 academic year.

The English Department is proud to invite you to

two exciting public lectures

by

doc. PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasová, Ph.D.

associate professor, Masaryk University

and

Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D.

assistant professor, Masaryk University

False Friends Beyond the Language Class – What Is There to Study? (dr. Rambousek)
April 28, 2023, 8.50 am, P102

The lecture deals with selected aspects of language interference, especially the so-called false friends (faux amis, false cognates). There are around two thousand false cognates between English and Czech. While often mentioned in intermediate-level English lessons, they are neglected at higher levels of ESL and in translator training. Based on errors collected from authentic texts, the lecture looks into the existing types of false friends and compares the ESL approach to what is needed in translation studies. How can false friends be studied, registered, and their treacherous influence avoided? Throughout the lecture, a few tricky examples will be presented and discussed.

Jan Firbas and His Approach to Functional Sentence Perspective (doc. Chamonikolasová)
April 28, 2023, 10.40 am, P102

The lecture will present the basic principles of the theory of Functional Sentence Perspective founded by Jan Firbas and its position among other theories of Information Structure. Attention will be paid to factors affecting the flow of information in discourse and the distribution of Communicative Dynamism within sentences and clauses. The lecture will include an example of the application of the FSP theory in translation.

---

Doc. PhDr. Jana Chamonikolasová, Ph.D. is a teacher at the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. She specializes in teaching Functional Syntax and the History of the English Language. The focus of her research is the Information Structure of Discourse. She is a follower of Jan Firbas, the founder of the Brno school of Functional Sentence Perspective.

Mgr. Ing. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D., teaches translation theory and practice courses at the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. His research interests include the history of Czech translations of children’s literature, especially Lewis Carroll, and problems of language interference and language contact in translation practice.

In the week of April 17 to April 21, 2023 Dr Laura Castor of The Arctic University of Norway is visiting our department. Students have the chance to meet her in Culture 2 seminars and in some other classes.  Dr Castor teaches classes in American literature, indigenous studies, and life writing. She is the author of Facing Trauma in Contemporary American Literary Discourse: Stories of Survival and Possibility (2019). If you would like to meet Dr Castor for a consultation about a topic that is of interest to you, please contact Anna Světlíková and she will help you arrange a meeting.

The English Department is proud to invite you to

a public lecture followed by a sing-along session with the banjo

by

David Livingstone, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Head of the Literary Section of the Department of English and American Studies
Palacký University, Olomouc

Shakespeare('s) Lives: Adaptations of the Bard in Contemporary Literature

April 19, 2023, 6.00 pm, P005

Like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, Shakespeare is still very much around today, but not always in forms we might expect. This talk will primarily explore Shakespearian themed books from the last fifty years. This will cover not only novels which are contemporary adaptations of the plays (especially novels in the so-called Hogarth Shakespeare Series), but also books dealing with Shakespeare the historical person. There will also be references to the development of this tradition as well as a brief discussion of the film adaptations and TV series (Shakespeare in Love, Upstart Crow).

David Livingstone is an American who has been living and working in the Czech Republic for more than thirty years. He teaches Shakespeare, modernism, Czech culture, children’s literature and American folk music at Palacký University, Olomouc. His doctoral dissertation, entitled Subversive Characters and Techniques in Shakespeare's History Plays, attempted feminist and cultural materialist readings of the first Henriad in particular. He has recently published a book, In Our Own Image: Fictional Representations of William Shakespeare, which looks at the wealth of novels, plays, short stories, films, television series and even comics focused on Shakespeare as a character.