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Literary Politics of the Radio Free Europe in Czechoslovakia in the Period of "Normalization"
Momčilović, Aleksandar ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Zezuláková Schormová, Františka (referee)
The MA thesis aims to reconstruct the political and aesthetical framework based on which the Czechoslovak Broadcasting Department of the American Radio Free Europe created its "literary canon" and interpreted literature and society in Czechoslovakia in the period after the breakdown of the Prague Spring, usually referred to as "normalization." The thesis contextualizes the RFE's literary activities and political implications within the late Cold War transnational dynamic to demonstrate the influence of the Anglophone cultures on Czechoslovak literary and political life. Unlike the traditional comparative research, which is usually concerned with how cultural artifacts or values travel from one national culture to another, the thesis explores the Anglophone influence through the way in which this American transnational institution promoted the Czechoslovak cultural products primarily but framed them to be aligned with the American foreign policy. Chapter 1 provides the historical and theoretical background of the activities of Radio Free Europe based on the critical overview of the existing literature on the Radio's cultural activities during the late Cold War with the emphasis on funding, its role in international politics, and its underlying ideology and internal structure. Chapter 2 deals with...
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Us and Them: Presenting America 1948-1956
Zezuláková Schormová, Františka ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
1 Abstract This MA thesis discusses contemporary US literature in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1956 in order to see how the US was represented through the chosen American writers and their works. The first two chapters look at how the parallel canon was established, both from historical and theoretical perspective. The third chapter discusses Langston Hughes as the representative of American poetry. It shows how Hughes was used to draw attention to racial inequality in the US. Howard Fast as the superstar of the "Czechoslovak America" is the focus of the fourth chapter. The cases of both Fast and Hughes show that contemporary US authors published in Czechoslovakia at that time were chosen for the way they depicted the US racial and social inequality and the repression of political opposition, and identified themselves as members of the so called progressive America. Reading Hughes and Fast from the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain contributes to Czech scholarship on the 1950s and adds new perspectives to the contemporary reconsiderations of American leftist writers.
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