THE PRESCIENCE OF KAREL ČAPEK / A talk by Thomas Ort

Name: THE PRESCIENCE OF KAREL ČAPEK / A talk by Thomas Ort
Start: 2025-03-06T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-03-06T20:30:00-05:00
Location: Bohemian National Hall

Schedule

Thu Mar 06 2025 at 07:00 pm to 08:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Bohemian National Hall | New York, NY

This year, on the 135th anniversary of his birth, we will be celebrating his genius and reconsidering the relevance of his work.
About this Event

Professor Thomas Ort will explore the uncanny relevance of this early twentieth-century Czech writer for our times' political and technological developments. Čapek's fears about the displacement of human labor by machines and the threat of authoritarianism appear closer to their realization than ever since the 1930s.

Moderated by Professor Chris Harwood, Columbia University

Thomas Ort is Associate Professor of modern European history at Queens College, The City University of New York. The main focus of his research has been modernist and avant-garde life in early twentieth-century Czechoslovakia, but his most recent work concerns the politics of memory in postwar Eastern Europe. He is the author of Art and Life in Modernist Prague: Karel Čapek and his Generation, 1911-1938 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), which was subsequently translated into Czech (Argo, 2016). Prof. Ort’s new book project, Meaning, Memory, and the Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, explores the ever-evolving interpretations of the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS general and architect of the Final Solution, who was assassinated in Prague in 1942.

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PLEASE NOTE:

The Long Island University - Post Campus in Brookville, NY, will present Karel Capek’s seminal play "RUR" on FEBRUARY 21-23, 2025!

Tickets https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/post-theatre-companylong-island-university/66c365552d501a0e382b2df9/about

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Just in case ...

a renowned Czech writer, playwright, critic, journalist, and friend of the first Czechoslovak president TG Masaryk, has been compared to writers like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. His notable works include the novels War with the Newts and Krakatit, and plays such as and R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which introduced the term "robot" to the world. Čapek's writing spanned multiple genres, from drama and fiction to essays, travel writing, reflections on gardening and enchanting stories for children. He was a master of language and storytelling, elevating Czech literature on the global stage.

Fun facts

Despite being nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, Čapek never received the award. He was instrumental in establishing the Czechoslovak PEN Club as part of International PEN.

In honor of his legacy, astronomer Luboš Kohoutek named an asteroid he discovered in 1969, Capek 1931. Richard E. Pattis of Stanford University also named his educational programming language "Karel" after the author.

Čapek's play The Makropulos Case inspired composer Leoš Janáček to create the celebrated opera (1925) of the same name.

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This event is organized by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) in New York as part of The Karel Čapek Year, with the support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association BBLA and in cooperation with the Czech Center NY.