Transatlantic Kafka: American and European perspectives on Kafka's work

We invite you to a series of lectures and panel discussions that will present Kafka's ideas in the context of today.

The following have confirmed their participation in the project „Transatlantic Kafka“:

Benjamin Balint

American-Israeli writer, journalist, educator and translator. His book „Kafka's Last Trial“, published in 2018, which deals with Franz Kafka's literary legacy, was awarded the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature 2020. Balint will explore Kafka's relationship to Judaism and also provide a space to reflect on how Kafka informs our understanding of literature, identity and human existence in the modern world.

Ross Benjamin

The American translator and literary critic has translated Friedrich Hölderlin's „Hyperion“, Joseph Roth's „Job“ and Daniel Kehlmann's „You Should Have Left“ and „Tyll“. In 2010, he won the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize for his translation of Michael Maar's novel „Speak, Nabokov“ and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for the translation of the new edition of Franz Kafka's diaries.

Merve Emre

Merve Emre is Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. She earned her BA from Harvard and her PhD from Yale University. She is the author of „Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America“ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), „The Ferrante Letters“ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), and „The Personality Brokers“ (Doubleday: New York, 2018), which was named one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, the Economist, NPR, CBC, and the Spectator and was the basis for the CNN/HBO documentary „Max Persona“.

She contributes to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and the London Review of Books. She has been awarded several prizes and fellowships, including the Philip Leverhulme Award and a fellowship from the Institute for Postdoctoral Studies in Berlin. She is a curator of Words Without Borders and the Hawthornden Foundation.

Magdaléna Platzová

The well-known Czech writer, who lives in France, is the author of several novels, including her latest work „Life after Kafka“ (2022), which is about his fiancée Felice Bauer, but also about other people whose fates are linked to pre-war Europe and its ruins. Platzová grew up in Prague, studied in the United States and England and earned a master's degree in philosophy at Charles University in Prague. From 2009 to 2012, she lived in New York City, where she taught a course on Franz Kafka at New York University.

Seth Rogoff

University lecturer at the Anglo-American University in Prague, writer and expert in media studies, literature and cultural analysis. He is the author of several novels, including „First, the Raven: a Preface“ (Sagging Meniscus Press 2017), „Thin Rising Vapors“ (SMP 2018) and „The Kirschbaum Lectures“ (2023). In 2021, Seth published „The Politics of the Dreamscape“ (Palgrave), which deals with cultural history, literary theory and the politics of dreams and their interpretations. He has translated the works of Franz Kafka, including the novel „The Castle“ (Vitalis 2007).

Mahulena Svobodová

Architect, works in the Office for Neighborhood Development at the Institute for Planning and Development of the Capital City of Prague. Prague, where she is responsible for the planning study of Prague's heritage conservation area. She will lead a discussion on how the city of Prague and urban space in general appear in Kafka's work in relation to contemporary urban space.

Veronika Tuckerová

A literary scholar and translator, Veronika Tuckerová teaches in the Department of Slavic Studies at Harvard University. Her research interests include Czech and German literature, the art and literature of dissent, and the theory and practice of translation. She collaborated on the exhibition „From Franz Kafka to the Velvet Revolution“ and recently completed a book on the Czechoslovak reception of Kafka from the 1920s to 1989. With her perspective on Kafka's work, she will open a discussion on the current relevance of his ideas.

Further participants and the program are under discussion.

Organizers: the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Anglo-American University in Prague

Partner: the Prague House of Literature of German-speaking Authors

Supported by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Prague.