Book Discussion: Prague: The Heart of Europe, by Cynthia Paces

Session Submission Type: Book Discussion Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable will discuss Cynthia Paces’s new, comprehensive history of Prague, which will be published by Oxford University Press in June 2025. A historian of Central Europe, Paces asks how Prague’s urban landscape and culture has reflected, challenged, and reinforced ideas of civic and national identity over eleven centuries. The book emphasizes the city’s linguistic, religious, and architectural diversity from medieval times to the present, paying close attention to the contributions and rivalries of the city’s Germans, Czechs, and Jews. A roundtable on Prague: The Heart of Europe aligns with ASEEES’s 2025 theme of “memory” as Paces’s scholarly career has been centered in memory studies. Her first book, Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth Century (University of Pittsburgh 2009), had a narrower scope but also examined the relationship between urban space, history, and identity. Paces’s new book takes an interdisciplinary approach and analyzes major events, the arts, religion, and social history. The panel reflects the book’s broad framework: Chad Bryant is a historian of modern Prague, Veronika Tuckerová is a literary scholar, and Hana Waisserová is an art historian and a specialist in gender studies. The author will discuss the challenges of confronting various mythologies rooted in Prague’s collective memory including the idea of Prague as a “Czech space” and the characterization of Prague as a magical or mystical place. Panel members will address the usefulness of a long-durée history and its potential as a resource for students and travelers.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Hugh LeCaine Agnew, George Washington U

Roundtable Speakers

• Chad Bryant, UNC at Chapel Hill

• Cynthia Paces, The College of New Jersey

• Veronika Tuckerova, Harvard U

• Hana Waisserova, U of Nebraska - Lincoln