Prague Spring on Screen II: Prague Spring Resisting: The Soviet Invasion and its Aftermath on Screen and in Literature

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the Prague Spring and the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague on the night of August 20, 1968. The following period of “normalization” touched many spheres of cultural production in Czechoslovakia including literature, architecture, and film. The papers on this panel focus on forms of resistance in the visual, literary, and spatial arts to standardization and stagnation after 1968.

Sub Unit

• Cinema/Television/Electronic Media

Chair

• Jan Culik, U of Glasgow (UK)

Papers

• The Soviet Invasion Depicted in the Novel and the Film: Milan Kundera’s and Philip Kaufman’s 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' - Karen von Kunes, Yale U

• From Prague Spring to Samizdat: Freedom Lost and Found Again in Literature - Gabriela Romanova, Czech Academy of Sciences (Czech Republic)

• The Housing Complex in Post-1968 Prague or Positioning Women in Space: Vera Chytilová’s 'Panel Story or How a Housing Complex Is Born' - Liana Battsaligova, Yale U

Discussant

• Alice Osborne Lovejoy, U of Minnesota