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February 3rd, 2020
Five Purdue professors have been named recipients of awards from the 2019-20 Library Scholars Grants program.
The grants are awarded by the Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies to early-career Purdue professors to help them gain access to primary source materials and unique collections that are necessary for their research. Grants of up to $5,000 each are made possible through an endowment established by the generosity of the 50th Anniversary Gift of the Class of 1935.
Dr. Megha Anwer will travel to archives in Delhi, India, where she will be mapping women’s habitation and their encounters with crime and urban violence. This research will contribute to her current book project, “Forgettable Infractions: Everyday Violence and Female Mobility in Victorian London (1850-1900) and Delhi (1911-1947).” Anwer is a Clinical Assistant Professor and the Director of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in the Honors College.
Dr. J. Peter Moore will conduct research onsite at the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, utilizing the papers of the architect, Cliff May, and the poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. His current book project, “Other than a Citizen: Vernacular Poetics in Postwar America”, will explore daily used language with a multifaceted approach that encompasses a variety of expressive forms that include poetry and architecture. Moore is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Honors College.
Dr. Erik Otárola-Castillo will conduct archival research at the Ministry of Culture in Lima, Peru, with his project, “Climate Change Effects on the Migration and Subsistence Patterns of the First South Americans.” His current study focuses on climate change and its impact on migration in South America. Otárola-Castillo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts.
Dr. Zoe Taylor, will visit the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University to utilize their archives to advance her project, “Children on the Move in the Twenty-First Century: An Assessment of Resilience, Mental Health and Well-being of Migrant Children in Europe.” Her research broadly examines factors which contribute to health and positive development outcomes in underserved children, with a focus on migratory Latinx populations. Taylor is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Health and Human Sciences.
Dr. Margaret Tillman will conduct research at the Shanghai Municipal Archives in the People’s Republic of China for her second book project, tentatively titled, “Tested: Cultivating Talent and China’s Standardized Exams, 1905-1950,” that examines Chinese educational testing in the aftermath of the abolition of the Civil Service Examination. The results of her expedition will inform a chapter about postwar policies to extend literacy campaigns and to implement a new postwar vision of international peace promoted by the United Nations. Tillman is an Assistant Professor of Chinese History in the College of Liberal Arts.
This year’s scholars will be recognized at a luncheon on March 4 in the Purdue Memorial Union. Presentations will be given by previous awardees, Dr. Silva Mitchell, Dr. Heather Fielding, and Dr. Kim Gallon, who conducted their research at the Archivo del Palacio Uceda in Spain, at the New York Public Library and Columbia University, and at the People’s Educational Association at the University of Ghana in Africa, respectively.
For more information about the program, and to see the past recipients of Library Scholars Grants, visit www.lib.purdue.edu/scholars/past_recipients.
Filed under: general, Library Scholars GrantFebruary 3rd, 2020
Ruha Benjamin will give the Spring 2020 Critical Data Studies Distinguished Lecture “Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code” at 5:30-7 p.m. Feb. 17 in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. The hourlong talk will be followed by a half-hour Q&A with the audience. The event is free and open to the public.
Benjamin is a professor of African American studies and founder of the JUST DATA Lab at Princeton University. She is the author of “Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code” (Polity) and “People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier” (Stanford University Press), as well as the editor of “Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life” (Duke University Press).
In her talk, Benjamin takes listeners into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, she challenges listeners to question not only the technologies being sold to them, but also the ones they manufacture themselves. Benjamin presents the concept of the “New Jim Code” to explore a range of discriminatory designs that encode inequity: by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies, by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions, or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. She asks listeners to consider how race itself is a kind of tool designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice and discuss how technology is and can be used toward liberatory ends.
The Spring 2020 Critical Data Studies Distinguished lecture is organized by the Critical Data Studies Collective at Purdue in partnership with the Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Division of Diversity and Inclusion, DiversiKey, African American Studies and Research Center, NSF Center for the Science of Information, The Data Mine and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
The Critical Data Studies Lecture Series is a cross-college collaboration that brings scholars engaged in public scholarship to Purdue’s campus, with the aim of engaging a wider audience in a dialogue about critical challenges related to data science, big data, digital technology and infrastructure in contemporary society. Previous distinguished guest speakers have included Safiya Noble, the author of “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism”; Virginia Eubanks, the author of “Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor”; and Jenny Reardon, the founding director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of “The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome.”
For more information about the Critical Data Studies Seminar Series and/or other related learning and research opportunities, contact Roark at 765-494-2637 or via email at roark6@purdue.edu.
Media contact: Abbey Nickel
Source: Kendall Roark
January 27th, 2020
In this interview we talk to Steven G. Kellman, the author of Nimble Tongues: Studies in Literary Translingualism.
Nimble Tongues is a collection of essays that continues the author’s work in the fertile field of translingualism, focusing on the phenomenon of switching languages.
Q: Could you explain the concept of literary translingualism?
Steven G. Kellman: Literary translingualism is the phenomenon of writers who write in an acquired language. It includes writers who switch from a native language and write exclusively in another language – e.g, Joseph Conrad (who wrote in his third language, English, rather than Polish or French), Aharon Appelfeld (Hebrew rather than German), and Ha Jin (English rather than Chinese). And it includes writers who write in more than one language – e.g., Samuel Beckett (English and French), Vladimir Nabokov (Russian, French, and English), and Yoko Tawada (German and Japanese). Literary translingualism is as ancient as the writers of antiquity who employed the imperial languages of Latin, Persian, or Sanskrit rather than their native vernaculars. And it is as current as the wave of immigrants who are enriching contemporary literature with texts written in the languages of their adopted homes.
Q: Why do you feel that it is an important concept to study?
Kellman: There is an intrinsic literary value to translingual texts written by Apuleius, Petrarch, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fernando Pessoa, Isak Dinesen, Edwidge Danticat, and other outstanding authors. Any reader can appreciate how very difficult it is to write well in one’s first language – and marvel at the achievements of those who excel in a second, third, or even fourth language. However, linguistic switching also raises compelling questions about the relationships among language, thought, and identity. If, according to Ludwig Wittgenstein, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” writers who switch languages free themselves from the limitations of one world, only to place themselves within the limits of another world. The choice of language is not a trivial matter; it determines the text. After Ariel Dorfman wrote his memoir Heading South, Looking North in English, he duplicated the feat in Spanish, as Rumbo al Sur, deseando el Norte. However, it was not exactly a translation as much as a reconception – of the autobiographical project and of the self that is its subject. There are certain themes, moods, and thoughts that come more easily to André Brink when he writes in Afrikaans than when he writes in English.
Q: Perhaps uniquely, you mention that no one scholar can possibly claim mastery in the field, could you expand on that?
Kellman: No one researcher possesses the linguistic equipment or energy to exhaust the study of translingual literature. If there are approximately 5,000 languages in the world, the number of translingual possibilities would equal 5,000 X 4,499 ÷ 2 = 12,497,500. And that is only calculating the number of bilingual translingual possibilities; authors who, like Kamala Das, Vladimir Nabokov, and George Steiner, move among three or more languages add even more possibilities to the challenge of mapping out the universe of translingual literature. Not even the most formidable polylingual scholars of comparative literature such as René Wellek or Erich Auerbach are equipped to master the field. The burgeoning study of translingual literature is a collective effort, pursued through books, dissertations, journals, and conferences throughout the world. Scholars approach it through the lenses of comparative literature, linguistics, language pedagogy, psychology, postcolonial studies, and other disciplines.
Q: Taking all of this into account, how do you feel this title contributes to the field of study?
Kellman: Nimble Tongues expands on earlier work I have done in The Translingual Imagination (2000) and Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft (2003). Standing on the backs of giants, I have benefited from the growing community of specialists in translingual literature I have read and met throughout the world. The book discusses some translingual writers who have not received much attention, such as Hugo Hamilton, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Francesca Marciano. It also goes beyond just literary criticism to examine the strange case of a film made in Esperanto, the epidemic of xenolinguaphobia in the United States, and the challenges faced by the United Nations in producing a document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, intended to be universally valid and equally authoritative in all of its hundreds of linguistic iterations. The opening chapter of Nimble Tongues is titled “Does Translingualism Matter?” I hope that the book provides a persuasive positive answer.
You can get 30% off of any Purdue University Press books by ordering from our website and using the discount code PURDUE30.
Filed under: UncategorizedJanuary 27th, 2020
In this interview we talk to Steven G. Kellman, the author of Nimble Tongues: Studies in Literary Translingualism.
Nimble Tongues is a collection of essays that continues the author’s work in the fertile field of translingualism, focusing on the phenomenon of switching languages.
Q: Could you explain the concept of literary translingualism?
Steven G. Kellman: Literary translingualism is the phenomenon of writers who write in an acquired language. It includes writers who switch from a native language and write exclusively in another language – e.g, Joseph Conrad (who wrote in his third language, English, rather than Polish or French), Aharon Appelfeld (Hebrew rather than German), and Ha Jin (English rather than Chinese). And it includes writers who write in more than one language – e.g., Samuel Beckett (English and French), Vladimir Nabokov (Russian, French, and English), and Yoko Tawada (German and Japanese). Literary translingualism is as ancient as the writers of antiquity who employed the imperial languages of Latin, Persian, or Sanskrit rather than their native vernaculars. And it is as current as the wave of immigrants who are enriching contemporary literature with texts written in the languages of their adopted homes.
Q: Why do you feel that it is an important concept to study?
Kellman: There is an intrinsic literary value to translingual texts written by Apuleius, Petrarch, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fernando Pessoa, Isak Dinesen, Edwidge Danticat, and other outstanding authors. Any reader can appreciate how very difficult it is to write well in one’s first language – and marvel at the achievements of those who excel in a second, third, or even fourth language. However, linguistic switching also raises compelling questions about the relationships among language, thought, and identity. If, according to Ludwig Wittgenstein, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” writers who switch languages free themselves from the limitations of one world, only to place themselves within the limits of another world. The choice of language is not a trivial matter; it determines the text. After Ariel Dorfman wrote his memoir Heading South, Looking North in English, he duplicated the feat in Spanish, as Rumbo al Sur, deseando el Norte. However, it was not exactly a translation as much as a reconception – of the autobiographical project and of the self that is its subject. There are certain themes, moods, and thoughts that come more easily to André Brink when he writes in Afrikaans than when he writes in English.
Q: Perhaps uniquely, you mention that no one scholar can possibly claim mastery in the field, could you expand on that?
Kellman: No one researcher possesses the linguistic equipment or energy to exhaust the study of translingual literature. If there are approximately 5,000 languages in the world, the number of translingual possibilities would equal 5,000 X 4,499 ÷ 2 = 12,497,500. And that is only calculating the number of bilingual translingual possibilities; authors who, like Kamala Das, Vladimir Nabokov, and George Steiner, move among three or more languages add even more possibilities to the challenge of mapping out the universe of translingual literature. Not even the most formidable polylingual scholars of comparative literature such as René Wellek or Erich Auerbach are equipped to master the field. The burgeoning study of translingual literature is a collective effort, pursued through books, dissertations, journals, and conferences throughout the world. Scholars approach it through the lenses of comparative literature, linguistics, language pedagogy, psychology, postcolonial studies, and other disciplines.
Q: Taking all of this into account, how do you feel this title contributes to the field of study?
Kellman: Nimble Tongues expands on earlier work I have done in The Translingual Imagination (2000) and Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft (2003). Standing on the backs of giants, I have benefited from the growing community of specialists in translingual literature I have read and met throughout the world. The book discusses some translingual writers who have not received much attention, such as Hugo Hamilton, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Francesca Marciano. It also goes beyond just literary criticism to examine the strange case of a film made in Esperanto, the epidemic of xenolinguaphobia in the United States, and the challenges faced by the United Nations in producing a document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, intended to be universally valid and equally authoritative in all of its hundreds of linguistic iterations. The opening chapter of Nimble Tongues is titled “Does Translingualism Matter?” I hope that the book provides a persuasive positive answer.
You can get 30% off of any Purdue University Press books by ordering from our website and using the discount code PURDUE30.
Filed under: UncategorizedJanuary 27th, 2020
We are proud to announce that The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist by Julien Gorbach has been selected as a finalist of the 2019 National Jewish Book Award, in the category of Biography. The National Jewish Book Awards, now in its 69th year, is the longest-running program of its kind in North America.
The Notorious Ben Hecht is a biography of a great twentieth-century writer that treats his activism during the 1940s as the central drama of his life. Known widely for his roles in writing films like Scarface (1932), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), Hecht’s activism has often been overlooked. This book gives this part of the subject’s life its due, detailing the story of how Hecht earned admiration as a humanitarian and vilification as an extremist at a pivotal moment in history, and about the origins of his beliefs in his varied experiences in American media.
Julien Gorbach is an assistant professor in the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and an award-winning journalist and media historian.
You can get 30% all Purdue University Press titles by ordering from our website and using the discount code PURDUE30.
Filed under: UncategorizedJanuary 23rd, 2020
Humanities, Social Science and Education Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring History Reference Center, brought to you by EBSCO Industries, Inc.
Link: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/db/histrc
Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue login and password.
Focus: This database provides full text from more than 1,620 reference books, encyclopedias, and non-fiction books. There is also full text for more than 150 leading history periodicals, nearly 57,000 historical documents, and biographies for over 78,000 historical figures. The database also includes historical photos, maps, and video.
Tutorial: Click here see the basics of using History Reference Center.
Why you should know this database: This database features full text for thousands of primary source documents and informational texts.
Quick tip: Be sure to locate the “Cite” button for any article you are planning to use in your research. It will bring up a window with a drop down menu listing various citation styles. You can select the style that you need, then cut and paste the citation to your bibliography.
Related Resources:
Another database you might want to explore is:
_________
This Featured Database comes to you from the Humanities, Social Science and Education Library. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact hsselib@purdue.edu. Also let us know if you know of a colleague who would benefit from this, or future Featured Databases.
Since usage statistics are an important barometer when databases are up for renewal, tell us your favorite database, and we will gladly promote it. Send an email to hsselib@purdue.edu.
Filed under: HSSE, HSSE Featured Databases, UncategorizedJanuary 14th, 2020
Parrish Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring AgEcon Search, brought to you by the University of Minnesota Libraries, the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota and the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA).
Link: The List of Business Databases is the alphabetical list of the databases specially selected for those in a business program of study. Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue login and password.
Focus: Collects, indexes, and electronically distributes full text copies of scholarly research in the broadly defined field of agriculture and applied economics including sub disciplines such as agribusiness, food security and supply, energy and natural resource economics, policy issues, international trade, and more.
Tutorial: Click Getting Started with AgEcon Search to see the basics of using AgEcon Search.
Start with this hint: Use the advanced search link to combine keywords for a more precise search.
Why you should know this database: AgEcon Search is a freely accessible resource. Content includes conference presentations, working papers, journal articles, government documents, and theses and dissertations.
Related Resources
Some other resources you might want to explore, are:
This Featured Database comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu. Also let us know if you know of a colleague who would benefit from this, or future Featured Databases.
Since usage statistics are an important barometer when databases are up for renewal, tell us your favorite database, and we will gladly promote it. Send an email to parrlib@purdue.edu.
Filed under: database, general, MGMTJanuary 13th, 2020
The mission of the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections “is to support the discovery, learning, and engagement goals of Purdue University by identifying, collecting, preserving, and making available for research records and papers of enduring value created or received by the University and its employees.”
In more ways than one, the mission of the Archives and the university press are a perfect fit, and our work can come together to create something of unique value to the University.
The research for many Purdue University Press projects has started in the archives, including the two books published for Purdue’s 150th anniversary celebration, Ever True: 150 Year’s of Giant Leaps at Purdue University by John Norberg and Purdue at 150: A Visual History by David M. Hovde, Adriana Harmeyer, Neal Harmeyer, and Sammie L. Morris.
“The Purdue Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center is a portal through which the past speaks to us, where people long gone reach out to tell us who they were, how they lived, what they thought, and what they did,” says John Norberg, author of Ever True, “among the roles of a university are creating the future while preserving the past. We can’t know what the future holds. But the past comes back to life at the archives.”
Here’s more about some of our recent titles that are sourced heavily or entirely through the archives:
by David M. Hovde, Adriana Harmeyer, Neal Harmeyer, and Sammie L. Morris
This book tells Purdue’s story through rare images, artifacts, and words.
Authors, who have all worked for Purdue University, culled decades of student papers, from scrapbooks, yearbooks, letters, and newspapers to historical photographs and memorabilia preserved in the Purdue University Libraries Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections. Many of the images and artifacts included have never been published, presenting a unique history of Purdue University from the student perspective.
Read more about the process of research and writing this book in an interview with the authors.
by John Norberg
In this volume, Norberg takes readers beyond the iconic redbrick walls of Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus to delve into the stories of the faculty, alumni, and leaders who make up this remarkable institution’s distinguished history. Written to commemorate Purdue University’s sesquicentennial celebrations, Ever True picks up where prior histories leave off, bringing the intricacies of historic tales to the forefront, updating the Purdue story to the present, and looking to the future.
“In working on Ever True: 150 Years of Giant Leaps at Purdue University and other books, I spent many long hours in the archives. I was able to look at the material available online and request what I wanted to see. I sat at a table and the always very helpful archivists brought boxes to me. I opened the boxes and found letters, speeches, diaries and much more. History is the stories of people and in the Purdue Archives people came back to life, sat beside me and told me their victories and tragedies, joys and sorrows.”
by James R. Hansen
Today, some 75,000 of them letters to and from Neil Armstrong are preserved in the archives at Purdue University. This book publishes a careful sampling of these letters—roughly 400—reflecting the various kinds of correspondence that Armstrong received along with representative samples of his replies.
“There’s always more to know, to learn, to discover. For First Man, I did not have total access to Neil’s correspondence. For the past four or five years I did have access, in the Purdue Archives, and, as a result, I have a lot more to share with the world about Armstrong.”
Read the full interview with Hansen.
Frederick Whitford and Neal Harmeyer
This volume contains over 900 picturesque images, most never-before-seen, of men, women, and children working on the farm at the turn of the twentieth century, many of which come from the J.C. Allen and Sons Inc. Photographs and Negatives Collection in the archives.
John Calvin Allen, known as J.C., worked as a photographer for Purdue from 1909-1952, and operated his own photography business until his death in 1976.
You can get 30% all Purdue University Press titles by ordering from our website and using the discount code PURDUE30.
Filed under: UncategorizedDecember 13th, 2019
2019 was another great year at Purdue University Press. As we reflect on a year that included 29 new titles and several new journals, we’d like to thank all who support the press in a myriad of ways.
Here are some highlights:
On May 6, Purdue’s 150th birthday, we joined Purdue University in celebrating 150 years of giant leaps, publishing two titles celebrating Purdue’s history, Ever True: 150 Year of Giant Leaps at Purdue University by John Norberg and Purdue at 150: A Visual History of Student Life by David M. Hovde, Adriana Harmeyer, Neal Harmeyer, and Sammie L. Morris.
These two sesquicentennial titles were a part of our Founders series, which publishes books on and about Purdue University, whether the physical campus, the University’s impact on the region and world, or the many visionaries who attended or worked at the University. The two other titles added to the series this year were Memories of Life on the Farm by Frederick Whitford and Neal Harmeyer and the second edition of Wings of Their Dreams by John Norberg.
Another title from 2019 with a strong connection to Purdue, Dear Neil Armstrong: Letters to the First Man from All Mankind by James R. Hansen, publishes a sampling of the some 75,000 letters to Neil Armstrong stored in the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections, a collection he left to Purdue after his passing.
Some of our premier series had exciting years, with our New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond Series adding four new titles, and our Central European Studies series adding three new titles: Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher by Pavel Soukup, Making Peace in an Age of War: Emperor Ferdinand III by Mark Hengerer, and A History of Yugoslavia by Marie-Janine Calic.
Our blog was full of interesting author interviews, insightful and posts by our own staff, and the debut of our new blog series “The Impact of a Monograph”.
To keep in touch with us in 2020, make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and sign up for our email newsletter.
If you haven’t heard yet, you can get 40% off a selection of books in our Winter Gift Catalog, all you need to do is enter discount code GIFT40 when checking out on our website. The sale will end on at the end of the day on December 31st.
Two 50% off sales will also run until the end of 2019, for books in our Central European Studies series and our Studies in Jewish Civilization series.
Filed under: UncategorizedDecember 6th, 2019
We talked with author Pavel Soukup about his book with Purdue University Press, Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher.
The book records the life of medieval Czech university master and popular preacher Jan Hus, who was one of medieval Europe’s most prominent reformers.
Q: Who was Jan Hus?
Pavel Soukup: Jan Hus was a late medieval Czech university master and popular preacher in Prague, an adherent of the teachings of the English thinker John Wyclif, and a proponent of Church reform. Through his dedicated pursuit of what he understood as his mission, this medieval intellectual generated conflict, and eventually brought execution upon himself. In 1415, he was condemned at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake as a heretic. Thanks to his contemporary influence and his posthumous fame in the Hussite movement and beyond, Hus has become one of the best known figures of the Czech past, and one of the most prominent reformers of medieval Europe as a whole.
Q: It must provide a challenge to write about someone with the notoriety of Hus. Was there anything new you intended on adding to the conversation around him?
Soukup: The new facts I was able to add Hus’s biography are rather detailed findings that matter mostly to specialists. More important was my ambition to provide a comparative perspective on Hus. I did not want to see him as a titan with no peer, but rather as a member of a large group of reform-minded medieval intellectuals. What puzzles us is the fact that many of these reformers belonged to Hus’s opponents and some most prominent of them were among the judges who sent him to death. It is only through comparing their grounds, aims and approaches, that we can understand the religious split and the emergence of the Hussite dissent. While much work remains to be done, my book identifies the key areas in which this comparison should be done, and provides answers to the question of why an ecclesiastical reformer was condemned by a reform church council.
Q: Why did you choose to write about Jan Hus now?
Soukup: The book was written upon request by the German publisher of the original version. Otherwise, I would not think of writing about a person of such prominence in Czech historical research and public debate. Nevertheless, I accepted the invitation immediately. I understood it as both a chance and a challenge. Writing about Hus, one finds himself part of a long and venerable tradition. Czech patriotic discourse always spoke about Hus in impassioned, affected language. Today, big words like ‘truth’ and ‘martyrdom’ make us somewhat bashful. While literature on Hus certainly needs more sober language, the central themes of Hus’s story remain topical. Hus had to make hard choices facing repressive institutions, and the former Czech president Václav Havel had a point when he emphasized the principal of individual responsibility that cannot be delegated to anyone else.
Q: You say that the central themes of Hus’s life remain topical. What are some of these main themes?
Soukup: Jan Hus is often seen as someone who chose death instead of betraying the truth. This stance might be questioned by pointing to the subjectivity of personal convictions, especially when they are rooted in religious beliefs. Yet it is precisely these days, in the age of disinformation, that we need to care again about truth and reliability. Another theme crucial for grasping Hus is his public activity which led to the emergence of a group of determined followers who, not much later, started a religious revolution. I devoted the key chapters of the book to communication, media, and propaganda, as well as to preaching and political networking of Hus. Given the importance of communication networks and social media in today’s world, I believe that the social impact of communicative behavior represents a highly relevant topic of cultural-historical studies.
You can get 50% off Jan Hus during our Central European Studies Sale, just enter discount code CES50 when ordering directly through our website. The sale ends on December 1.
Filed under: Uncategorized