Country Report
English Studies in the Czech Republic since 2000
Seen from the distance of the time that has passed since the first report on English Studies in the Czech Republic, following the 2001 Bamberg Conference, English studies at Czech Universities appear to have developed along similar lines as other European Universities, especially after the Czech Republic joined the European Union in 2004. University studies are now organized as a three-stage programme, comprising B.A., M.A. and PhD. studies. Most students now take English as a single subject; students who opt for two-subject study most frequently choose another language or linguistics and phonetics or philosophy. Older forms of study (e.g. two-subject five-year programmes) are closing after the completion of the respective curricula. A great deal of progress has been made in international contacts with regard to the mobility of both English Department staffs and students. In the case of the latter, students of English and American Studies mostly participate in the LLP/Erasmus scheme (one or two semester stays), visiting not only British and Irish universities, but also universities in other European countries. The same proportion of students come to study at our institutions, mainly from Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Poland, Austria and Germany. Students also participate in inter-university exchange programmes, and doctoral students can also benefit from the so-called “cotutelle” schemes (European jointly supervised PhDs).
Departments of English language and literature, or of English language, are established at four large and several smaller universities, mostly both at the Faculties of Arts and Faculties of Education. English Departments accredited to carry out doctoral programmes are in the Arts Faculties of Charles University in Prague, Masaryk University in Brno, Palacký University in Olomouc and Ostrava University in Ostrava. Accreditation to appoint associate and full professorships has been obtained by the English Departments in Prague, Brno and Olomouc. The other Departments do not qualify owing to a persistent shortage of full professors. After the untimely death of Professor Aleš Svoboda of Ostrava University this year, English Departments have only ten full professors of English language or literature on their staffs, some of whom, moreover, have reached retirement age. Hopefully, the number of associate professors (twenty-one including those working at the Faculties of Education) promises improvement. Continuation and advancement of English studies is also fostered by the number of students in doctoral studies (Prague 52, Brno 37, Olomouc 48, Ostrava 13), the number of those who have finished having so far exceeded a hundred (Prague 36, Brno 29, Olomouc about 40). It is to be noted, however, that the numbers of students in the doctoral programmes are limited by the supervising capacities of the respective departments.
English Departments mostly offer the study of both language and literature, though some of the Faculties of Education (Olomouc and Plzeň) have Departments of English Language alone, while the Arts Faculty at Charles University caters for the study of language and literature separately, in the Department of English Language and ELT Methodology, and the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures. It was at this faculty that the first English Department was founded by Vilém Mathesius, the first Czech professor of English language and literature, nearly a century ago. The centenary of the Department’s existence will be celebrated in 2012.
Of the remaining universities in the Czech Republic English Departments are established at the Faculty of Education of South Bohemian University in České Budějovice, at the Faculty of Science and Arts of Silesian University in Opava, at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pardubice and at the Faculty of Education of West Bohemian University in Plzeň. The Plzeň Faculty of Arts offers English studies focused on the language of commerce, management, economics and law.
All English Departments have long issued or have recently started issuing periodical publications. Prague Studies in English have appeared since 1924 as one of the series of Acta Universitatis Carolinae – Philologica. The latest volume, Prague Studies in English XXV (Karolinum, Charles University Press, 2010) is all but ready to appear. It commemorates the eightieth anniversary of the late literary scholar Jaroslav Hornát, in particular his work concerning the Czech reception of Charles Dickens.
The English Department at the Prague Faculty of Education presents volumes connected with its regular conferences. The 3rd volume, the latest one so far, appeared in 2007 under the title Plurality and Diversity in English Studies.
Brno Studies in English have been published since 1959, presenting one volume per year. Volume 9/2009 thus marks fifty years since its appearance, in connection with which it has doubled its periodicity and comes out biannually. No.1 of this volume gratefully commemorates the founder of the journal, Josef Vachek, the leading scholar of the Brno English Department in the first decades after World War II.
The Department of English and American Studies at Palacký University in Olomouc publishes Anglica and since last year also the Moravian Journal.
Recently started periodical series are issued by the English Department of the Brno Faculty of Education (Discourse and Interaction, Vol. 1, 2008, 2 issues; third issue 2009) and the Department of English Studies at the Faculty of Education of the South Bohemian University in České Budějovice (South Bohemian Anglo-American Studies, 2008, No. 1 Dream, Imagination and Reality in Literature, No. 2 The Dynamics of the Language System, a joint volume with the Department of Romance Philology). In the same year the English Department at the Faculty of Arts of Pardubice University started the publication of the American and British Studies Annual (ABSA), conceived as a yearbook devoted to American and British cultural and literary studies.
As has already been noted, many of these periodicals have been started as, or are partly connected with, regular or occasional conferences convened by the respective departments. As regards the organization of regular conferences, the Department that ranks highest is the English Department at Masaryk University in Brno. The Brno Conferences of English, American and Canadian Studies have been convened since 1986, and to the six noted in the previous report three have been added: the seventh conference in 2002, the eighth in 2005 and the ninth in February 2010. The last conference was a major event jointly organized by the Brno Department of English and American Studies and the Czech Association for the Study of English (CZASE), greatly surpassing the previous conferences in respect of both the number of participants and the number of foreign speakers.
Major conferences organized at Charles University are convened on different occasions, without being numbered. In recent years the major events included the European Association for American Studies conference (2004), the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures conference (2005), and the Prague School and Theories of Structure conference (2007). A regular event starting in 1994 has been The Oxford-Prague Medieval Workshop. Following the preceding four (in 1994, 1995, 1997, 2006) the most recent, fifth workshop was held in April 2010.
Widening international contacts are also evidenced at the conferences organized by smaller departments, e.g. at the fourth conference at the English Department of the Faculty of Education in Brno (September 2010) the keynote speakers will be Professors Henry Widdowson and László I. Komlósi, and at the 12th Ideas That Work Conference of the English Department of the Plzeň Faculty of Education (November 2010) the plenary speaker will be Michael Swan.
For the sake of providing an overall account of the history of English Studies in the Czech Republic, the present report is concluded with a reference (also contained in the previous report) to “The History and the Present State of English Studies in the Czech Republic” by Josef Hladký in Balz Engler and Renate Haas (eds), European English Studies: Contributions towards the History of a Discipline. The English Association, Great Britain, 2000.