Zdenek David - SVU Vice President

Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars since February 2002, Zdenek David was born in Blatnáá, Bohemia, Czech Republic, in 1931. After coming to the United States in September 1947 he studied at the Putney School in Vermont in 1947-48, then at Wesleyan University (politics and philosophy, B.A. 1952), and did graduate work at Harvard (Russian area studies, M.A. 1954; history, Ph.D. 1960). He taught historiography, and Russian and East European history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1960 to 1965. From 1966 to 1974, he served as Slavic bibliographer and history lecturer in Russian and East European history at Princeton University, and from 1974 to 2002 as Librarian at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

His book, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists' Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) was published in August 2003. A Czech translation is now under preparation. With the late Robert Kann he is coauthor of the Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526-1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984). He compiled the Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History for 1978-82 (with Robert Strassfeld), and for 1983-87 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University, 1984-89). His contributions have appeared in Austrian History Yearbook, Bohemia, Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, Church History, Ceskýý casopis historickýý, Communio Viatorum, EEPS: East European Politics and Societies, East European Jewish Affairs, Folia Historica Bohemica, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Kosmas, Sixteenth Century Journal, Slavic Review, and Slavonic and East European Review.

In the early 1990s, David joined David R. Holeton and Viléém Herold in organizing symposia on "The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice," the first three of which were held during the World Congresses of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (Prague 1994, Brno l996, Bratislava 1998), and the next three under the auspices of the Philosophy Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague in 2000, 2002, and 2004). He co-edited the symposia papers for biennial volumes of which so far five have appeared (1996-2004). In November 2002, he was invited to address the Historical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences on the subject of the Bohemian Reformation. He serves as a Member at Large of the Executive Committee of the Czechoslovak History Conference for 2004-2006. David is currently preparing a book on Shaping the Political Culture of Central Europe: Enlightenment and Romanticism.